I love history, though I struggle to internalize it without context. I find it challenging to put all those dates and names and places together without a narrative or visual aid. Travelling Europe has helped, especially when I read topical history books before and during the trip, aware of past events and visiting the sites where they occurred. Not everyone can afford the expenses or time to travel, but advancements such as augmented reality may be ready to offer some help.

Augmented reality overlays computer generated images over realtime visuals. The field was limited for mobile use until smartphones with cameras were able to provide a realtime view for a graphical overlay. Phone screens are nice, but limited. Several technologies are coming together to provide data overlays to provide rich environments, including wearable glasses (Google Glass), interactive street views (Google Stretview), and metadata tying content to a space based on both GPS coordinates and date identification. Not the current date, but the time frame the media represents.

To get an idea of the possibilities, this video for the Layar app explains what they propose for Google Glass and what augmented reality might provide in the future.

As you can see, apps like Layar using technologies like Google Glass can offer a rich Web 3.0 experience, bringing a range of media into our everyday interactions with the world around us. Combining historical images with our physical space can provide context. In this image, the Museum of London's Streetmuseum app can combine old and new London. Here is a second set of images using the same technology.

Mixing Google Street views and historic art, user haldocherty give us an Imgur album with historical images overlaid onto today's London.

Historical expert Jo Teeuwisse came across 300 negatives in a flea market. Using these images, she combined them with modern images of the same locations to bring history alive.

I've toyed with augmented reality and have very little interest in the gamification of this technology outside of education, but these works prove it offers value I would enjoy on a regular basis. Am I willing to pay for Google Glass? Not yet, but I now hope the technology becomes affordable by the time my daughter is old enough to get some education while traveling. Being able to mix history into the present will be an amazing opportunity to learn.