Mobile Graffiti

Stumbled across a really cool mobile tagging project in Edinburgh called Spellbinder:.

"Spellbinder is a new interactive digital medium based on camera phones and image matching. Using Spellbinder, digital content can be embedded in the real world by taking a photograph of an object or place. The digital content can be released by another user by taking another photograph of the same location. Spellbinder does not require special markers or barcodes to be placed in the world and works indoors or outdoors. Unlike tracking technologies such as global positioning systems, the focus is onwhat specifically is being looked at rather than where the user is. "

Currently, the system is used for an Edinburgh Invisible Art project (see picture from the interesting BBC article about this, but, as Dr Mark Wright of the Division of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh told the BBC, not just locations but practically everything could be linked to the virtual world. "With Spellbinder, the real world becomes a computational resource."

Fascinating: Take a picture of a real life object and get information, pictures, sounds, comments from your community,... in return. Lots of applications possible. But what really entices me is that mobile tagging based on real objects instead of code is one more step towards living in a world where virtual and real are no longer distinguishable. Yep, I fell for the Simulation Argument which says that if mankind is at some point able to build a simulation of the real world (and it looks like we're getting there), then chances are we are already living in one. And I think that is a consolation :-)