If Paris can augment reality with an appreciation for history, then so should San Jose. And if Google really cares, then it should help.
Earlier this year, thanks to Google’s Geospatial Creator and a San Francisco immersive company, Rock Paper Reality, people drifting aimlessly along the Seine in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower could jump straight into Google Maps and experience the same neighborhood from over a century earlier, but morphing into the landscape of the current day. This came about because augmented reality was now possible within the Web, without having to download a separate app to make the AR work.
It was a great idea, an enhanced way to travel. Everyone was familiar with the Eiffel Tower, but maybe not the sketches Stephen Sauvestre submitted for the Eiffel Tower’s reconstruction 124 years ago. To see those sketches virtually, and watch them morph into the modern-day tower, all a user had to do was hold a smartphone up to the real Eiffel Tower, capture it with the camera, and then watch as Google Maps called up the AR accompaniment, replete with descriptions and other interactive elements about the history.
The best thing? You didn’t even have to be in Paris. Anyone with Google Maps on a smartphone equipped with AR capabilities, anywhere else in the world, can pop in the Eiffel Tower and then have the same experience, which is already being implemented at several other world landmarks.
In San Jose, I immediately thought of a zillion ways to riff on such a project. You, dear reader, can probably imagine even more. It’s impossible to pass up.
History San Jose has already partnered with Google Arts & Culture on numerous online exhibits for at least ten years now. One can already take virtual tours of many buildings, mostly the structures located at History Park, but having AR built into Google Maps would take everything to a crazy new dimension.
This would work great on empty buildings. Take the abandoned Woolworth building, for example. At this point, most people don’t even know or care that there was a Woolworth downtown. But if images could be superimposed within Google Maps, users would no longer see just an empty structure with a graffiti-stained San Jose development placard. Imagine beehive hairdos at the Woolworth lunch counter and a ’65 Chevy parked outside. All of that could interactively show the building’s prior uses, juxtaposed with the perpetual emptiness of today.
Imagine anything else that doesn’t exist anymore. Tower Records. Toys R Us. The Brass Rail. All of it would return to life again via AR. This would be a great educational tool.
Shopping centers could take the idea to the next level. Look at the atrocities unfolding at El Paseo de Saratoga, for instance. Imagine the old version of El Paseo rising from the dead—the legendary video game arcade Merlin’s Castle, plus Fantasy Records and Video, or The Monk’s Retreat restaurant—and then superimposing that imagery onto the hideous disaster of the current mall. Even more, once it’s all destroyed for grotesquely overpriced housing, as it will soon be, any user could then see the unique El Paseo retail center of 40 years ago and make their own decisions.
New ways of teaching local history would emerge. Anyone around the world could open up Google Maps and experience interactive multimedia history of the abandoned Woolworth building, a defunct record store or the atrocities of El Paseo Shopping Center. Merlin’s Castle would live on forever. It would put San Jose on the map. The Google Map.
In theory, anyone with Adobe Aero and Geospatial chops who also has access to historic photos would be able to make this happen. For decades now, San Jose has called itself the “Capital of Silicon Valley,” a tagline every resident knows is BS. Now we really can lead the way.
Teaching local history to business travelers or leisure visitors, and how it all relates to the present, especially with augmented reality, would enhance San Jose’s name recognition. Historians would love it. Tech bros would love it. The convention and visitors’ bureau would love it. Everyone wins.
If it doesn’t happen, well, I guess we’ll always have Paris.
