Augmented reality headsets that look like ordinary glasses will soon let people layer digital information onto the real world around them, altering what they see, hear, and experience throughout the day. This project addresses a gap in knowledge: no one has yet systematically studied how such always-on AR could reshape society before the technology becomes as widespread as smartphones. The researcher will use human-computer interaction methods to explore both the benefits—such as allowing people to express their identity more authentically or enhancing public spaces to build community—and the harms, including privacy violations, disinformation, and coercion. The work is fundamental, not applied: it aims to anticipate societal challenges and propose new digital human rights and protections, particularly around who controls what a user perceives. If successful, the findings could inform legislation and design standards before mass adoption occurs, helping steer everyday AR toward social good rather than harm.
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Everyday Augmented Reality (AR) headsets, with wearable, fashionable, all-day form factors, will supplant our reliance on physical displays, heralding new capabilities in augmented intelligence and perception, communication, productivity and more. They will become as fundamental to our daily lives as smartphones are today, empowering users, communities, business, governments and others to alter, augment, diminish or otherwise mediate our perception of reality. I argue that in driving the Augmented Society, everyday AR has the potential to become the most powerful agent for societal change we have experienced. For social good, this technology will enable us to "build a better reality", augmenting expression of social identity to better represent our 'authentic' self, and virtually enhancing real-world social spaces to encourage greater community ownership and social cohesion. For social harm however, everyday AR could infringe upon user and bystander privacy, and facilitate and amplify information disorder (e.g. dis-information), censorship and coercion in our day-today experience of reality. Consequently, it is crucial that research seeks to anticipate societal challenges and steer the development of, and legislation around, everyday AR - minimising harm and maximising the potential for social good before mass adoption of AR headsets in particular occurs. Using Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methodology, AUGSOC will explore how we can safely leverage AR to reshape how we perceive society, and develop resilience to individual and institutional misuse and abuse. We will holistically consider our findings to propose new digital human rights and protections, in particular balancing the tension between AR user perceptual agency (i.e. that users solely control what they perceive) against the desire of others (individuals, communities, institutions) to influence what they perceive - fundamental, timely research in support of the EC's vision of a digital society.
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