When I was at The London College of printing back in the early 90’s I spent a lot of my time and dissertations thinking and writing about Virtual Reality – it was gonna be the next big thing and, tied in with the web, was raising all kinds of social issues about who was going to police this new realm. What were the rules? Who’s in charge? Will we still be using the term CyberPunk in 10 years time?

I read my Negroponte, my Rushkoff, my Coupland and it was clear we were heading towards this incredible new digital existence, where at least half of our time would be spent self-navigating through 3D worlds with Dire Straits video graphics wearing a cumbersome headset.

We now know of course that that didn’t happen – the web took off and VR died a slow painful death, only to be seen in some scary medical setups and on reruns of Tomorrow’s World.

So, as we witness the rise of Augmented Reality, what can we learn from VR and it’s demise?

Christ if I know – I’m not nearly clever enough for that.

I do know that it freakin rocks though! I reckon VR is going to be huge for one main reason – the tech required is built into everyone’s phone and not part of some multi-thousand pound set up.

That’s the tech distribution sorted, but what about the apps? Did you see the Space Invaders game on Techcrunch this week – http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/ar-space-invaders/ – that’s amazing. But can you imagine a game where an entire area of a city is mapped and as you walk around it you have to battle with monsters coming out of doorways, windows, around corners! Groups of you battling a common cause – all through your HTC – bring it on!

And then there’s a social layer (or layar) – imagine FaceBook AR. Go to the pub – scan the room – see where your mates were last night – watch a geotagged YouTube movie of Dave spilling Mad Mike’s pint and the ensuing hilarity.

Or, go to the Imperial War museum – scan an exhibit for people in your social graph. Find a clip of Dave’s grandad standing next to a V2 replica talking about the day one fell outside their house in Dover – “heading for London it was – never made it.”

That’s what AR is to me – an incredible, rich layer of data that comes from your social graph. If you can filter out the crap (not too many ads pls) and scale it, it could be awesome.

Then again, I thought cyberpunks were pretty awesome too…