The Drawbacks and Benefits of Augmented Reality

Technology has grown over the past decade giving humans more efficient and a better life style then what we had ten to twenty years ago. As time keeps advancing, technology will keep improving and our lives will become simpler and more efficient to live in. One technology that is developing right now, that will soon be integrated into our daily everyday lives is augmented reality. Augmented reality is the idea of a computer data base system appears visually in the real world and in real time through optical devices such as glasses. Augmented reality implements 3D and 2D images as well as numbers and texts to the human peripheral for an enhance version of viewing the world. Many have believed that augmented reality will soon be implemented into how daily lives as we will gain immediate access to any source of information that is available to us making us even more intelligent. Thus this is why I chose this topic. For this Essay I used the following scholarly articles: Augmented Reality An Overview and Fire Direction for AR in Education, Death By Pokémon GO The Economics and Human Cost of Using Apps While Driving and Augmented reality in healthcare education: An Integrative Review, Augmented Reality Trends In Education: A Systematic Review of Research and Applications and Augmented Reality Applications in Education. Lastly I am using an article written by Francesca Larkin called, “Advantages and Disadvantages of Augmented Reality”, where she explains why augmented reality could benefit us and how it could cause troubles in our society.

Currently we are living in a society that is constantly developing new ways to create a more fast and efficient work flow to help us in our day to day lives. Augmented reality will help us achieve such a feat of efficiency that once implemented we are able to complete many long task and complete it in such a short amount of time. Given the excitement of Augmented reality it is highly possible for such a device to be used in our education. Augmented reality will give students a chance to learn more visually as well as learn virtually hands on. Many researchers have explored how augmented reality will help in different fields. An example is with Liu, Jenkins, Sanderson, Fabian and Russel have examined that augmented reality in the medical field help the student visually learn the human anatomy and what each organ in the body does and how it functions. Augmented reality can also be used in the architecture fields where student will be able to produce 3D construct and visually see how the construct will be able to hold up on its own. As Augmented reality grows, it will be used in our medical fields where it will enhance surgical and clinical procedure as well it will become more cost efficient to use as information will be display in our peripherals. Such a device will allow surgeon to prepare themselves for upcoming surgeries as they will be presented with a visual anatomy of the patient condition and will be able to decide how to treat the patient. Augmented reality will be able to fully support the surgeon who is operating a patient and navigate them and showing the surgeon vital procedures which will shorten surgery time. Using augmented reality in the medical field will overall increase the likelihood of producing many new procedures and will aid the doctors and surgeon during their task.

Augmented reality can also bring leaning to students who have a learning and physical disability. Many researchers have found that using augmented reality storybooks to bring stories come to life can bring positive results as students were able to remember key concept in the story and have a better comprehension. These types of storytelling could easily help many students who struggle to learn using textbooks. Student can be more actively involve in a story which create a more interactive environment as well as help motivate students to learn. There is a variety of things that augmented reality can do to aide people with disability such as overlaying audio for visually impaired people subtitle for people who struggle in hearing. With wearable devices that allow augmented reality such as glasses allow the users to be hands free and allow the user to use both hands to interact and learn in their environment.

Augmented reality can also be used for object-based modeling which is especially useful in the architecture field where they are able to envision how the structure would look like and how stable it would be in tougher conditions using the device 3D functions to create such structures. This is also useful for people who are trying to renovate their homes or for parties without spending any money. This can be useful for many designers who can envision how the hall may look like with certain type of décor made virtually through their devices. With Augmented reality we are able to grasp information almost instantly during our venture in our reality and creating a hands on learning experience for many students who struggle on learning through the use of textbooks. Augmented reality can also help many careers create an even more vivid visual idea of how they want to construct to their plans and their operation.

Although augmented reality can be used to bring us even closer together, it can also attract unwanted guest such as hackers and creeps. An article written by Francesca Larkin is talking about the advantages and disadvantages of augmented reality. She explains that although augmented reality can make our lives easier it is still technology that can be still be accessible by unwanted guest. Many people are concern of how augmented reality can risk our privacy of its users Francesca Larkins explains “Here in the UK we are anything but anonymous and some people are unaware of how much of their personal information is accessible to complete strangers.” Augmented reality opens a whole new world of privacy as hackers are unable to be able to locate where you are and also are able to see the exact same thing you are seeing. This can be a huge problem as our society is leaning towards a more technological world and everything can be accessible and can also be used against.

In our generation we are always constantly distracted with technology creating many problems in our society such as distracted driving. Nowadays we always have our eyes glued into our phones instead of the road which can cause serious injuries not only to ourselves but to others around us. Augmented reality on hand held devices such as our phones can be very dangereous as we have to look down onto our devices instead of looking at where we are going. Certain health problem that can affect the user if the AR devices are not properly designed is tunnel vision which distracts the user and in some cases can put the user in dangerous situation. One game in particular in particular that has greatly impacted our society and distracted driving is a mobile app called Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go was released on July 6 2016 on mobile. Pokemon Go was an augmented reality game that allow players to see creature called “Pokemon” on their phone using the camera and GPS location in their devices. This game brought about 100 million user in the first months and ever since the increase of insurance has gone up for distracted driving. A scholarly article called “Death By Pokémon Go: The Economics and Human Cost of Using Apps While Driving.” Written by Mara Faccio and John J. McConnell explains that there has been an increase of vehicle damage in the vicinity of Pokestops. Pokestops are essentially special landmarks around the world such as a graffiti painting or a stone tablet. Being in the vicinity of the pokestops allow the player to gain prizes in game such as Pokeballs which are ammunition to catch the creature that lies in the game. Many people have realized that the most efficient way to go to each pokestops is by driving. This cause many drivers to keep their eyes on their mobile devices instead of looking into the road and cause vehicular damage and injuring themselves or others. Their studies have shown that about 134 car accident has occurred the first 140 days of the game release. Causing the insurance of vehicular damage to increase to around $500,000 or about 22%. Many articles that are included in these websites are cases where many drivers are distracted by the app and have struck a pedestrian killing them. Other articles include many teens who are in a dangerous neighborhood getting attacked by people who use the game to harm other players.

Another problem that augmented reality will have to face is fatigue. Since the user is constantly looking into a screen they are force to keep their attention and focus towards the screen infront of them and after some extensive use of the AR devices the user can become fatigue and the extensive use of such a device can affect the health of the user. Some health related issues a user can face are Nausea, Seizure and as well as vision loss. Many studies have showed that long use of a device can cause the personality of a user to change to become more aggressive and become more isolating towards their friends, family and colleague.

Overall the use of Augmented reality can be really dangerous since augmented reality takes place in the online world where everything is accessible and can be easily hacked. Privacy of the user can be very difficult to maintain and can be a problem for many user who are debating if augmented reality is worth it. Also if the user of the device is not careful from his/her environment it can lead them to many dangerous area where they can harm themselves or harm others as their eyes are away from reality.

Since I am a visual learner watching YouTube videos really help me to see how augmented reality could shape our world and all the capability that it can do for us. During the course of the school year we have learn many things about the internet such as determinism, management and control as well as gender and racial bias. One topic in particular that may relate to augmented reality is internet addiction. This past decade we have seen technology greatly improving becoming more useful as well as more affordable, one device in particular is our smartphones. Smartphones have become the device that can replace everything and compact it in such a small device. We are constantly checking our smartphones and distracting ourselves away from reality so that we can use our devices. With augmented coming into play and with all the possibility that augment reality will allow us to do, there is no doubt that people will always be constantly distracted by these devices and will end up having a great affect with their bodies. These addictions can affect their bodies by becoming more tiresome and stress from all the information the brain will have to function. They will also distant their friends and families being more isolated even though technology will help us become closer together.

Overall Augmented reality will benefit us as a community, but we must be aware that these technological addictions will cause serious harm to the users and to others. The question “Does the drawback of augment reality outweigh the benefit of it?” I believe that it will benefit our society as new methods will be created in many fields to accommodate the immediate access of information we are able to receive in our peripheral visions. Surgeon would have more of a visual idea of their patient illness and how to treat it as well as having visual aid during the operation to increase the success of the surgery. Architecture majors will be able to visual plan their construct and see what it will look like. Augmented reality will help us further into the technological society we hope to create. Even though there are many dangers that comes with augmented reality such as our privacy the benefit of having new method to make our lives easier.