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The Future of Text IV

By admin

{December 2023} Text to extend cognition in extended environments.

We are looking at text on paper extended from notebooks to reams of paper across tables and onto walls. It also includes text on digital displays extended onto projections and head mounted devices, interacted with directly as well as through AI. We ask:

  • What is text beyond the page, the notebook, the book, the tablet, the smart phone, and computer screen?
  • What is text with massive processing capacity behind it, through AI operations?

We are currently living in the last period of time for human history when most of us do not spend a significant time working in full spatial environments, either through headsets or projectors. This is a truly historic time, the end of an era with the very first glimpse of what is to come.

Those who choose to dream of a future in fully immersive environments today, whether VR or AR, will determine how these environments will develop.

We need to ask how this future can truly augment how we think and communicate. This is a question much too important to be left only to software developers.

And as we look ahead, we should not ignore the past and what we already have. As we extend our thinking digitally, we can also extend our thinking into analog environments, from drawing on large reams of paper and not just on small pages in books.

The opportunities for the future of text are wondrous.

Preview

You can download a preview of the book for comments for free:

Preview PDF

Reader Software

Although this book is released as a standard PDF which is compatible with any PDF viewer, if you are on macOS, please consider viewing the book with our free software ‘Reader’, the software designed with a focus on this series of books: www.augmentedtext.info

Student Competition

We are planning a Student Competition for 2024. Details to follow, but here is the current draft page.

 

Editor

 

Copyeditor

  • Jonathan Finn

   

Editorial Board  

  • Alan Laidlaw
  • Brandel Zachernuk
  • Dene Grigar
  • Fabien Benetou
  • Ismail Serageldin
  • Peter Wasilko
  • Vint Cerf