Month: September 2021

Augmented Reality Ducks

It’s an open secret that Apple is working on an augmented reality headset (or something). All the recent advances in ARKit and adding LiDAR to the pro iPhones and iPads are certainly leading up to a larger goal.

I have no idea what that next leap is.

But, I do know that fourteen years into iOS, people still ducking hate autocorrect. Especially when you find your ducking text messages littered with ducks. There’s just no ducking way around it. Short of adding a fake contact to your address book named Dr. Duck Ducking McDucker, autocorrect seems ducking incapable of learning everyone’s favorite bit of profanity.

That got me thinking earlier today. What’s going to happen when Apple finally leads us into that next frontier of human / computer interaction? What happens when our day-to-day reality becomes augmented with live information and our physical and digital worlds merge even closer together?

What happens if Apple takes autocorrect’s prudish vocabulary into AR? If they dared to try and censor the real world, how would that look?

I decided to try and find out. And I have the Xcode project to prove it.

Watch.

So what did you just see in that video?

It’s an iOS app that analyzes video streaming from the camera and attempts to detect human hands. If it finds any, it then tries to distinguish the digits of each finger and, specifically, if the middle finger is raised. If it detects that, it takes the location of the offending finger and censors it with a 🦆.

This whole post, of course, really is a joke. But the silly idea originated from an actual conversation with my wife and then a friend egging me on to build it.

But, more importantly, it shows just how fantastic software is these days. How spoiled we are to carry supercomputers in our pockets. In less than 200 lines of code, I used these incredible frameworks developed by Apple to get this idiotic idea working in an evening.

I know I complain a lot, but I also want to credit the many talented people working hard to put software like this out into the world for other developers to build upon.

As usual, the sample code for this project is on GitHub.

Conversations in the Dark with a Six-Year-Old

I love our new world of always-on technology because it can provide empirical, digital evidence that validates the squishy, fuzzy experience of being human. It can prove you’re not crazy. That there is a reason for feeling the way you’re feeling.

I don’t have a good segue into this next paragraph, but one of the things I hate most about myself is I don’t think fast enough on my feet. It’s why I prepare so meticulously when I know in advance that I need to make an important point or defend my position. When an argument becomes heated, when I’m unexpectedly challenged without supporting evidence ready and within reach, I go full Costanza.

Given an hour to craft my argument, I can eviscerate the other side in a scathing email that makes my case. But on the fly, I fumble and back down in the face of a more aggressive opponent.

That doesn’t happen often, but it did today. And I could feel my body reacting, fumbling, and shutting down in real-time as it always does. Fight or flight? I noped right out of there. I packed up my bag and went home for the day.

The difference this time, since the last occurrence, is I was wearing my watch.

Were the stress and my body’s reaction real? Or imagined? (Does it matter?)

A 161 bpm heart rate during a contentious conference call sure seems to validate how I felt.

To me, that’s fascinating. The direct connection between a piece of aluminum strapped to your wrist and the emotions overwhelming your brain. A tenuous but verifiable link between digital and analog. An opportunity to recognize something tangible and make a change.

So when I arrived home today, I silenced and shut down every device and scheduled some vacation time for next week. In my out-of-office auto-reply, I even lied and said that I would be away without access to the internet or a cell phone.

Later, after sunset, I held my daughter’s hand and walked around our backyard in the pitch black for an hour. Me in my house shoes. Her with bare feet. We talked about the usual things that are top-of-mind to a six-year-old.

Why is it cold at nighttime but not really when it’s Summer?

Can wolves hear me with their long ears if I howl quiet?

What was that noise?

Where do bees go when it’s dark?

Where do ants live?

If I get a flashlight, will that scare away the lightning bugs or make them come closer?