James Cameron’s Avatar is turning out to be a timely, rumored-to-be-half-a-billion-dollars project. Augmented reality, a real-time, interactive, 3-d experience (sort of like, well, actual reality) has been popping up everywhere.

Marc Owens, a designer-in-residence at London’s Design Museum, made this crazy piece of work which lets you see yourself as a virtual character walking around and doing stuff in the real world. Like this. Remember that episode? Anyway, point is, it’s some Twilight Zone-type mind-trip.

The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.

Like what, exactly? Shoot people? Fly? How many gamers asked for “Walking around London’s Design Museum Adventure in 3D” for XBOX last Christmas? Ok, ok, it looks cool. I’ll leave it to the pros to figure out what to do with it.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc 540]
Besides, who knows where it’ll be in 5 years? 10? Even the USPS is getting in on the AR frenzy as everyone and their mother’s mother struggles to find a practical use for this technology that seems like it should have a million.