Google Lens, Augmented Reality, and the Future of Learning | Gear - WIRED

Lauren Goode, senior writer at WIRED explains, Why take a boring selfie in front of the Mona Lisa when you can use AR to dive deep into it?

Photo: Cera Hensley

Did you know that the painter Rockwell Kent, whose splendorous Afternoon on the Sea, Monhegan hangs in San Francisco's de Young Museum, worked on murals and advertisements for General Electric and Rolls-Royce? I did not, until I visited Gallery 29 on a recent Tuesday afternoon, phone in hand.

Because the de Young's curators worked with Google to turn some of the informational placards that hang next to paintings into virtual launchpads, any placard that includes an icon for Google Lens—the name of the company's visual search software—is now a cue. Point the camera at the icon and a search result pops up, giving you more information about the work. (You can access Google Lens on the iPhone within the Google search app for iOS or within the native camera app on Android phones.)...

It's too early to say how well we learn things through augmented reality. AR lacks totality by definition—unlike VR, it enhances the real world but doesn't replace it—and it's hard to say what that means for memory retention, says Michael Tarr, a cognitive science researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. “There is a difference between the emotional and visceral responses that happen when something is experienced as a real event or thing and when something is experienced as a digital or pictorial implementation of a thing,” he says.
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Source: WIRED