An interesting encyclopaedia

This picture represents the future.  It’s a transparent encyclopaedia, meaning that you should never get lost or stuck again.  The idea is that we’re going to need even more information in the future than we do now and holding up this gadget against a car, a building, some writing or just about anything else will give you a range of details about the object.

See anything that’s of interest and the slide will call up context-sensitive, relevant information to the object that you’re viewing through the transparency that’s retrieved via Wi-Fi.  As the screen is transparent, you can then touch on a particular area and you’ll get even more information about whatever it is you want to know – such as say a word in a book or article.  Similar to a deep link really.

Mac Funamizu sees the work (which is simply a design at the moment and not a functional device) coming with Google Maps or Google Earth pre-loaded, together with a web browser for navigation.  The prototype will naturally include a camera and a scanner, should it ever be built.  Is this the future?  It’s certainly one vision of it.