Augmented Reality on the Big(ger) Screen

iPad 4.0?  I’m ready now!  Gary Hayes sent me the link to his video on YouTube illustrating the augmented reality (AR) experience would be on an iPad-sized screen. It is a great video; it really captures a sense of the potential of AR across a gamut of applications.  After you check out the video, go to Gary’s website and read the blog entry  “Where Industry and Academia Fear to Tread – StoryLabs Launch” on the need for storytelling in effective message construction and delivery–and the conundrum of finding someone who knows how to speak “transmedia.”  As someone who teaches digital storytelling and emerging technologies, it was exciting to see his take on it.  The world is no longer linear.  Well, it never was, but before it moved slow enough so our inability to see it wasn’t such a problem.  Now, it is.  And we have to learn to be nonlinear, multidimensional storytellers.  To do this, we need to become nonlinear thinkers.  This isn’t just about storytelling.  Storytelling is creating a narrative which functions as a cognitive map or model that organizes information so that it has meaning–whether it’s emotional, functional or inspirational.  The ability to construct narrative across media means we have to let go of the need to have a story arc start and finish all in the same place.  This takes cognitive flexibility and it is especially critical if we want to nurture innovation and creativity.  The world is changing too rapidly and is too complex  to keep up without being able to think and communicate in new and exciting ways.  There are few better exercises to limber up your synapses than learning to create transmedia narratives.