Diminished Reality research (Prof. Mann with student James Fung)

Billboards, advertising, and other visual detritus form annoying, and sometimes dangerous clutter at the sides of busy roadways and highways. This advertisement, made in the shape of an octagon, and painted red, and placed at the side of a busy road, is the visual equivalent of yelling ``fire'' in a crowded theatre in order to get everyone's attention to tell them you have something for sale.

one possible solution is to wear protective eyeglasses that help us see better by diminishing reality, and filtering out dangerously distracting advertisements to replace them with relevant subject matter:

Click this picture to see a movie. If you are using a Microsoft product, you will not be able to see this movie. You need to upgrade to GNU Linux or UNIX or some other real operating system.

This allows the wearer of the special eyeglasses to pay more attention to the road. Moreover, by eliminating the need for pencil and paper, roadmaps, or the like, safety is improved because eyes are kept on the road at all times, rather than trying to share attention between a notepad of paper, a map, or the like.

here is another example of diminished reality:

For more on diminished reality: see http://about.eyetap.org/library/weekly/aa012301a.shtml, or the scholarly research publication cited below, in BibTeX format from use in the LaTeX typesetting system:

@inproceedings{ismr,
  author="Steve Mann and James Fung",
  title="VideoOrbits on Eye Tap devices for deliberately Diminished Reality
         or altering the visual perception of rigid planar patches
         of a real world scene",
  booktitle="International Symposium on Mixed Reality ({ISMR}2001)",
  month="March 14-15",
  year=2001,
}

According to Barnum, the aim of advertising was "to extort attention."