Two very brief videos to fuel your futures-thinking.

Project Glass presents a first-person view of a future in which locality-aware data is continually streamed into your line of sight—from the time you wake up for your morning coffee through a day of work and meeting friends. The video was created to introduce Google’s heads-up display glasses, which they intend to launch by the end of 2012. (If it works, will we see early adopters sporting geeky AG glasses at the 2013 AAM annual meeting?) But the transhumanists doubtless envision a time when this augmented capacity will be grafted into your corneas. (Run time 2 minutes, 30 seconds.)

Golden Age Somewhere by Paul Nicholls brings the Star Trek “holodeck” to life, showing us a future in which you can be anywhere, interacting with anyone, with the wave of a nanotechnogical wand. But system crashes get ugly. (Run time 5 minutes, 29 seconds.)

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As with all the reading and viewing profiled in my occasional Futurist Friday posts, I recommend you take the 8 minutes it takes to watch these videos (ok, round up to 10 minutes to include reading this post) and ask yourself:

• What would these futures mean for me, for my work, for my museum?
• What opportunities would these technologies unlock, and what threats might they pose?

 Two specific questions that intrigue me are:

• Short term: how will the integration of digital data into our perception of the real world change how we experience “place?”
• Long term: when spot-on holographic immersive experiences (complete with appropriate smells and haptic feedback) become commonplace, what will be the additional lure that brings people to see the real thing?

Please weigh in below with your comments on these videos and suggestions for future reading & viewing,.