[FRIAM] Augmented Reality

[glen]

What I'd like to see is a federation of government produced (curated by professionals, obviously) data providers, like RESTful services. That might provide "the street" or the "public space" or whatever metaphor you choose to map to the graph. Each service curated close to the source, by the appropriate government. So, for example, our neighborhood association (SWONA) would provide a data source in scope for this tiny block of Olympia. Olympia provides data city wide. Thurston provides data county wide. Etc.

How that data is aggregated and used could be as varied/diverse as anyone with computational skills and hardware availability can imagine. So Meta could aggregate that data for its users. And I, over my tiny little DSL connection, could aggregate it differently.

Such an arrangement could also be robust to mesh nets, onion routing, P2P, etc. Sure, grandma might not be able to whip up a little Python script to fact-check a JSON response from a federal source against a JSON response from a county source. But if such infrastructure existed reliably, the youngsters could.

Much of this infrastructure already exists in some form or other. I regularly make OSINT queries about our neighbors and such, using the county GIS and tax records. It's not RESTful. But it's good enough for government work. Why use Google when you can use, say, Palm Beach County's Property Appraiser:

https://www.pbcgov.org/papa/Asps/PropertyDetail/PropertyDetail.aspx?parcel=50434335000020390

On 8/23/22 16:09, Prof David West wrote:
> another, I think relevant/interesting science fiction reference: Neal Stephenson's /Snow Crash/.
> 
> Not  central to the novel, but central to scene settting for much of the action was a concept of a metaverse—a single streeet 32,000 miles long) where the superstructure/infrastructure was paid for, hosted on servers owned by a (world?) government; the structure maintained by a non-profit (ACM in the novel); Buildings and neighborhoods by corporations; rooms and suites by smaller businesses and affinity organizations; and smaller buildings/rooms by effectively any group or individual.
> 
> Always struck me as a not unreasonable approach to creating a metaverse, one free from the insidious and evil intent of some entyty like Meta.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2022, at 7:41 AM, glen wrote:
>  > This is an interesting take on AR I hadn't really thought of:
>  >
>  > Sanas, the buzzy Bay Area startup that wants to make the world sound
>  > whiter
>  > https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/sanas-startup-creates-american-voice-17382771.php <https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/sanas-startup-creates-american-voice-17382771.php>
>  >
>  > And a voice modifier from a different company here: https://koe.ai/recast/ <https://koe.ai/recast/>
>  >
>  > This post brings home the implications of such:
>  >
>  > Does the rise of the Metaverse mean the decline of cities?
>  > https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora/2022/08/rise-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg-decline-cities <https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora/2022/08/rise-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg-decline-cities>
>  >
>  > Do we want our "public spaces" (e.g. cities) to be owned by singular
>  > corporations? Olympia (where I live) is already bad enough, mostly
>  > renters, most of the downtown rental properties owned by a single
>  > family. We're inching ever so slowly to Plato's Philosopher King,
>  > except any benevolence of the King is a mere (and sporadic) side-effect
>  > of the primary motive: profit. This seems, to me, strongly analogous to
>  > the grifters who call pretending to be "Agent Bob Jones" or whatever
>  > from the IRS trying to steal money from me in the form of Walmart gift
>  > cards. I know several of my similarly aged peers who talk loudly and
>  > often about their rental houses, usually, since I'm surrounded by
>  > liberals now, bragging about how they keep the rent low and try to
>  > provide a good place for the renters to live. This altruism-washing of
>  > their rent-seeking behavior is way too similar to disguising an East
>  > Indian voice to sound more white. Is it really any less dystopian if
>  > you're the one on top?
>  >
>  > It's interesting that I don't mind the loss of possible
>  > contact/engagement with some people because they rely solely on
>  > Facebook (Instagram, Zoom, or whatever) for their networking. Most
>  > breweries and music venues up here use Instagram as their primary
>  > announcement forum. The result? I don't know about them. So I'm much
>  > less likely to engage. That's fine. More time to think
>  > <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35901414/ <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35901414/>>. I'm "this close" to
>  > quitting LinkedIn, too:
>  >
>  > People Are Flooding LinkedIn With Strange Stories. We’re Calling Them
>  > Broetry.
>  > https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because>
>  >
>  > We really do need honest *public* spaces, even if you hate "socialism".
>  > The internet is a public utility and should be treated that way. And
>  > governments should devote some of our tax monies to
>  > corporation-independent social network platforms. Mastodon would be
>  > perfect for that.


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