An inspiring TEDxMongKok talk by most published mobile author Tomi Ahonen predicting the magic of Augmented Reality, the next mass media that he expects to be used actively by a Billion citizens in the next decade.

This is an area that I’m very optimistic about and I think it’s going to be much more pervasive than even Tomi is suggesting as AR isn’t neccessarily a personal mass media and so can be used “on us” without needing us as individuals to do anything eg. by someone else pointing a cameraphone at us to pull up our Facebook/Linkedin profile or as with the facial recognition security systems that are already being used on public transport systems in London and will by 2020 be much more widely explored for monitoring purposes at international borders etc.

To help you imagine the potential just swap out the concepts in that Google Goggles video to imagine the tool you could create for a:

> Senior citizen who’s living independently at home

The market for compensatory hearing and vision are already worth more than $10 Billion/year so can you imagine the value of “Superman” senses?

> Emergency Medical Responder

Imagine meeting with a patient who has a cloud based HealthVault record. Call 911 and immediately you’re connected to their family Doctor and they can see what you’re seeing and talk you through what they’d like you to do.

> New parent

Imagine being able to hear your baby sleeping in the room next door as you sleep. Okay you can already do that one but this would just be with bionic hearing (processing of soundwaves)…

> Community Carer

Imagine “superman sound” being used to deliver medical decision aid support tools so that someone with no medical training can provide quality care to a patient in the community to a standard you’d normally only experience in the Mayo Clinic?