Holographic body modification? Snapchat lenses rendered in real life? “They Live” playing live?

At Google I/O I started freestyling with an attendee about what we might see when—not if—wearable augmented reality becomes mainstream. He was concerned about kids like his teenage daughter punching metal into their skin, grafting on horns, etc. What if, we mused, one could apply little patches (like the NFC-enabled tattoos we were handing out) and use them to totally modify how others see us, changing everything from gender to species on the fly? If current behavior is any indication, we’ll all be human-taco hybrids. (A quarter billion views in a day! I still can’t get over that.)

Expecting less personal expression than corporate oppression, Keiichi Matsuda has conjured a terrific dystopian rendering of such a world. Check out “Hyper Reality”:

Which directions will all this take? Seems we’ll know sooner rather than later. See you in the future!

[Vimeo]