my modified version of the article below.
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> Daniela Deane, Washington Post
> Monday, January 27, 2003
> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/27/BU85184.DTL’
…
> Andersen’s new entrant, which isn’t for sale yet, is a bay window that
> doubles as a home entertainment center. A low-voltage current runs
> through the window. When the current is on, the window is clear. Turn
> the current off and the glass goes opaque for use as a projection
> screen for television or DVDs. Flanking casement windows become the
> speakers.
…
> “The transformation is….
imperceptible
> ,” said Sandy Isenstadt, a
> professor of architecture at Yale University. “One minute you’re
> looking out your bay window at your neighbor’s backyard, and the next
> you’re watching …
a real-time image of your neighbor’s backyard with an image of a
murder spliced in. Utilizing previously developed advertising
technology – such as that developed to present personalized
advertisements on blank walls in sports arenas, spliced in by
computers in the studio, and recast with the updated image to
specific areas or audiences. By utilizing the home computer, the
internet, this new window technology and each individual’s profile
(profile assimilated by credit reports, credit cards, school records,
medical and psychological records, criminal and employment records,
etc.), produces an individualized image for each family based on who
is viewing. For a fee, you can watch as your backyard turns into a
playground of nudes. Or, for a fee-less system, small advertisement
chunks will be inserted into your backyard seamlessly. A truck with
FEDEX is parked in back. The label on your neighbor’s beer is
replaced by Budweiser. Anti-drug messages are inserted via
conversations that people in the alley are having, courtesy of the
government and the anti-drug message credits for ads program (as
exposed on salon on network television a few years ago).
‘Really, this is only the beginning of augmented reality – a reality
controlled both by corporations and the government, personalized to
get you to act in an appropriate (profit and product bearing) manner.
Imagine once eyeglasses and hearing aids are modified, and beyond
this, the actual eye and ears. The point is that reality is no longer
something that exists exterior to the media. You can no longer trust
your senses. The division between real and virtual is one that is
clearly manipulated to profit those in power. Baudrillard once said
that disneyland exists to make us believe the rest is real. Thus,
traditionally, modes of virtual are clearly demarcated, so that the
subtle (virtual) manipulations of reality are not distrusted.’
Said a crazed prophetic street walking messenger.
‘For now, trust only what you can touch and feel, and who knows how
much longer we can trust that.’