When placecasting becomes overkill

Right idea. Totally overbuilt. Watch...

The driving force behind placecasting (see my concept post) is that people are hungry for information about the world around them. Technology that knows where we are can help us get answers to those questions while we're in that world. BUT, one important guiding principal is that the technology should not actually obscure the real world.

Thus, the woman on a beautiful ocean overlook who chooses to look instead at a kiosk computer screen is kind of missing the point. Take away the giant kiosk and replace it with a 3G cell phone with the right app, and I bet she could have gotten the same information without encasing herself in a cocoon of overbuilt technology. I wrote about this a couple months ago.

That said, it's exciting that more and more people are working on this notion. In fact, my simple placecasting idea seems to be just one cornor of a larger concept called Augmented Reality. I'll be looking through more of Wired Magazine's coverage of this evolving notion to see where audio might fit in.

(h/t Wired Magazine via Steve Mullis)