Weekly New/Digital Media (64)

Facebook's key to building communities in divided times: augmented reality 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-f8-speech-augmented-reality 

Summary: "Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 conference hinted that AR encourages people to interact with others – although that experience is still mediated by a screen"
Zucherberg is outlining that the camera app planned to be released makes it easy for people to build augmented reality experiences (digital objects and overlaid information enhancing physical space)
Facebook has developed some clever tools to turn a two-dimensional camera image into a three-dimensional model into which animated effects can be added.

Key facts/ statistics:

• We live in a time when society is divided and work is needed to bring people together, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks it has the solution: augmented reality
• “AR is going to help us mix the digital and physical in all new ways, and that will make our physical reality better,” said a chipper Zuckerberg, outlining a range of technologies the company had developed to enable augmented reality experiences that go beyond simple Snapchat-style animated filters.
• After a few somber seconds it was back to talk of how technology – particularly augmented reality – can be used to build community.
• Zuckerberg did not make this clear but hinted that augmented reality encourages people to look up from their screens and interact with others and find common ground – although for now that experience is still mediated by the smartphone screen.
• “In the future, technology is going to make us more productive and free us up to enjoy interacting with each other,” he said.
• “We all know where we want this to go. We want glasses and contact lenses that look and feel normal and overlay digital information over the real world,” he said, adding that you wouldn’t need to have a TV on your wall when your AR glasses could conjure one up on demand. “Instead of being a piece of hardware it’s a $1 app.”

My opinion:
I don't like the concept of AR in all realness. I don't think it would create a sense of community much rather isolate everyone from community and reality much further than they already are. It detaches you from the physical world to view it through the lens of a phone, a camera, a screen. It isn't real. I don't see the point other than recreational purposes but not everyday usage.
Moreover, i think this is just a PR to 1) take away attention from the flaws of Facebook 2) make them seem better than Snapchat, to make them feel like they can do it better than them - haven't they been doing something similar with their filters? I think its ridiculous and he is trying to do too many things at once and if he doesn't focus on the things that he has already started they are all going to fall apart. This negative PR for his existing project, especially facebook, my be more detrimental than he thinks, i think he doesn't realise how fast audience preferences can change and they can instantly move onto another platform. That other platform may not even need to be snapchat, whilst Mark is so focused on competing with snapchat another competitor may just slip by.