Augmented reality glasses for a dystopian present

I’m currently on a roll with near-future Science Fiction (Rule 34 currently graces my iPad Kindle app) with all it’s predictions of a capitalist, dystopian and advert-laden future. And I run across a blog post called 5 Terrifying Things Movies Don’t Tell You About Los Angeles. It’s number 5 entry bemoans the capitalist, dystopian advert-ladent present that is LA.

Billboard ads for gastric bands proclaiming “Dieting sucks!”? With a man who appears to be struggling with some sort of food-related being that’s attempting to stuff itself down his throat? Perhaps Ridley Scott just came forward in time three decades to modern Los Angeles before filming Blade Runner.

But I have a solution. Augmented reality glasses feature heavily in some modern Science Fiction, usually coupled with intrusive advertising being thrown through the cybersphere at the protagonist. We already have Augmented Reality apps of a sort on the iPhone, and seperately from this Ad-blocking technology is popular with some folk. (I use it myself on Firefox, because Flash hurts)

So, instead of glasses or a VR application on the iPhone that allow unscrupulous spammers to invade your reality with their sales pitch, how about a version with that blacks out locations of known billboards? You could even filter certain kinds of adverts perhaps. Or replace the adverts (And paper copies of the Daily Mail that accidentally come too close to you) with pictures of kittens.

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