There is information relating to each physical spot on earth. Augmented Reality is about blurring the lines between the real and virtual world. – David Sweeney

Bionic Eye’s new Augmented Reality app for the iPhone is an exciting development for a concept set to revolutionize our interactions with the world. Currently available in the UK, Japan, France and America, it lets you see points of interest in your city just by holding up your iPhone.

There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the components that make up Augmented Reality, or AR. It is basically just a video camera with GPS,  an internet connection and a powerful graphics card. However, the combination of these technologies will totally change the way we interact with our cities.

At the moment, this app is great for finding a hotel, your nearest McDonalds, or somewhere with free Wi-Fi, but in the future it is hoped that when you look through your AR enabled phone you could see Wikipedia pages relating to your location, photos from the area on flickr, a map showing which of your facebook friends are closest, and nearby tweets. Point at a billboard to access further information about the product being advertised, at a building for architectural information, or find out how many crimes have been commited in the surrounding area.

‘Go out and enjoy un-augmented reality while you can because soon everything will be augmented in some way. But it will always be easier for us to take our cues from the design of the city than it is from AR devices – AR is going to be a layer on top, it’s going to be part of the palimpsest of what’s built’ – Daniel Light

Excited by this? We are walking around with more technological power in our pockets than ever before, and Augmented Reality is an inevitability.