Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it happen

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ReHerakhte
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Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it happen

Post by ReHerakhte »

I have seen the future and it is Virtual Reality -- it's augmented and in J-Pop style.
This article from Technovelgy gives a very scant description of the creation of an anime girlfriend via augmented reality. The video attached to the article gives a whole lot more information.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-F ... wsNum=3703

I'm fascinated by the technology but I'm not keen on anime J-pop so I don't know whether to applaud or hide in a corner. And I don't know if William Gibson is nodding his head in approval or shaking it in despair... actually, I think he'd kind of approve?
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by Linden »

At the risk of engaging in crude national stereotyping, I was reading that a lot of younger Japanese men aren't that keen on having a 3-D (i.e. real) female partner and would actually prefer to interact with some kind of computer generated construct. If that's true it's not going to do much for the country's already lousy demographics.

May also explain how my cousin's eldest lad returned from a year studying in Tokyo complete with new Japanese girlfriend...
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by ReHerakhte »

I've read some similar information but I've also read some counter arguments that it's a case of the media giving too much attention to what is actually quite rare.

However, given that there are many men (and some women) in Japan who feel that relationships are difficult to start or maintain and that women feel they'll lose any independence (they're "expected" to marry by the time they reach 30 and thus give up any career or other aspirations they may have) or that people are too busy with work to have enough time to socialize, that the Japanese "Idol" culture creates an idealized fantasy of what women are supposed to be like and given that there is a fascination with computer technology and finally that some people feel that they don't have enough money to get married, it's not so surprising to learn that many men aged between 18 to 34 don't have realworld girlfriends.

Apparently, a survey conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research claimed that over 60% of single men in that age don't have girlfriends and that nearly 50% of single women in the same bracket don't have boyfriends. I think then that the fantasy girlfriend phenomena might be a little more prevalent than claimed by the opposition.

Some sources (I've tried to avoid Western newspapers like the Telegraph who all seem to single out the one source and endlessly repeat it):
http://www.japantoday.com/category/nati ... hed-survey
http://www.japantoday.com/category/life ... chelorhood
http://beforeitsnews.com/environment/20 ... 84024.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24614830 I've seen this particular article vilified by a few Western forums because of the final sentence (those forums seemed to have a lot of "woman hate" though, in my opinion)
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by Linden »

Yes, it was the article on the BBC website that I saw. I'd agree the last sentence is rather on the crude side, maybe even a bit racist.
Last edited by Linden on Sat Nov 02, 2013 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by ReHerakhte »

Yeah the last sentence was crudely put but it isn't enough to warrant the vitriol against the articles author. In my opinion, the author was being attacked because she's a woman (Anita Rani) and certain men reacted to the last statement in the article as if it was a personal slur on them.

To explain further about what I'd seen in some Western forums, the members were all males and a good many (easily 40-50%) were praising Japanese men for not surrendering their "manly rights" to the "bitches".

These men were blatantly hostile towards the women of Japan to the point of misogyny. They weren't interested in learning the viewpoints of Japanese men towards women in Japan let alone learning the viewpoints of the women. It appeared to me that for them, the women were to blame for everything and so Anita Rani, being female was also to be blamed.
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by Linden »

There's an awful lot of maladjusted people out there and the internet gives them a platform to spew their bile. It's part of the reason I don't really bother with political blog sites any more. At the end of the day though it probably doesn't matter what a load of misogynist saddoes write in the comment section of a web page. Are they going to achieve anything beyond self-reinforcement of their own hateful views?

It does get me thinking though in a DC sense...could the massed hatred in the comments under newspaper articles, blog posts etc feed the Dark Ones or maybe even coagulate into some kind of net based Dark Lord?
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by Morthrai »

Linden wrote:
It does get me thinking though in a DC sense...could the massed hatred in the comments under newspaper articles, blog posts etc feed the Dark Ones or maybe even coagulate into some kind of net based Dark Lord?

A media or telecoms corp that had been infiltrated by Darklings could easily slip something into the net that could "harvest" negative emotions from users. They would also be in a prime position to stir up more bad feelings as and when they might want them...
Lee Williams.
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Re: Augmented Reality and the freaky things that make it hap

Post by ReHerakhte »

Some very interesting ideas there Linden and Lee.
Taking it a step further, what if some of the Dread Sidhe were captured by another Dark Lord's forces and the Sidhes brains used to make organic computers connected to the net. Would these Sidhe computers then be able to harvest the emotion from the hateful comments? What would they then be able to do with the "energy" they had amassed? Would they be able to send it on to their own Dark Lord or would it be taken by their captors? Would they be able to make use of it themselves?
More food for thought :D
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