Ancient Augmentation of Reality

It's important in my writing about Augmented reality to talk about how ancient of a practice that reality augmentation in in the realm of education and communication. Listening and watching my pastor today at church brings many of these ancient tools of communication to life.

Music & Song - for millennia  humans have transmitted information about history, beliefs and bloodlines through song. The ancient Indian Vedic Samhitas before they were written they were transmitted from generation to to generation through putting it to song.

Voice, tone & inflection - accenting some words to give emphasis and relate the emotion and strength of what's truly meant.

Written word - the thoughts and ideas of ancient, faraway strangers being besought to intimate levels.

Parables and stories - many cultural and societal norms and rules were easily communicated through the stories of it's peoples. You have aesops fables, greek mythology, and the great stories of Christianity. Jesus famously used parables to help everyday people understand complex interpretations of rabbinic and living scripture.

Gestures - my pastor today also used gestures mimicked by the audience to have them to corporately understand our church vision.


Praise & Worship - hands up to the sky
Learning the word/being fed the word - hands on your stomach
Outreach & witnessing - hands stretched forward

These hand movements use the body mind connection to help create deeper understanding of what's being communicated. If 93% of communication is non-verbal than to truly transmit the full meaning it seems to reason one might have to repeat or re-mediate those gestures as well as the words transmitted.




Props - my pastor to demonstrate what he was communicating in his message also used physical elements. He used a thrown that had cotton piled at it's feet to represent the throne of Christ and a life-sized real wooden cross to represent the sacrifice of Christ. Matter of fact you can see strong symbolism throughout Christianity (e.g. Rosary, cross, communion, robes, women's covering).

I was watching this evening a show on the science channel about the ancient coliseum's of Rome and how they were spectacles for the public.  I remembered learning how great productions were done in these great places that transformed the spaces into jungles for hunts of far away animals imported from Africa and other lands along with recreating great naval battles in a flooded coliseum.  These spectacles recreated events and realities from places far from Rome.

Augmented reality through the technology available to day is obviously far more complex than these ancient devices. AR will help to make information and learning live like never before. If a medical student needs to understand what the heart looks like a professor can call one up for the class to see and explore in three dimensions by looking through their smartphone or through some new AR lenses.