Augment Reality

I like new technology. I am rarely the first to try it. I like others to work out the bugs. However, if I think it will be useful, I usually will try it.

One idea has been to put on a pair of glasses and suddenly see streaming information about what you are looking at.

Your special glasses will tell the cost of the camera and its specifications. If you are sightseeing, you will get historical background on the landmark in front of you.

The name for this technology is “augmented reality.” Some of the fun things done with it is pokemon go, but the business application is what fuels much of the economic interest. Lately, I have seen this technology as an app on your smart phone. It will offer your information about the world as you presently engage it.

A great example is the endless number of smartphone apps that allow you to use your phone as a viewfinder, holding it up to the street in front of you to see restaurant ratings hung virtually beneath a venue's actual awning or directional arrows virtually lining the street ahead of you, pointing to the nearest metro-stop.

Nevertheless, it is about to get better. The latest developments suggest that we will soon live in a world where GPS directions to grandma's house will no longer be on a display in your dashboard but appear as signs on the side of the road through technology embedded in your windshield.

Likewise, the Google Glass Project has launched, providing one with an augmented reality display within one's field of vision via a pair of hip and modern eyeglasses, adding informative graphics, and more, to everything one encounters. Very soon, life in this world will be layered with more information, opportunity and power than we have ever imagined.

As always, the question before us as users is what we will do with this information.

Information is critical, but we need more than information. We need some beliefs and values that help us assess the information. Of course, as a preacher, this might lead to a message about how people who love Jesus and walk in the Spirit, people who pay attention to the Bible, and respect the way God has worked through the traditions of the church, might “augment reality” in a way that offers the healing and liberating gospel to others.