It really takes a writer to show a vision of how new technologies can change our daily lives, and in Halting State, Charles Stross has done that for me with his version of augmented reality. Standing in my barn this morning, I realised I need CopSpace here, at home.
I have tended to think that augmented reality tools, a technology often linked to either mobile phones or as enhancements to wearable glasses, will take time to catch on and have limited uses. Most of the descriptions I have seen have been presented as tech visions, often written by people trying to sell the possibilities of the technology for marketing or gaming. I know other writers have offered visions of a future in which your glasses show you advertising, or GPS to restaurants, but none of them clicked for me. Halting State is, well many things but it has a strong line of police procedural in it, set in Glasgow in 2016 – sort of Neuromancer meets Taggart In Stross’ CopSpace, a cop standing on the street can see overlays showing ABSOs, parking tickets on cars, or other little things. Its the little things that get it for me. Potentially, everything has a RFID tag, and can be linked to information in some database.
So back to the barn. I need those boxes moved there, and need to mark that space to be cleared for storing those tools, and I need to tag all this work as jobs for Lex. We also need to know where the blasted shovel is gone. Now, all of this is a work, but if I could flip on some sort of AR screen, and use a virtual keypad to mark all this out in cyberspace, it’d be faster, and easier, and much less likely to be fogotten and more likely to be done properly. People talk about RFID tagging for stock control in shops and how your fridge will order your milk for you, but it is where things are not in tidy spaces that it will really save time, and effort, and money. On farms and building sites, people will be able to lay hands on a box of 3/8″ no 7 widgets instantly. Untidy people will love this – and so will the neat freaks. My kids will never again have to spend 20 minutes looking for their school shirt in the morning. This is why Augmented Reality will be useful and become common. Of course there will be a cost, and there will be even more abuses of people’s personal data, but I’ll know where my shovel is gone.
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