No. 249 Augmented

Immaterielle Realitäten

In the late eighties digital media experts like the social scientist and author Howard Rheingold spoke of a future in which our realities would be virtual: full immersion escapism into alternate fictional worlds. But we are not submerging ourselves in the virtual, rather the virtual is leaving the device and entering our material world, in the form of GPS guides and sensory reinforcement and instant information access to everything from health monitors to apps that can recognise and name a tune, or keep us posted weather conditions, football scores and our social networks. In design we are tending towards giving our products extended stories and users access and the ability to manipulate and customize individual products for themselves. Our world has become incredibly complex, yet we are adding to and augmenting that complexity. Why? Is it part of our insatiable thirst for pattern and order or, are we in the throes of handing over management of our environment to our machines? Issue 249 looks at how designers are adapting us to different kinds of user interfaces and coming up with new ways of interaction – reducing the barriers between the user and the device, helping us fit better, more symbiotically, with the technologies of our own making today.