“Someone told me that cyberspace was 'everting.' That was how she put it.”
“Sure. And once it everts, then there isn't a cyberspace, is there? There never was, if you want to look at it that way. It was a way we had of looking where we were headed, a direction...”
---from Spook Country, by William Gibson
Augmented Reality and the Locus of the Conscious Self
Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968 Mother of All Demos, appropriately titled A research center for augmented human intellect, introduced the world to a set of concepts and ideas that are now as common-place as kleenex. Interactive text, video and teleconferencing, email, hypertext, and the now ubiquitous mouse all found their public debut on that most momentous occasion. From the beginning, Douglas Engelbart was conscious of the transformative possibilities computerized technology had for the human intellect. Engelbart's demo represented a dream of a human intellect that could expand beyond the limited boundaries of the individual, a dream of a self enhanced by technology. Today, these technologies are ubiquitous, their potential has become kinetic, their influence irrefutable.
We are in the midst of a social experiment which is in the midst transforming every aspect of society. Our material interactions with technology have shaped both our imagined internal self and our external social self. We have communities that are no longer constrained by geography, dreams of realities that are no longer contained within the confines of our own minds. This is a massive experiment in remapping; geographical and social boundaries, the boundaries between the mental and physical self, and even the boundaries of consciousness are no longer concrete. Rather these boundaries have become movable, flexible, permeable membranes, unconstrained and portable. This paper will explore the possibility that the modern conscious self is an augmented self, and that the seat, or locus, of consciousness is not only flexible, it is under constant transformative motion.
Bibliography
"Augmented Reality." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality>.
Boelstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton U. Press, 2008).
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. New York: New Directions, 1964. pp. 3-18 and pp. 52-58
Brin, David. Earth. New York: Spectra, 1991.
Flores, Richard R. Remembering the Alamo memory, modernity, and the master symbol. Austin: University of Texas, 2002.
Gibson, William. Spook Country. Reprint ed. New York: Berkley Group, 2009.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Gödel, Escher, Bach an eternal golden braid. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Metamagical themas questing for the essence of mind and pattern. New York: Basic Books, 1985. pp. 232-259
Jaynes, Julian. Origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000.
Kim, Ryan. "Augmented reality to alter how we see the world." Sfgate.com. San Francisco Chronicle, 26 Oct. 2009. Web. 26 Oct. 2009. <Augmented reality to alter how we see the world Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/26/MNCR1A9B5S.DTL#ixzz0W6mWZfAj>.
Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2006.
Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual. (Durham and London: Duke U. Press, 2002). pp. 1-21.
Stephenson, Neal. Snow crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.
Turkle, Shery. “Tethering” in Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art, Caroline A. Jones (ed.). Cambridge, MA: List Visual Art Center and MIT Press, 2006.
twitter
flickr
facebook
Equipment