September 21, 2005
Wikipedia the (physical) World
Semapedia is a project to annotate physical locations with 2D barcodes that link to Wikipedia articles. With the Semacode software running on your PDA/cellphone, you scan a barcode and it'll take you to the linked-to article. There've been a lot of attempts at this sort of physical annotation of the world, WorldBoard being one of the earlier ones I remember.
I like the concept in theory, but I'm always disappointed by the quality and variability of the links. Do I really want a link about privacy just because I see a no-tresspassing sign, or about the Hofburg Imperial Palace just because I'm standing there? Perhaps, if I'm in the mood for ironic social commentary or I'm a tourist with an interest in architecture, but most people won't be the right audience for any given link. One man's art is another man's graffiti, and the world-annotation systems I've seen are currently little more than virtual spray paint.
The variability is the real key. If 90% of the tags I come across link to something interesting to me, I'll probably follow every one I see. If only 50% link to something interesting, I might look at the human-readable title printed on the tag and then decide whether I think it likely that the article will be well-written and interest me. If 90% of the tags wind up being useless, I won't even bother reading the title — and then it won't matter that there are 10% that I would have enjoyed if I had bothered to look.
I'm not totally pessimistic about this sort of technology though. With the right combination of filtering (to make tags I don't care about completely invisible), subtlety (to make the tags I might care about still be unobtrusive in case I don't want to be bothered) and community support (to insure relevance to me and to bond me to my community regardless of the link quality), I could see something like this finally taking off.
(Thanks to Eugen Leitl on the Wearables mailing list for the link!)
Posted by bug to Media Technology at September 21, 2005 11:38 AM | TrackBackI just don't buy the "tag the real world" idea. Virtual space is boundless and consequently everyone will have a different idea about what is a good tag, as you say. It seems like the better idea is to get location technology up to the point where you can hold a device that will tell you which tags are around your present location.
Posted by: Rawhide at September 21, 2005 6:47 PMI'm pretty agnostic when it comes to implementation — a pure location-sensor solution doesn't clutter the space with physical tags and lets you annotate from a distance (which may or may not be a feature). Physical tags make it easier to tag objects that move around, the infrastructure is a lot cheaper and it's a lot more robust for tagging things smaller than the broad-side of a barn (GPS and compass can only take you so far...).
I do agree that if you tag physical objects or locations it makes more sense to tag them with a globally-unique tag that represents no more than that tag, and then let augmented-reality systems in the area do a lookup on that tag to find annotations that are suitable for the individual. That's harder to bootstrap up though, and also means that you can't use a nice physical title on the tag itself to say "if you take the time to scan me with your cellphone you'd get a Wikipedia article on chlorophyl."
Posted by: Bug at September 22, 2005 8:32 AM