Off Course-On Target

Is Fit “It” When it comes to Great Learning!?

In what has become almost a mantra for me, one of the ways I often synthesize my focus on the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is getting to “just right”; just the right things for just the right person at just the right time in just the right way on just the right medium, in just the right context…………… well, you get the idea. For the past few years what I’ve been finding is that this can all be taken down to a single word and concept; fit.

When you think about it, a good fit is essentially defined as getting it just right, just for you, just at that moment. This could be for something simple like a favorite shirt, or sweater or pair of shoes. You know the ones we tend to choose over all others whenever we can because when we wear them, and often wear them out, they fit us just right and make us feel just right. Often they are not in the best condition, the “fashionable” choice at the time or other factors more commonly used to make such choices. Yet, because our favorites fit so well and make us feel so good we choose them whenever possible. Great fit is also a lot like that comment about great art; I don’t know how to describe it but I know it when I see it. Great fit is extremely elusive and deeply personal It has been no surprise to me then to also observe that this context and concept of fit works very well for many other and perhaps more profound examples such as one’s life style, personal relationships and learning.

Fit for Me

As some of you may know for the past few years I’ve been conducting a personal experiment by setting off on a grand adventure to see the world from the perspective of the world’s oceans by living aboard my sailboat Learnativity.  So I’m typing this up sitting in the shade of my cockpit right now as I’m anchored off the small island of Malo near Neiafu in the Vava’u Group of islands in the Kingdom of Tonga and you can paste the lat/long of 18 39 56.2 S, 173 58 56.2 W into Google Earth or maps to see where that is and if you’re interested you can learn all about that on my Learnativity blog. 

However the reason I mention this is one of my examples of the use of fit.  What has been the biggest surprise to me of my adventures so far is how well this strange new life style and experiences fits me. I don’t come from any ancestral background of mariners, didn’t grow up around boats or the sea, and didn’t have any lifelong dream of sailing nor previous sailing experience. It is all very new and foreign to me. Yet it fits me to a T for some reason; the independence and freedom on one hand, the complete self reliance and dependence on myself I have for everything from navigation to power to water to food and everything in between.  I was guided to it by using serendipity as my guide, listening to my heart and my gut more than my head, and by paying attention to how well things fit as the way to know which way to go, what was working and what wasn’t, what to say yes to and when to say no.

Fit as a way to Better and Greater Learning?

In the case of learning, it seems clear to me that a great fit is necessary for great learning to take place. We learn the best and the most when it is just right for us, just at that time, just in that context. Great learning then seems to also condense down to getting the best fit. What fits you best at any one time won’t likely fit me best. What fits you best today won’t likely fit you best tomorrow because some of the conditions and context have changed. Perhaps this will help you understand why I am so focused, some would say obsessed, for the past many years with the critical need to transform most learning methods from those based on mass production and sameness to ones of mass personalization and uniqueness; the Snowflake Effect.

Think back to some of your most recent moments when you experienced truly great learning of some kind, often very serendipitously in that it wasn’t planned or expected. What made that learning so great for you? What was different about that moment and the many others when it didn’t work? In the literally thousands of times I’ve posed this question to individuals I’m speaking with they initially struggle to explain it yet almost always end up describing how it was just the right choice of words or pictures or experience at just the right time, when they were in just the right frame of mind, etc. In other words, when the learning was just the right fit.

Therefore I’d like to encourage all of us to consider using “fit” in this context and as a way to determine what characterizes great learning. What are the parameters we can use to determine fit when it comes to learning? Perhaps we are best to use things like outcomes and results to measure the learning itself, but these are all after the learning takes place. For me at least, the bigger question is how do we increase not only the frequency of truly great learning experiences for every person on the planet? And for that, the use of fit is extremely helpful.

Exponentially Increasing the Frequency of Great Learning Experiences

One of the more troubling trends I’ve long noticed is that when the conversation of great learning moments comes up, it is a very revealing and rewarding conversation until you ask when you last had a great learning moment or how many have you had in your life. The answers are troubling to me because they are usually many years ago and a number that leaves many fingers unused. Therefore, one of the questions (I have several) that figuratively keep me awake at night and gets me out of bed every morning is how do we change this? How do we increase the frequency of great learning experiences? And incremental increases, while welcome just won’t do it for me because I think it is possible, and I might argue necessary, to exponentially increase the frequency of great learning; from a few experiences in a lifetime to many of them every day, for every person!

How is this even imaginable you ask? The topic of many more conversations to come to be sure, but in short my awareness and attention to finding and determining the best fit has helped me increase the frequency of my great learning experiences. I wanted to share this with you so you can try this concept of “fit” on for size yourself, and see if paying attention to fit and what makes for a good fit, helps you experience more great learning moments? What does fit mean to you in this context? What are its key characteristics? And the list goes on.

Can’t wait to hear back from you in your comments, your writings and our future conversations.

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog
Aboard s/v Learnativity
18 39 56.2 S, 173 58 56.2 W
Neiafu, Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga

Email:    [email protected]
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FaceBook page for updates @ www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog @    www.learnativity.typepad.com
OCOT blog @ http://waynehodgins.typepad.com
Skype:    whodgins
Twitter:  WWWayne
Text/SMS:  Send (short 140 character) Text msgs via Email to:  [email protected]

The Snowflake Effect on the World of Things

Look around you; anything that isn’t made by nature had to be designed and built by we mere humans and what I’ll be referring to here as “things”. The Snowflake Effect is causing dramatic changes in the world of things as they rapidly transform from being mass produced to mass personalized and in the process, are becoming snowflakes themselves.

In the coming weeks and months, I’d like to explore this very large and influential meta trend of both the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization and specifically the effect on “things”. My interest in doing so is that I believe this is ushering in a new era, what some have referred to as the “Next Industrial Revolution”, and even more so than the “first” Industrial Revolution I believe that this next one will cause and require an even more profound revolution in the world of learning, education and training for all of us.

Flexible manufacturing was one of the initial enablers of this transformation from mass production to mass customization, however this was barely the beginning. With the advent of more and more computer controlled design and machining, and more recently the introduction of affordable 3D printers and scanners, we are seeing an exponential increase in the personalization of individual items which can now be both designed and produced to match the unique context of the individual person and situation for no more and often less cost that previous mass produced things.

The Long Tail of Things

As striking as these changes are and will be, let’s PLEASE avoid our history of believing that each new era will completely eliminate all of what has come before. This is about disruptive innovation not disruptive elimination. We do not want or need every thing to be unique. Large scale items such as airplanes and cruise ships for example will likely continue to be produced in quantity, but even now these items are largely uniquely built to match the individual customer and be adapted to match some specific routes or conditions. Many such large scale items are already being designed and built such that they can be changed over time to match a contextual change, predicted or not. For example, several of the world’s Navies are building their newest ships in such a way that they can be reconfigured to match different contexts of use such as switching from a configuration that is best for a military situation to responding to a natural disaster.

There will also likely be a need for some mass produced parts where large numbers of exactly the same thing is just what we want such as with fasteners like screws, nuts and bolts. For an even longer time yet there will be instances where many people will want to have the exact same thing and there will continue to be fads and hits such as popular books, songs and movies. But these will be at the front end of the Long Tail and small in number. As you move down the exponential curve of the Long Tail, you get to more and more things for more and more people which have less and less in common.

Even if I really like the pen you just showed me and we can “print” one “just like it”, I will often want to modify it a little bit to better fit me. I’ll want it to be a bit shorter or more curved to better fit my hand, match the way I write or a be a bit heavier to match my personal preferences. The same dynamics will play out if this were a coffee cup, a pair of eyeglasses, a pair of shoes, or a chair. In this way there will be an equivalent Long Tail of things and it will be a spectrum with products falling at all points along the exponential curve towards uniqueness. However as we are seeing with the Long Tail effect on music, movies, books and the like, the transition will be such that the volume of objects down at the unique end of the tail will rise dramatically and become the majority in terms of both instances, business and learning.

The Internet of Things

Above and beyond being mass customized and personalized by their design and production, things are increasingly connected, networked and interconnected to each other and to ourselves as we use them. One version of this is often referred to as “The Internet of Things”. A commonly cited example is the way in which home appliances are being connected to each other and the net for everything from monitoring energy use, setting thermostats, timing of when best to turn things off and on. Or where all the items in your fridge are dynamically updating their status in terms of how full they are, their expiration date, peak freshness and so on to help you choose what’s best to make for dinner tonight and what to pick up at the grocery store on your way home. But as we’ll cover in future articles, “you ain’t seen nothing yet”! Start to think smaller and smarter and imagine and prepare yourself for things like “smart” and digital dust, dirt, pixels, locations, ink dots and paint. More on each of this in posts to follow.

Things are Becoming Snowflakes Too

In short products or “things” are going to increasingly be snowflakes themselves; alike perhaps but no two exactly the same. And just like us as unique individuals, as things become more like snowflakes, they too will start to have their own identity, their own networks, their own conversations and even their own “social networks”. Indeed, if you’re paying attention, many already do! One of many future topics we will cover here.

Snowflake Things Need Snowflake People & Learning

However it is the more far reaching and more latent effects of these changes, especially those on how, when, where and what we learn that excite me and motivate me to initiate this conversation with you. If these trends have not already captured your curiosity and fascination as they have mine, then I think they soon will and I hope to help in that process.  We need to seriously and deeply reconsider things such as core competencies and skills required for a world where mass personalization replaces mass production.  We need to rethink and redesign things like learning, teaching, training, content and the like to take advantage of the increasing new capabilities of mass personalization and have have personalized learning experiences be the norm for everyone every day.  As we gain the ability to do such things as copy, replicate, modify and mash up pretty much everything, not just the 2D and digital worlds, as easily as we now do with books, documents, music and video, we will face challenges such as what does original mean, is there a role for such things as copyright anymore and if you can have anything you want at your fingertips in an instant, what DO you really want and more so need?  All these some of the questions prompting me to start this conversation and to cover in the coming weeks and months.

Just as it was the change from an agrarian society to an industrial one that produced most of our current models for learning, education and training, so too will this next era shape us as a society both locally and globally. The revolution in the world of learning, and make no mistake it is truly deserving of this often overused word, is upon us and it is as daunting as it is exciting and powerful. Yet as has often been said, the best way to predict the future is to design your own, and it is my sincere hope and conviction that collectively, we can strategically and serendipitously lead the transformation of learning, training and education rather than have it happen to us. By exploring and better understanding current trends and directions of the Snowflake Effect on the world of “things”, we will be able to bring the power of mass personalization to the world of learning such that each of us experience and help others to experience great learning moments every day.

The Promise of a Personal Assistant is growing

I’ve long lamented the fact that for all the computing power we have at our avail, and in spite of it growing exponentially, it still seems that it is all quite “dumb” in terms of not knowing much about me, my situation, my habits, etc.  I wrote about this back in the 90’s that it was like having an assistant with no memory and no learning ability.  You had to teach them, each time, how to do everything you wanted them to do,  But it seemed inevitable that in the future we would see this change as computers and applications got smarter.  We’ve seen some progress in the years since but it has been mostly on that initial low and flat feeling part of exponential change and I think we are just about to hit the inflection or tipping point in this area. 

One indicator is the recent announcement below from Siri of their voice based assistant app.  It shows much promise and will help you see the distinction between mere voice recognition and voice based assistance. The assistance part comes when the app is able to not just recognize what you said but to interpret it and take actions as a result.  For example it hear you say “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” and it will do everything from finding the closest Il Fornaio restaurant, display driving directions on a map and book the reservation for two.  There is still much work to be done to make this more ubiquitous and find ways of hooking into many other services, but it is a significant step towards true smart assistance that we all need and I’m optimistic that the exponential curve of the Snowflake Effect of mass customization and personalization continues to shoot every upward.

Siri Launches Voice-Powered iPhone ‘Assistant’

• By Dylan F. Tweney February 5, 2010

A new app invites you to command your iPhone in the same way that Captain Kirk addressed the Enterprise’s computer.

Siri's visual interface displays a transcription of what you say, then hands the data off to an appropriate web service or search engine.

Siri, an artificial intelligence-based voice-recognition startup, launched an iPhone app incorporating its technology on Friday. With the app running, you can address requests to your phone verbally, asking it things like, “Will it rain today?” or “Where is a good place for pizza nearby?” and “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” The Siri app parses the sound, interprets the request, and hands it off to an appropriate web service, such as OpenTable, Yelp, CitySearch, and so on. It displays the results onscreen as it goes, giving you a chance to correct or adjust your request via onscreen taps.

It’s the most sophisticated voice recognition to appear on a smartphone yet. While Google’s Nexus One offers voice transcription capabilities — so you can speak to enter text into a web form, for instance — the Nexus One doesn’t actually interpret what you’re saying.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/siri-voice-recognition-iphone/##ixzz0f5YzoxB8

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The Snowflake Effect on motivation

The word and concept of motivation is a very popular one these days, largely fueled by Dan Pink's new book "Drive" (well worth the read) 

So this short article caught my attention and matches my sentiments that the preface to the question "What motivates people?" is "it depends".  Depends on the context and the situation I or anyone else is in at the time.  This is the Snowflake Effect on motivation.  As Paul puts it:

“But here's the point: What motivates you, may not motivate me. Also, what motivates you today, may not work tomorrow.”

The #1 Motivator

Published: Thursday, 4 Feb 2010 By: Paul Hellman

Paul Hellman
Founder
Express Potential

What's the best way to motivate people, based on recent research? We'll get to that in a moment. But first—is this even a smart question?

Not really. The question assumes a one-size-fits-all, best solution. That's a common trap when problem-solving.

3D Printing now in Stainless Steel

As I’ve noted previously one of the current limitations of 3D printing is the limited materials that can be used to print with, mostly plastic, paper, wax and others up to now.  The ability to create molds which can then be used to create castings of metals and other materials expands the range considerably but the ideal of course is to be able to create objects of any material.  And in keeping with what seems to be the norm where the rate of change is exponential, we are now much closer to this ideal now that 3D printing can be done in stainless steel.  The big news and change is not just that 3D printing can be done in stainless steel but that YOU can do it!  The article below will give you more details.

I’d also recommend reading this article for the note about how Shapeways has done such an admiral job of being very up front and clear about their service.  Read for example the Shapeways stainless steel page titled “expectation management.” I want to join Aaron in pointing this out as a great example that all companies and organizations would do well to emulate.  As Aaron put it:

“I would like to take a moment and applaud Shapeways for having both guts and common sense. Listen up Internet, if you want to sell us something cool, put the limitations right up front.”

I can’t help but like a company with the tag line: “Passionate about creating”

Shapeways also has some excellent tutorials on their site (one included below) which are very instructive and well worth watching if you are as fascinated by this rapid evolution of 3D printing and DIY manufacturing. 

Overall I see these developments as some of the most compelling evidence of The Snowflake Effect and how we are headed for a future where we can increasingly realize the promise within us all as unique snowflakes by increasingly being the designers and creators of our the manufactured part of the world we live in.

Stainless Steel Printing from Shapeways

August 6th, 2009 by Aaron Saenz

As if 3D printing wasn’t cool enough, you can now “print” objects in stainless steel. That’s right, dust off your old Transformers designs, make room in the Monopoly box for a new piece, and get ready for the model budget at your office to sky-rocket. Shapeways, an European 3D printing website that has traditionally worked in plastics and resins, has upped its game by giving you the option to take your airy artistic concepts and fashion them into cold hard steel. Except for some reasonable constraints on size and detail there are no limits to what you can create. Even if you’re not a model enthusiast, stainless steel printing holds the promise of machines that can replicate themselves and build anything.

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10 Profoundly Personal Future Innovations

Here’s a list of innovations that really caught my attention as this list takes a refreshingly human and personal look at the future and also manages to live up to this headline of being both profound and innovative.  Well worth your time to read though I’ll warn you in advance that there are lots of links and each one is worth following and using up even more of your valuable time and attention.

Notice how many of the innovations featured in this list are already happening and add to my What if the impossible isn’t? list.  As you reflect upon what you read here I think you will see how this adds to my conviction around The Snowflake Effect and that our future is a giant snowstorm of extreme mass customization for every person every day by making everything deeply personal and unique.  Read on and see what you think?

10 Profound Innovations Ahead

By Jeremy Hsu TechNewsDaily
29 January 2010 1:11 PM ET

Today's world looks increasingly like the future. Robots work factory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield, while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes. Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like relevant cautionary tales.

Most Likely to Succeed? Is it possible to predict & hire great teachers?

Most Likely to Succeed

How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?

by Malcolm Gladwell December 15, 2008

I really enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's writing and more so his curiosity and how he "thinks different".  I try to read as many of his columns as I can as they find a sweet spot for me of being long enough to explore a topic in some depth and let him tell a good story, yet be short enough that I can read them in one sitting along with the many other articles and posts I'm reading each day.

This New Yorker article focuses on the very tricky art of hiring practices, especially for teachers and exposes a lot of common myths about hiring and spotting of true talent for a given job or task.

You'll need to make it through his initial telling of the challenge in American football he refers to as "the quarterback problem" before you will get to his comparison and coverage of the importance and challenge of how to choose good to great teachers.  However it is well worth your time and I highly recommend reading the full article and see what you think and take away.

 Effective teachers have a gift for noticing—
 what one researcher calls “withitness.”

via www.newyorker.com             Read more

At the risk of spoiling the story for you, Malcolm makes that point that effective hiring practice for complex and critical roles such as teachers takes years and requires observation of the results achieved over this time.  This would suggest an apprenticeship type model and a radical shift from the way we currently recruit, reward and retain great teachers.  To be effective we need to treat each teacher as a unique individual and hire at this same level of uniqueness; one at a time.

Many would therefore probably place this into the "impossible" category but as you can likely guess I'll add it to my "What if the impossible isn't?" list.  And indeed Malcolm goes on to describe at least one example, financial planners, where this is both possible and being practiced.  For me this is yet another example of why we need to treat each situation, each job and each person as a unique individual.  Hence I see this, no doubt through my frosted glasses, as another excellent example of why The Snowflake Effect is so important and how it is affecting almost everything in our world.

Here are some of Malcolm's points which really got my attention:

"with enough data, it is possible to identify who the very good teachers are and who the very poor teachers are. What’s more—and this is the finding that has galvanized the educational world—the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast."

"Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects.""After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like.""Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans."

"The equivalent of that approach, in the N.F.L., would be for a team to give up trying to figure out who the “best” college quarterback is, and, instead, try out three or four “good” candidates.
 In teaching, the implications are even more profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated."

"What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?"

I hope you will take the time to not only ready this article but to reflect upon it and contribute your reactions and ideas.  Is it possible to hire and retain great teachers?  Is it possible to raise the quality of teaching staff overall?  Would this "apprenticeship" type of model work for the teaching profession?

I think my favorite quote from Malcolm's article is:

"A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice."

In the Next Industrial Revolution Atoms Are the New Bits - Wired and WITII?

As you've been reading here in many of my previous posts, one of the best examples of the Snowflake Effect and my constant quest around the theme of What if the Impossible Isn't? (WITII?), is that of the extreme mass personalization of the manufacturing process.  This is essentially democratizing manufacturing and therefore most of our physical world of human designed and made "things".  This all ties in nicely or is part of the often called the "Internet of Things".

Of course this is pure delight for me as The Snowflake Effect hits manufacturing and represents a huge surge forward in the transformation from mass production to mass customization.

IMHO, the importance and the long term effects of this new industrial revolution will be no less than and likely more than that of the previous.  Consider that most of our society, our education systems, our design models, our assumptions and our way of life are indelibly permeated by a mass production orientation and the influences of the initial industrial revolution.  Imagine, as I do, this is changing and doing so exponentially rapidly.  The future is a much more “Do it Yourself” DIY model, based on groups of individuals, access, collaboration, crowdsourcing and centered around great ideas.  Brace yourself for the future, it is already here.

I can therefore heartily recommend that you spend the time to read this recent Wired article in its entirety, watch the video and click on some of the many links in the article to learn more and likely convince yourself just how real and how big this coming revolution is. I’m confident you’ll agree it is a good use of your time.

The video is below and below that I’ve pulled a few quotes out which caught my mind’s eye.

Atoms Are the New Bits

Added: January 25, 2010

In an age of open source, custom-fabricated, DIY product design, all you need to conquer the world - and to profit - is a brilliant idea. Welcome to the next Industrial Revolution.

Some other significant out takes from the Wired article include:

"Within minutes, you have a whole new physical object: a rip, mix, and burn of atoms."

“Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they’re ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other institutions and handed over to regular folks. The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both participation and participants in everything digital — the long tail of bits.”

“Now the same is happening to manufacturing — the long tail of things.”

“Three guys with laptops” used to describe a Web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.”

“Hardware is becoming much more like software,”

“As Cory Doctorow puts it in his new book, Makers, “The days of companies with names like ‘General Electric’ and ‘General Mills’ and ‘General Motors’ are over. The money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people.””

“For a lens into the new world of open-access factories in China, check out Alibaba .com, the largest aggregator of the country’s manufacturers, products, and capabilities. Just search on the site (in English), find some companies producing more or less what you’re looking to make, and then use instant messaging to ask them if they can manufacture what you want. Alibaba’s IM can translate between Chinese and English in real time, so each person can communicate using their native language. Typically, responses come in minutes: We can’t make that; we can make that and here’s how to order it; we already make something quite like that and here’s what it costs.”

Personal projects are often worth more than professional ones. What's stopping you? - Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education

The Snowflake Effect is all about extreme mass personalization for every person every day.  Making things uniquely matched to ourselves and our context so they fit us just right  This often involves the personalization of products and services but what about the personalization of the person?  The Snowflake Effect enables us to be our authentic selves and THAT may well be the most exciting and powerful result of a world full of snowflakes.

Check out the post from Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com and the video of Ji Lee telling the story of how he Snowflaked himself by putting his personal projects in front of his professional ones and ended up having them become one and the same.

Personal projects are often worth more than professional ones. What's stopping you?

It's all too easy to relegate our personal projects to the bottom of the pile until "the day job" is complete. The result? We nearly always end up having to leave creative, fun, new projects behind in the interest of ticking someone else's boxes, when those same personal projects could be the very innovation that make the difference.

Ji Lee was fed up with his life as an ad exec when he decided to engage the public in parodying that very same world, printing out 50,000 speech bubble stickers and placing them over ads around New York City. Over time, the public took the lead in inventing political or comical speech to make the parody. The ultimate parody in this project is, of course, that ad agencies used them to further promote their products. He spins a good yarn in his 99% video.

via edu.blogs.com

Augmented Identity & Reality = Augmented Cognition

Below is a nice combination of postings from Ewan McIntosh on face recognition based Augmented Reality (AR) apps and some thoughts from David Truss on the applications and implications of this when used in education.

I'm delighted and encouraged by the questions and issues Ewan and David raise as I see the implementation of AR as one of the many examples of exponential rates of change.  I'd also suggest you see through the clumsy use of "screens" and displays such as those on cameras and phones and instead think of these disappearing through the use of eye glasses, contact lenses and implants such that the notion of a screen or a display goes away and everything is just sensory input, visual in this case, to our brains, and what is being augmented is our cognitive capabilities more so that "reality".

Augmented Identity

Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for a while. Fans of Monday Night Football have always had the television advantage of ’seeing’ the first down line conveniently added for their viewing pleasure. A more advanced version of augmented reality can be seen here, where you can see information about all the nearest subway locations in New York superimposed onto your iPhone’s camera view.

And now from Ewan McIntosh I’m introduced to this application of Augmented Reality, possible due to face recognition software.

Ewan says, “…In a schools context this could be seen as lethal.” And then he asks:

“But there are some amazing potential side effects – what would yours be?”

via pairadimes.davidtruss.com