If it hasn’t happened to you already, prepare to be assaulted by a ton of publicity for companies in the “augmented reality” market. Three sure signs that we will soon hear a lot from these folks: (1) the category is being hailed by some investors as the next big thing, (2) critics are already warning that the technology might be overhyped,(3) one of the most promising companies in the market — Netherlands-based SPRXmobile — is getting ready to make an announcement regarding “global expansion” on Monday August 17 (today the service is only available in the Netherlands and UK). What does SPRXmobile do? Two things. First, It has a product — dubbed Layar — that enables people to point a smartphone at a physical object — a restaurant, a home, another person — and show data about that object (review of the restaurant, price of the home, C.V. for said guy or gal). Second, it lets third-party vendors use the Layar platform to *layer* in their data over the objects. In short, Layar may be augmented reality’s first platform play. And if you look at all the point applications which are making the rounds — Metaio (for tagging), TwittARound (for locating Twitter folks by location), Nearest Tube (for subway locations in London), Wikitude (for information about public places), Augmented ID (for — yep — identifying people) — there appears to be a market for an AR platform.

I am bullish on the AR market. But I believe that companies carrying the AR label are doing themselves — and the market — a disservice. While the phrase is catchy and marketable — sounds like virtual reality, but with added value — I believe it confuses, disturbs, and distracts people who are trying to make sense of this important market:

–Augmented reality is a category shared with offerings that are almost completely unrelated to what companies like SPRXmobile, Metaio and others are doing.
One of the most ardent supporters of AR recently warned, “don’t be misguided by the gimmicky marketing applications now.” While not all of these marketing applications are gimmicky, a great number of smart brands — A&E, Nickelodeon, P&G — are experimenting with techniques that do not follow the scenario above: i.e., going out into the world, and pointing a device at objects. Many of these marketing experiments ask consumers to hold an object — say a coupon to their webcams and see the object transformed into something else. Whether gimmicky or not, it doesn’t help to be grouped with these experiments.

–As a catchphrase, “augmented reality” doesn’t speak directly to the customer. It forces the question: what, in fact, are AR companies “augmenting”? You cannot augment reality — you can only augment our understanding of it. While “augmented intelligence” has its own marketing challenges — not as catchy, kind of creepy (but AR has that problem, too) — it is a lot closer to the truth.

–And speaking about the customer, “augmented reality” doesn’t help us to see future applications of this technology. I would argue that “augmented reality” speaks to the device — which today is the mobile handset. But the technology — again, better described as “augmented intelligence” — speaks to the human being, and points to an inevitable market for applications where the device is more and more about the human body. In fact, the component parts for AR — GPS, compass technology, facial recognition, object recognition — can be abstracted from the physical device and integrated into the way the body moves and functions (more on that in a moment). In other words, AR technology may accelerate us to a time when the body — augmented by a complex of amazing technologies — is the device. If that sounds too weird, too creepy, too Minority Report, check out the presentation below by Pattie Maes (of the MIT Media Lab) at the February 2009 TED Conference. Maes makes the case that those days are already here. At a time when machines are becoming more like humans, and humans are becoming more like machines — the twin phenonmena that have inspired me to write this blog — this is important stuff.