I met Dan Romescu, a really nice guy and totally addicted to Mobile Augmented Reality. These days it seems that he is on every stage to promote his activities but he found time to answer my questions. Thank you, Dan.

1. Dan, please give us an impression who you are and how you have been infected by the Mobile Augmented Reality virus.

Mobile augmented reality (MAR) Ecosystem will be the next social communication and information hub, with a new interpretation of Social Proximity. I think MAR in combination with the social sphere can drive the evolution of surprisingly new action patterns, services and value chains. Social MAR will increase social atom interaction with a strong commitment to improve a sustainable lifestyle. That’s why I am very positive about Mobile Augmented Reality.

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements.

With Augmware tools  (e.g. adding mobile object tracking & vision and object recognition)  the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information real time stream on top of the real world view. This will have strong implication on our behavior and deep impact in our consciousness.

My first experience with Augmented Reality was the futurist writer Bruce Sterling, that was the light for the next years.

2. Not everyone is positive about Mobile Augmented Reality. Why do you think mobile AR will be huge?

Since AR adds data into your stream of perception it immediately adds something into your stream of consciousness. Different overlay, means different worlds, means different behaviors – as Willi Schroll (part of ARBcon team) once put it. AR will not be just another media channel in the future, instead it is bringing bits and atoms, minds and things into interaction. That means, that we  are in immediate communication with the physical space, finally with Nature.

I think the negative concerns are coming from the people who care about Augmented Reality Objects ownership, privacy and permission to manipulate this objects. I must admit that I have the same concerns. When the Augmented Reality Community will not preserve this ideals, it will have the same problems that appears in the actual web – spamming, phishing, stolen identity etc.

But I am very positive about the future development, the people are not so “naive” like at the beginning of the web and will take position to inhibit this wrong development.

3. You are organizing an mobile augmented reality event in Berlin. When and where will it take place and why should one attend?

You have very good information, I am working to get all the Augmented Reality pioneers in Berlin on 23-24.04 at the 1st European Augmented Reality Conference and Developer Camp in Berlin. We started with much enthusiasm and at the beginning we had in mind to organize an Augmented Reality Developer Camp. But we had such a good feedback from the community that “forced” us, Willi Schroll, Filipp Issa and me, to change this into the European Augmented Reality Conference. This step was not easy, when you put in balance the time and resources.

We invite here Marketing, Business and Product Designers, Software Developers and Engineers, Researchers and People who want to be involved in the new MAR co-evolution.

4. When do you think will Mobile Augmented Reality will become mass market and what are the key factors?

MAR will come in the main stream in the next 4-5 years, this depends very strongly on the LTE and devices. We need real bandwidth and better devices – I mean better processors and battery life. But we will see very interesting development.

You asked me, how big is Augmented Reality, my answer is: so big as our “imagination”. Augmented Reality will help us to be more conscious on our decision, simplify our Nexting and reach the “Human Farsightedness”. For more related information you can follow my writing on Augmented Citizen.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to have this interview on mobile zeitgeist and I appreciate your effort to sustain the mobile movement in Germany.