Barlow, Cyberspace and the Augmented Reality

In 1996 John Perry Barlow published online “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” Link, in respond to US passing of the Telecommunication Reform Act. In his declaration He said: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather”. After nearly 15 years, it seems that Barlow lost the fight since the cyberspace or the Internet is now regulated by governments and large corporations such as Google and Microsoft in its all aspects and it is not free like he, among others believed it should be. Also nothing in the Internet is for free, it’s all for profit. Banks, companies and government are very active online. T.V interview with Neil Postman in 1995, he said: “when I hear people talk about the information superhighway, it will become possible to shop at home and bank at home and get your texts at home and get entertainment at home and so on, I often wonder if this doesn't signify the end of any meaningful community life”.

Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995:

It is clear now that the Internet takes a huge part of our daily life time and it`s always use it individually and that`s exactly what Postman was concerned about, people do everything online will lose their sense of communication with others. Virtual is the second life; it was best illustrated in the Matrix trilogy. People who were in the Matrix didn’t know that they are living a virtual life; the Matrix is a second life. But now days it seems that second life term is not practical anymore. Because we are using the Internet all the time and everywhere thru our smart phones! Which mean there are no boundaries between the real world and the second life. And now, with the “Augmented reality”, it’s hard to tell which is real and which is virtual. Augmented reality fills the gaps between real and virtual. It is basically mixes the two worlds. AR was out there for years, but Smart phones like iPhone and computers with built in video cams gave AR the boost it needed. Link. Famous AR application was built by Layer, which can give you radar map of details such as Wikipedia information, Flickr photos, Google searches and YouTube videos superimposed onto a picture you`ve taken from the scene. Although the use of AR in retail is still relatively small, yet it seems that AR next boost would be in retail business. in the end it doesn't seem that Barlow still feel the same way about what he called the Cyberspace!

An example of AR in retail business in Youtube: