Future Compliant, June 22: Enki, Androids, and Enhanced Reality

I first came across the idea in William GibsonWilliam Gibson's novel Virtual Light, and he plays with the idea some in his new novel, Spook Country. But for my money, the coolest sci-fi interpretation is in Vernor Vinge's award winning novel, Rainbows End, which I loved through and through and recommend to one and all. Let's call it enhanced reality - the concept of layering "virtual" images and facts over the real world as you look around it. So, for example, say you're wearing some special goggles or contacts or what have you, and they're connected to the internet and downloading information in real time about the world around you. When you look at something, you not only see the real thing, but you see information and even other images superimposed on top of reality, or in Vinge's book, an entire alternate version of whatever you're looking at. What you see would be entirely context sensitive, tied into GPS location and map databases and maybe even info beacons attached to RFID chips or other devices in the objects themselves. In a store the items' prices and details would sow up. Wandering around the streets, you could have street numbers, addresses, and even a directional arrow overlaid to help you find your way. I always thought this enhanced reality concept was a really cool idea, and of course I'm not the only one who felt that way. Naturally enough, someone's working hard on making it come true.

These two researchers are developing a project called Enkin and it aims to do just that, and they're going to do it on your phone. Go ahead and watch the video on their site. It's only about five minutes long and while it is in early prototype and therefore a little rough around the edges, it is in fact super, crazy, cool, and awesome. They were participating in Google's Android app development competition, although for reasons passing all understanding they weren't chosen as one of the 50 winners. But never fear, they say Google has contacted them directly and there's no way they're going to pass up on this kind of technology for their mobile phone platform. Android, by the way, is Google's cross-platform, open source cell phone development platform that's supposed to launch later this year. I'm in love with the idea of Android and am psyched that my carrier, T-Mobile, is on board with it. As cool as the IPhone is, the fact that it's so locked-down and controlled by Apple makes me go crazy. Not that my Blackberry's much better mind you, but still, it drives me nuts. So I'm really looking forward to this open source alternative.

I have to say that, looking at this list of the 50 that did win (on this post there's a link to download a pdf) none of them strike me as nearly as super cool as the Enki project. On the other hand, all of them do seem much simpler to implement and more likely to be ready to ship when Android is first released. There are some cool ones in the mix, including lots of nice, location-based apps that accomplish some of the same things that the sci-fi version of enhanced reality I talked about early promise. There are a couple of apps designed for use with location based reality gaming, which sounds very fun to me, and others, like some sort of Golf thing, which might be really great if I played golf. What's great is that because these are open source and will be available on multiple phones from multiple carriers they're going to see a lot more uptake then the walled-in, Steve JobsSteve Jobs-controlled apps that make their way onto the IPhone. At the same time, if any of them prove really useful or popular, Apple will be forced to adopt them as well, spreading the open source love even farther.

I really do think portable phone-sized computing is the future of computing in general. I already do as much work on my tiny EeePC as I do on my other computers, and as things get smaller and more powerful and wireless broadband starts to become actually ubiquitous, things are going to get even more portable and I'm going to love every minute of it. More and more, I think the big, heavy desktops are going to be the sole domain of people who need serious computing power like video editors, artists, programmers, and so on. For 99% of home users, it's all going to get smaller, and easier, and more portable, and very much cheaper. I look forward to the day when my glasses or contacts overlay a virtual screen on the table in front of me and I fold out the keyboard from the side of my mobile device to do my touch typing on. That's probably a few years off, but I do have a message for Google - bring my Enki for my Android phone, and bring it soon!