Ideas from Mark Stout

In 2016 my family and I visited Masada , a famous ancient site in Israel near the Dead Sea. As our tour group walked around the ruins, our guide challenged us to imagine the daily life at this place occupied in the years before and just after Year 0. The thought hit me that if I could be wearing AR goggles, as I looked at the ruins, animation could show the buildings as they actually were, and actors dressed in period clothing going about their business. I got quite excited about the idea, imagining tourists renting AR goggles at any historical site. Imagine settlers building cabins at Jamestown, Washington sitting in his study at Mount Vernon, the debates in Constitution Hall, or roaming the streets of Jerusalem (as we did the day after Masada) and seeing people living and working as they did in the first century AD (or any date you choose). Blogging this idea has been on my to-do list since our return home in March 2016. Lately I re-read Daniel Suarez's amazing Daem...

I looked to the left and was surprised to see a fighter jet there. Even more astonishingly, I looked up and found another fighter just above my head, only feet away from my own aircraft. A voice startled me and I looked behind me to realize I wasn’t alone in the plane; there was a pilot behind me. The Family Tech gadget budget is – shall we say – “restrained” so I wasn’t flying my new F-35, but instead my $20 Google Cardboard. Virtual reality, or VR, may finally be poised for the home. VR goggles let you see different views as you turn your head. Imagine you are wearing VR goggles and it appears to you that you are at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles. In front of you is a big silver-colored airplane. If you turn to the right, you see more airplanes. Look up and you see a variety of planes hanging over your head. Look down and you see the floor. While it’s not as good as being there, you get a sense of what it is like to be there. Read the rest at FamilyTechOnline.com