Digital Augmentation of Space
Alan John Dix, Steve Gill, Joanna Hare, Devina Ramduny-Ellis · 2022
Abstract Humans have always used technology to control space, from simple huts to shut out the weather to the telephone that allows us to talk between continents. This chapter looks at how digital technology amplifies existing means of control but goes beyond as the computer now infuses space itself: from CCTV cameras, to Internet kettles, digital technology is embedded into the very fabric of our lives. At a personal level, mobile phones allow access to people and resources from anywhere, but they also allow the world to be marked and interrogated through social network check-ins and geographic search. Public displays create new roles, new interaction potential, and new ways to conceive privacy. Beyond the screen, mixed reality makes space itself the interface, where movement is interaction, and the chapter addresses computation that is literally all around us. However, these technologies that link space globally can also enable us to rediscover the local.