Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech's Next Big Thing

by Mark Pesce

Overview

Slated as ‘the next big thing in tech’, augmented reality promises to take the screen out of our hands and wrap it around the world via ‘smart spectacles’. As a pervasive, invisible interface between the world and our senses, AR offers unparalleled capacity to reveal hidden digital depths, but it also comes at a cost to our privacy, our property, and our reality. 

In this crucial and provocative book, Mark Pesce draws on over thirty years’ experience to offer the first mainstream exploration of augmented reality. He discusses the exciting and beneficial features of AR as well as the issues and risks raised by this still-emerging technology – a technology that moulds us by shaping what we see and hear. 

Augmented Reality is essential reading for anyone interested in the growing influence of this impressive but deeply concerning technology. As the book reveals, reality - once augmented - will never be the same.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509540945
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	12/14/2020
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Mark Pesce is an inventor, author, educator, entrepreneur, broadcaster and futurist.

Table of Contents

Timeline of Key Events in AR vi

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction: A Riot in Rhodes 1

1 The Will to Empower 16

2 Surveillance Status 43

3 The Last Days of Reality 63

4 The Web Wide World 96

5 Setting the World to Writes 118

Conclusion: No Feint but What We Make 140

Notes 149

Index 162

Editorial Reviews

This is the story of how we came to live in an increasingly augmented reality and what this might mean for the future of being human, told by one of this technology’s most brilliant and playful pioneers. Thrilling, scary, hopeful, and required reading.”
Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens and Team Human

“A must-read for those who are both fascinated by digital technology and fearful of its implications. Mark makes a deeply technical topic accessible to any reader, and catalogs the key insights and innovations that led to where we are now: on the cusp of the most significant technological advancement in history— and possibly the most dangerously invasive and manipulative tool ever created.”
Tony Parisi, VR pioneer and Head of AR/VR Ad Innovation at Unity Technologies

“an expansive and holistic picture of how augmented reality works as a system of machines.”  
ARPost

“a must-read.”
The Connector

“fascinating”
ZD Net

From the Publisher