Augmented Reality: the next step in human evolution? Or merely a trend that will lose credibility after the smoke clears?  Who can say for sure at this point? Although there can be many benefits to AR, I’d like us to remember one of the most potentially damaging effects it could have on us, losing our humanity. And what does ‘humanity’ really mean? As The Free Dictionary puts it, one definition of humanity is, “The quality of being humane; benevolence.” (Some other definitions here and here)

So why am I so worried that we are losing this so-called humanity? Because like many researches and developers out there have already pointed out to us, “We are only a heartbeat away from super-human” qualities, and ” augmented reality will allow us to use the best of robotics to enhance our human senses and function at a higher level” (Hazel Davis article). Everytime a development is made, we risk becoming more and more detached from one another, choosing and augmented reality over what is real. There might even come a day where we become ‘transhuman’, a collective that more closely resembles the Borg from Star Trek than what we look like today.

As Clyde DeSouza writes, having “Augmented Human Memory, Augmented Intelligence, and Quantum Archeology and Immortality” are just three out of the five ways we are becoming ‘transhuman’. Everytime we make a status update, upload files, and shop online, we are “converting a biological function into a digital one. We are digitizing our analog stream-of-consciousness”. We are going from the natural, to the unnatural, and that is a scary thought. Combining technology or implants into ourselves may seem like a good or cool idea, but what would the long term effects be like? And would what we have ever be enough? Just look at how tablets and smartphones have become a sort of commodity to us already, and we are still craving more. Have we not yet reached perfection?

The more technologies that are created, the more we change how we interact with each other, alienating ourselves from our peers.  Like Daniel Tamarian puts it, augmented reality “is like to further expand the gap between pure traditional relations and technology-based ones.” He goes on to speculate whether or not humans will actually have relationships with other humans anymore. Who needs real life friends when you can create your own? And what about creating a romantic character? Where does it stop? How far might we go?