Reflections of Reality, and Scones

Augmented reality is a term denoting the way technology can provide more or different data to your senses (dominated by sight, of course) than just walking around provides. In Fast Company, Kit Eaton writes about Layar, which uses smartphone gadgets to identify your location and give you more information. Depending on who licenses Layar in the country (it was developed in and the video shows Amsterdam), you can find various information such as housing prices, ATMs, bars and clubs, your way home, etc. All in all, this sounds pretty cool.

As information becomes increasingly available and immediate, some warning bells to start ringing. We like to think that more information leads to better decisions, better decisions are part of better (more informed, better skills, etc.) behavior; but it is not as simple as that, because if I can just follow a GoogleMap on my phone to get to my friends' homes or even to my home, will navigating city streets go the way of recalling telephone numbers?

In a video game, one often uses a "heads-up display" or HUD to figure out one's location or activate items in the game world. In many ways one must do this because, most of the time, video game environments are pretty homogeneous whereas our real life experience is extraordinarily heterogeneous. Downtown Lincoln or South Street or the academic ghetto outside of Wesleyan all look and feel different than my neighborhood of South Lincoln. If I woke up confused and disoriented in St. Peter, Minnesota, I would very quickly know where I was and that I was not in Lincoln or St. Paul; Belem, Brazil or Durham, North Carolina (Places I have lived and worked, by the way). The sights and smells and noises of each place provide a great deal of information by which I can orient myself and understand something about what is going on.

These cues would not provide the market value of a flat in London or the nearest ATM in downtown Minneapolis, but that is what locals, friends, and one's own memory are for. I do happily concede that looking for a place to stay for the night or live would be made easier if a star-rating, price, and perhaps directions were posted on the corner, and Layar does provide something like that. Most of the time, though, I get enough going on around me to capture my attention. We already walk around with headphones in a little too often for my taste, I would hate to see everyone wandering around looking "through" their little phone screens in order to "see" the world. As a culture (I am uncertain if I mean American or High Tech or industrialized here), we tend to take a good thing and overindulge, to make abundant the blessings best left discrete. The notion of more readily available information is exciting and has potential, but in a world of such experiential diversity, it feels--for the most part--unneeded.

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Almost unrelatedly, check out Worio and its FAQ. It is a new search engine that could threaten Google's dominance by incorporating a memory factor. Worio effectively cross-references old searches with your present query in order to find things that might interest you. Google does many things well, but Worio may be doing something excitingly different.

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Later today, I am making scones with my friend Kalisa. Here is a recipe:

Buttermilk Scones

1 3/4 c white flour
1/2 c oats, preferably thick
2 or 4 tablespoons of sugar, for savory or sweet varieties
4 teaspoons baking powder

Blend dry ingredients and any mix-ins. For sweet scones, I've used dried cranberries or frozen blueberries. I haven't yet made them with savory ingredients, so I may have an update later.

4 tablespoons (half a stick) of butter, salted

Cut in butter and mix with your fingers. You are supposed to get a little messy. Mix until the pieces of butter are smaller than peas.

1 cup buttermilk, less is better than too much in this case

Add and mix gradually. When the buttermilk is incorporated, dump out onto wax paper or aluminum foil in order to get all the dry ingredients mixed in. Do not overmix scones! Overmixing makes them too tough. Mix as little as necessary.

You can shape the dough into a circle and flip onto a greased cookie sheet or stone. Bake at 400 F for at least 10 minutes. This has been a wet recipe so in my sad little oven at school, it would take nearer to 20 minutes to bake through.

Scones are their very best the day of their making, so share and eat!