Impact of augmented reality on society

The development of augmented reality goes faster than you could possibly imagine. This could be seen as a good thing, because there are a lot of useful and helpful applications which could really benefit society. But what are the possible applications of this technology that can endanger the society? And how can companies maybe abuse the technology for their own good? In this article I will give you an insight on the useful and helpful applications that are designed with augmented reality but also the dangers that come along.

Let me just start off with a short description of augmented reality. Augmented reality means an increased reality. So basically your own reality is mixed with a virtual one. This implemented reality could be visible on your phone screen, but also by for example looking through a lens. Now I will give some examples of useful and helpful applications of augmented reality.

First and most noticeable application of augmented reality is in the medical sector. Here, augmented reality can be used for educational purposes. For example, study books can only deliver 2D images of the human anatomy. So, to study the human anatomy in 3D, human cadavers are used. However, there are a lot of emotional arguments against this teaching method and it effectiveness has not yet been proven (Winkelmann, 2007). Solution is augmented reality, which can offer a 3D image of the full human anatomy, visible through a lens (Kamphuis, 2017). Also, augmented reality can be used to visualize real-time lung dynamics in 3D. By combining a generic functional lung model with patient-specific data, the lung activity of a specific patient can be visualized. This offers new insights and therefore leads to new training opportunities which are only possible with augmented reality (Kamphuis, 2017).

Second application of augmented reality is in manufacturing tasks. For example, an assembly task. Training for a particular assembly task can be difficult and time consuming. With an augmented reality system it is possible to visually overlay instructions and animations on the real products. Tang (2003) have conducted an experiment in which they compared three instructional methods with the augmented reality system of instructions. Overlaying the instructions and animations on the real products resulted in a reduced error rate of 82% (Tang, 2003).

There are more examples of useful applications of augmented reality in society. But all this useful applications have one thing in common, they are created only for the use of this specific application. The real problem with augmented reality can be found in the augmented reality that is created for social use. These so called glasses-style augmented reality devices are already available on the commercial market. And the development of these augmented reality glasses is going fast, company’s are already getting patent on augmented reality contact lenses.

The first problem is regarding the security of these augmented reality glasses. The security systems of these glasses is hard to create, because it is a complex device (Roesner, 2014). So, it could easily be hacked. Imagine a hacker that can literally see what you can see? Also, it could implement things in your augmented reality. In this way a hacker could nudge you in certain directions or psychologically torture you.

Second problem is regarding privacy. Lately there has been a lot of controversy about all the data Facebook and Google are getting from us. And that only regards the data that we type in on our computers and mobile phones. But with augmented reality glasses, companies could literally steal your vision and see what you are seeing. With this information they could nudge you in certain direction by implementing things in your vision. Also, by stealing your vision they could advertise more precise on your needs and maybe even implement it in your vision.

Third problem is about fixation on visual impulses. We know that humans get easily fixated on the screen of their mobile phone. That is why it is absolutely prohibited to use your mobile phone while driving a car. In the Netherlands there is even a campaign ongoing, that is promoting to shut off your phone or put it on airplane modus when you are driving. This is because when someone sees the incoming of an text message, it could distract them and fixate their vision on their mobile phone screen, which could then lead to an accident. So if this small impulse could distract you, how about all the impulses you can get when wearing augmented reality glasses? In California a woman got a ticket for driving with Google glasses, however this was suspended because the court could not prove that she was using it (Sacca, 2014). This illustrates how hard it is to control the use of augmented reality glasses in traffic. Imagine people wearing augmented reality contact lenses, that would make it impossible to control.

Finally, augmented reality could have negative effects regarding your physical conditions. People who are using augmented reality could experience eye twitching, dizziness and/or eye strain (Sahin, 2018) However, this only is in the minority of the cases. Still it is a problem regarding augmented reality glasses.

To conclude, augmented reality can have helpful applications that benefit society. For example, it can be used to improve education of medicine studies on the human anatomy and even give new insights in the visualization of lung dynamics. Also, it can be used to improve the results of tasks in an assembly process. However, the dangers of augmented reality are due to the applications in social use. Big companies, like Google, are manufacturing so called augmented reality glasses. However, the security on these glasses is not advanced enough to guarantee your safety. Also, the glasses deliver huge amounts of data to the manufacturer companies that can seriously affect your privacy. Thirdly, the impulses in these augmented reality glasses could form a uncontrollable danger in traffic. Finally, the augmented reality glasses can cause eye twitching, dizziness and/or eye strain. Thus, there are a lot of helpful applications of augmented reality. However, the social use of augmented reality glasses can seriously affect society.

References

Winkelmann, A. (2007). Anatomical dissection as a teaching method in medical school: a review of the evidence. Medical education, 41(1), 15–22.

Kamphuis, C., Barsom, E., Schijven, M., & Christoph, N. (2014). Augmented reality in medical education?. Perspectives on medical education, 3(4), 300–311.

Tang, A., Owen, C., Biocca, F., & Mou, W. (2003, April). Comparative effectiveness of augmented reality in object assembly. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 73–80). ACM.

Roesner, F., Kohno, T., & Molnar, D. (2014). Security and privacy for augmented reality systems. Communications of the ACM, 57(4), 88–96.

Sahin, N., Keshav, N., Salisbury, J., & Vahabzadeh, A. (2018). Safety and Lack of Negative Effects of Wearable Augmented-Reality Social Communication Aid for Children and Adults with Autism. Journal of clinical medicine, 7(8), 188.

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