Mobile versus headworn augmented reality: How visions of the future shape,contest,and stabilize an emerging technology

Introduction

Augmented reality (AR), defined in academia as a technology that combines three-dimensional, real-time, and interactive virtual graphics with physical space (Azuma, 1997; Liao, 2016), received a surge of attention around 2009 when smartphones were becoming widely adopted. Building on research examining mobile handheld AR (Billinghurst and Henrysson, 2006), several companies realized these smartphone devices now had the necessary capabilities (e.g. global positioning system [GPS], wireless) to access locational data and overlay information onto the user’s surroundings. Mobile smartphones represented a convergence of technologies necessary to support AR that was freely available for users. Companies like Layar and Wikitude released first-generation “AR Browsers” to the market, allowing users to find physical locations around them and create AR to change the visual representation of places (Liao and Humphreys, 2014).

This was a somewhat unexpected development, given that the origins of AR trace back to Ivan Sutherland’s (1968) “Sword of Damocles,” a head-mounted system that allowed users to see graphics overlaying physical space. ¹ Based on this original conception of headworn devices (HWDs), much of the formative research in AR worked on these systems (Cakmakci and Rolland, 2006; Mann, 1997; Rheingold, 1992). Sutherland later reflected that his work on head-mounted AR served as an important “attention focuser” that “defined a set of problems that motivated people for a number of years” (National Research Council, 1999: 237).

This study explores a pivotal moment in the development of an emerging technology, as two sets of stakeholders clashed over these different forms of the technology. With mobile smartphone adoption, a contestation emerged over whether mobile or HWD would be the preferred form for consumer AR. Therefore, two research questions emerged: (1) How did stakeholder communities debate, contest, and advocate for their preferred form of AR technology? (2) How did discourse about different social groups shape and embed itself into the design of the material technology?

While debate between mobile and HWD is often couched in terms of their technological differences alone (Cakmakci and Rolland, 2006; Van Krevelen and Poelman, 2010), there are important stakeholder groups at industry, standards, and academic conferences that advocate for each technological form. This contestation has been ongoing and resulted in two coalitions within an early group of AR supporters—mobile advocates and HWD advocates. While everyone is nominally unified under the umbrella term “augmented reality,” the contestation over what form AR should take is happening discursively over the futures being advanced about possible users, uses, and technological systems in which AR will be situated. These discursive debates play an important role in shaping the material design of these technologies.

The stakes are high, as competing devices/platforms attempt to attract users and push the infrastructure in line with their systems. These stakeholders are also competing for third party developers, who have to choose to direct their efforts to mobile or HWD based on their expectations. Funding becomes a major reason that these devices compete as separate categories, because if AR is seen as deliverable through mobile devices, then venture capital and grant funding for research might flow toward that direction. Depending on how institutional allies and individuals interpret and engage with certain promises, they might move resources toward that technological form and advocate for that particular form which can shape the design and commercialization of the technology (Rogers, 2003). Building on science and technology studies, communication, and sociology, this study utilizes the case of AR to explore the intersection between discourse, visions of the future, design, and the social construction of technology (SCOT) in mapping the ongoing development of a technology.

AR and SCOT

Technical design and social values are intricately intertwined (Abbate, 1999; Akrich, 1992; Bijker, 1995). Many have argued that the development of a technology is a complex entanglement of economic, political, and cultural pressures, while its ultimate form and adoption are the result of chance, necessity, and collective human will (Bijker, 1995; Flichy, 2007; Hughes, 1983; Law, 1987; Pinch and Bijker, 1987). These social constructivist positions believe that the design of technologies is neither inevitable nor linear; rather “the developmental process of a technological artefact is described as an alternation of variation and selection” among possible designs (Pinch and Bijker, 1987: 135).

SCOT articulates several concepts for understanding the technological developmental process, to help understand the multiple dimensions along which a technology evolves, and how social factors influenced those decisions (Bijker, 1995; Bijker and Law, 1992; Pinch and Bijker, 1987). First is the concept of relevant social groups (RSG). For each artifact, one could identify a set of actors who attribute meaning to that technology (Bijker, 2009), defined as an “organized or unorganized [group] of individuals [who] share the same set of meanings” (Pinch and Bijker, 1987: 30). RSG approach particular artifacts with their own priorities and assumptions. Second, this multiplicity of meanings around a technology is described as “interpretive flexibility,” where there are infinite possibilities for a particular artifact. Third, as artifacts gain dominance and are ascribed with certain meanings, RSG work on various problems to stabilize the technology (where it is agreed that a certain problem is solved). Finally, if the wider community believes that these problems are solved through particular designs and there is an irreversible end point to the discordant process, then SCOT argues that technology reaches a degree of “closure” (Bijker, 2009). In analyzing RSG, “stabilization can […] be introduced by analyzing intragroup development of artifacts” (Bijker, 1995: 85).

Drawing on SCOT, scholars found that technological development is the product of factors beyond inventors, companies, and investors with their own priorities, advantages, and resources (Bijker, 1995; Bijker and Law, 1992) to governmental actors’ regulations and policies (Law, 1987) and to users who shape the technology (Kline and Pinch, 1996; Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003). With Internet technologies, scholars have extended SCOT by examining the role of RSG and various processes of stabilization (Siles, 2011). Most studies, however, have looked at stabilization from a historical perspective, where scholars have the benefit of knowing the outcome of a particular socio-technical arrangement, and the work comes from linking together certain events which they deem to be explanatory (Flichy, 2007).

Some key criticisms of SCOT concepts, specifically stabilization, arise from this challenge of historical analysis. With retrospective accounts, some argue that the concept of RSG predetermines which groups are relevant, overemphasizes the relevance of certain groups, and draws rigid boundaries between groups (Winner, 1993). Others argue that the role of power is obscured by these historical accounts (Russell, 1986) and that certain perspectives get overlooked, overemphasized, or are taken as overly predictive: “the background conditions of group interactions, such as their relation to each other, the rules ordering their interactions, and factors contributing to differences in their power, remain largely invisible” (Klein and Kleinman, 2002: 30). Finally, the model has primarily been applied to cases where social consensus is achievable. More work is needed to understand stabilization under “circumstances in which there are serious disagreements about the design or use of an artifact or technological system” (Winner, 1993: 372).

SCOT needs more empirical development in these areas to answer questions such as the following: (1) How do early advocates and designers address other stakeholder groups as “RSG” in the process of designing and stabilizing a technology? (2) Which technical and communicative frames are deployed to stabilize the technology? and (3) How do two competing coalitions leverage discourse and power to stabilize the technology and enroll additional RSG? This study aims for an ongoing mapping of RSG contesting AR technologies, looking at various priorities, constraints, and social concerns; the strategies and approaches RSG undertook to solve socially defined problems; and how these became evident through the material design of the technology.

Future visions, promises, and expectations

The temporal moment that scholars study these technologies provides certain advantages for understanding the development of technology while presenting theoretical and methodological challenges. Because AR is in the early stages of commercial development/innovation, one challenge of an ongoing mapping is that much of the discussion occurs in the abstract, in the form of future discourse about the technology. These visions are intentionally hyperbolic, but it is far from idle speculation. There is increasing recognition that specific normative accounts of what the future should look like and what might be possible are constitutive elements of the social and political development of emerging technologies. Many argue that the articulated future visions of key actors are central to understanding the political economy of emerging technological fields (Brown et al., 2000; Sturken et al., 2004; Van Lente and Rip, 1998).

This research suggests that future visions are performative, that speculative visions advanced have economic and epistemic value in the present and work to create networks and alliances (Borup et al., 2006; Brown et al., 2000). Future visions create the institutional and organizational momentum supporting the technology and are important to understanding the design of technologies. While SCOT has been deployed to study a wide range of technologies and fields like organizational and economic sociology (Bijker and Pinch, 2012; Garud and Karnøe, 2001; Orlikowski, 1992), less work has combined future concepts to study the ongoing negotiations of a technological artifact.

The early stakeholders forming around AR represent various factions and groups that are advancing future visions about the technology. The conferences where they gather are places where collective future visions get circulated, where actors are taught how to critique and defend against threats to the technology, and where actors coalesce around particular goals, all while simultaneously celebrating and legitimating the technology. Through these discursive lenses, we can better understand how stakeholders contest and shape technologies. These hopes and fears about stakeholder groups lead to important decisions at the corporate, governmental, and design levels and become a place for seeing how “the communication about the technologies becomes more important than the technologies in shaping the uses and effects of new media” (Baym, 2010: 41).

Methods

This study was conducted over 4 years of fieldwork and participation observation at AR meetings and conferences. In 2011, I began attending a meetup group called Augmented Reality New York (ARNY) in Manhattan, where I connected with a network of actors and subsequently identified large industry conferences as important places where AR advocates gather as a collective. Following SCOT’s tenets of selecting RSG who cite the artifact in question (Bijker, 2009), I broadened the focus to academic and standards conferences based on the introduction of new actors. I selected conferences based on invitations and advice of stakeholders and the prominence of these AR conferences.

In May 2012, I attended Augmented Reality Event (ARE2012), one of the first conferences explicitly focused on the creation of a commercial AR industry. I returned in June 2013, renamed Augmented World Expo (AWE2013) to reflect the international scope of AR. In June 2013, I attended AR Summit in London, billed as the preeminent European conference on AR. In October 2013, I attended InsideAR 2013 in Munich, hosted by one of the largest AR companies and described as “where the AR industry meets.” In March 2014, I attended Augmented World Expo New York (AWENY2014) and Augmented World Expo in June 2015 (AWE2015).

Thinking about actors who are trying to bridge technologies through standards, I attended a series of AR standards meetings. In January 2013, I attended the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) technical and planning committee meeting in Redlands, California. OGC was the organization that housed the standards group working on an AR Markup Language standards. In February 2013, I attended the eighth International AR Standards Community (IARSC) meeting in Barcelona, Spain, where representatives from different standards setting organizations convened. In May 2013, I attended the ninth IARSC meeting at Columbia University, and in September 2013, I attended another OGC meeting in Frascati, Italy. In March 2014, I attended the 10th IARSC in Crystal City, Virginia. Finally, I attended twice the preeminent academic conference for AR, the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in 2012 (Atlanta) and 2013 (Adelaide).

I observed and interacted with the people who have a vested interest in advocating for AR, make technological decisions about AR, and build partnerships around AR. Overall, I attended 13 conferences/meetings in 10 cities, spanning six countries. Writing fieldnotes is important for pinpointing the indigenous meanings and interactional processes underlying those events (Emerson et al., 2011). I have over 300 pages of fieldnotes, from observations about formal sessions and events to social settings, which document elements of the social practices, values, and artifacts of these conferences from a wide collection of people present—conference hosts, speakers, exhibitors, journalists, academics, hobbyists, and skeptics.

Findings—mobile AR versus headworn AR

The rise of mobile smartphone AR brought new technological possibilities to the AR space and the possibility of a new technological order. Some acknowledged that it took people by surprise: “We’d been thinking about AR as eyewear for so long. […] Then all of a sudden this happens, and it is not quite what you expected” (Fred, Computer Science [CS] Professor, Ninth IARSC 2013). The companies that launched AR browsers were also getting media attention and funding. Developers began to create applications for mobile devices, and companies reported millions of users downloading them. Journalists quickly proclaimed that AR had finally arrived, with mobile smartphones leading the charge. This introduced a different regime to AR, as new RSG came with their own technological priorities and trajectories. The findings explain how members of both coalitions attempted to push their preferred form of AR technology, how they contested the meaning of the artifact through futures and tactics, and how those shaped the artifact itself.

Futures shape the material design of the artifact

Two RSG that are key advocates for the mobile coalition are the mobile hardware companies and chip manufacturers. Fred, a CS professor, explains,

Phones today are getting really good, and at some point there’s going to be a diminishing return on how many features people need. AR could convince people that they need smartphones to be faster, […] to have better graphics, to have higher resolution. (Interview)

This institutional support is confirmed by their activities at these conferences:

The mobile hardware manufacturers and carriers especially love this, because it’s using every single feature of the phone, and you always need stronger, more feature rich phone to be able to do the latest AR. […] If you look at ARE 2012 probably twenty five percent of the people are from the mobile hardware companies. (Aaron, CEO AR trade organization, interview)

The support of these companies stems from an attempt to avoid a negative future, one where sales of mobile devices saturate. The idea is to push AR futures to sell newer devices while adding features to their devices to enable those AR experiences. Steve, a mobile hardware developer, proclaimed, “The age of the single camera mobile phone is over. Soon we’ll need depth sensing, motion capture, and perhaps even thermographic cameras” (10th IARSC, 2014).

A project that exemplifies the design factors that mobile AR supporters advocate for is Google’s Project Tango, a handheld device with multiple cameras that attempts to create real-time mappings of the space around them using computer vision, depth sensing, and motion tracking. While these devices need to be handheld and pose limitations on its field of view, they do bracket off practical problems that HWD developers face such as user interaction, eye tracking, and creating precise overlays that work with our visual systems.

While redefining the problem space, mobile advocates simultaneously put forth negative futures that would result from HWDs. One fear they emphasize is how the private viewing condition of HWDs will exacerbate concerns about AR content:

There will be the ability for people to be creepy with facial recognition. […] you have no idea whether their doing recognition on your face or reading a kindle book. […] When you have that information there’s a real asymmetry when talking to someone wearing one of these glasses. (Boris, head of AR standards group, interview)

With the lack of social cues that HWDs give as to what a person is augmenting, mobile advocates tap into fears of privacy violations (e.g. recording, facial recognition).

These visions advanced by mobile AR advocates highlight the key tension for HWDs. The ability to unobtrusively see augmented objects and information overlaying physical space is precisely why many consumers would be attracted to the device, as evidenced by the marketing comparisons to X-ray vision and superpowers. That same private viewing functionality is the cause of fear for non-users who may be the subject of augmentation as well as institutional RSG like business owners (e.g. bars, banks), some of whom threatened to ban HWDs like Google Glass. HWD advocates took note of these negative futures, and these concerns that social/institutional norms could deter consumers from adopting HWDs were raised at a “HWD supporters only” meeting at AWE2013. The challenge for HWD advocates became to balance the futures that sell these devices while reassuring other RSG such as non-users and institutional actors that could prevent HWDs from becoming desirable and commercially viable.

Several HWD companies try to mitigate negative futures by proposing different HWD designs, an example of how futures shape the artifacts. Google Glass was one of the first HWDs to encounter these fears of power asymmetry, as a device that allowed users to look at and record someone through a private viewing condition. In an instance where design decisions are made to address larger discourses and critiques, Google built in social signals to activate the recording function, where users either had to verbally instruct Glass to take a photo or physically hold a button. They also designed a red light, which had no function other than to show that the wearer was recording. These social design decisions can be understood as technical “delegates,” or a feature that compensates for the moral deficiencies of its users (Latour, 1988), and also as an explicit recognition of other RSG (e.g. non-users).

Another area of contestation is the immersiveness of the respective forms. HWD supporters at these conferences often present optimal futures of AR that are immersive, hands-free, and with a full field of view, which necessitates the HWD form. At AWE2015, the primary goal that HWD companies were competing for was whose device had the highest resolution and widest field of view. For HWD hardware manufacturers, accessing this desired future of fully immersive AR applications is driving the development of their optical displays.

Faced with limits to their screen-based displays, mobile AR advocates attempt to reframe immersiveness as a warrant against HWDs by tapping into fears of overload. Because AR attempts to overlay content onto users’ visual fields, the question of overload and “how much is too much” is particularly pressing: “Imagine Times Square in your backyard. That’s annoying” (Dennis, AR Researcher, interview). There are distraction possibilities of HWD AR, where mobile AR advocates point to dystopic visions of the future where AR is littered with advertising, another RSG that is starting to shape the priorities of AR companies (Liao, 2015).

Google attempted to bypass the distraction question through design, placing the display above the eye and out of a user’s direct line of sight. This design decision changed the applications regarding how the device was promised and marketed to people: “It’s there when you need it, out of the way when you don’t” (Greg, Glass Community Leader, AWENY2014). This intentionally scales back on some of the promises of immersive HWDs, positioning it as an unobtrusive device that the user has the choice to engage with to bracket some of the criticisms of overload/distraction (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Loïc Le Meur wearing Google Glass.

Other companies like Vuzix and Optinvent are rejecting the overload/distraction frame and instead designing displays central to the user’s line of sight (Figure 2). For these companies, the immersiveness and field of view are the key advantage for HWDs, and it is the core focus of their design. They believe they can redefine the problem by selling AR as a device that makes people more aware of their surroundings: “The future really has more to do with contextual or situational awareness […] that actually gives the user information about their environment and helps them in some way” (Pete, CEO of HWD Company, interview).

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Figure 2.

Vuzix M100, Optinvent ORA-1.

Regarding its form, function, and design decisions, each of these mobile and HWD designs offers an early attempt at stabilization. While multiple different design innovations are common in demonstrating the interpretive flexibility of artifacts (Bijker, 1995; Rosen, 1993), the ongoing mapping shows how the designs are conscious attempts to access certain positive futures and avoid negative ones. We see how futures discourse co-constructs the design of these artifacts, both by driving certain forms and features (e.g. multiple cameras, recording light, screen placement) and then by motivating its own set of futures that flow from the design.

Sunglasses—a pre-stabilized ideal

The ease of use and aesthetics of HWDs are also major areas of contention, particularly how to design a system that produces AR that people want to wear. First is the bulkiness and weight of the devices, related to all the things needed to make AR work (e.g. battery, processor), which can make them uncomfortable for users to wear. Also is the social signal that HWDs send out—at these conferences critics constantly point out how wearing HWDs makes “you look ridiculous, this idea that people [are] going to go around with these extra eyes in front of them. It’s just too nerdy” (Bennett, CTO of mobile browser company, interview). In visuals and visions, mobile advocates frequently bring up how obtrusive HWDs are in displaying this identity in a strategic attempt to raise the difficulty for HWD supporters in terms of technical and social barriers (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Ben Lang/Road to VR wearing CastAR.

Beyond pointing out problems facing HWDs, one unique strategy that mobile advocates deploy is to simultaneously advance a futuristic ideal form that they believe HWDs will need to reach as a prerequisite before they will even entertain HWDs as a viable alternative: “I think mobile will be predominant. […] Talk to me when they [HWD] get to a point where they are acceptable, […] as light as glasses and as fashionable as glasses or sunglasses” (Dennis, interview). While it is common within SCOT to see different RSG employ different technological frames (Bijker, 1995; Pinch and Bijker, 1987), here we see a specific tactic of stabilization that uses a future “pre-stabilized ideal,” which I define as putting forward a concrete, presently unattainable future design of an artifact in which key problems within their technological frame are fully resolved. The vision of AR sunglasses is common at these conferences but with important differences in how people react to the frame. Some HWD advocates reject the premise that the pre-stabilized ideal is a prerequisite and support intermediary HWDs, while other advocates accept the frame and are working toward meeting that standard (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

GlassUp.

Mobile/HWD/hybrid devices access different coalitions of actors, priorities, and power

Companies are driving these coalitions with many economic, social, and institutional commitments. The constellation of key RSG pushing mobile AR (e.g. chip/phone manufacturers) bring with them significant power and resources in having shaped the existing technological infrastructure and established partnerships among a network of stakeholders. Their power comes from the large technological system they have already built to support an existing form, which configures the conditions under which an artifact can enter the environment (Hughes, 1983).

HWD advocates (initially new startups and academics) are comparatively at a power disadvantage of having to enter this system while attempting to supplant the existing mobile device. They have to persuade other RSG work on HWDs despite the institutional power of mobile AR advocates. They tried to do this by turning that power against them, questioning the commitment of phone/chip manufacturers to AR:

The phones still have to be phones first, and the manufacturers know that. […] You’re not going to get someone sane to come up with something that has higher resolution than an iPhone or comparable display at that size because people don’t care and can’t see it. (Fred, interview)

While mobile phones have many of the capabilities necessary for rudimentary AR, they are not specialized AR devices.

One criticism is that mobile institutional actors might perceive certain technological capabilities as “solved” and stabilize around hardware that is insufficient for AR (e.g. display, processing power). Another element is a question of priority; if these capabilities ever trade off with one another, these actors will privilege what they perceive to be “core” phone capabilities over AR applications. These attempts turn the industry partnerships of mobile advocates against them, suggesting that the future motivations of those industrial actors will prevent them from ever overcoming or prioritizing certain technological problems. The lack of control over AR and the uncertainty that certain “outside RSG” will commit to optimizing devices for AR is an attempt by HWD advocates to draw people back toward their frame.

Other companies attempted to work from their disadvantaged position by co-opting the structural advantages of mobile devices. One of the most significant disadvantages that HWD startups face is the inability to access the data infrastructure because they do not have the power to form partnerships with mobile carriers that allow them access to their 3G/4G networks. Many HWDs can only carry data through Wi-Fi. To overcome these infrastructural limitations, one design solution has been to run the HWD using a mobile device (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Seebright.

Murphy, a Seebright executive, explained, “we’re taking advantage of existing mobile hardware, […] anticipating some of the problems that people will encounter in adapting their work from the handheld space into the head-worn space” (interview). As a smaller company in the HWD AR space faced with a problem of data transfer, this design demonstrates the interpretive flexibility of technological development, specifically how the capabilities and power asymmetries of actors in an RSG can shape design.

Discussion

This case explores how the development of various new media technologies can contribute to our theoretical understanding of SCOT. It merges the sociology of futures literature to SCOT in several ways. First, it uses futures methodologically as a way of examining emerging technologies, which further builds on our understanding of futures and technology development. Second, the use of futures allows for an ongoing mapping of discourse, which addresses certain key critiques of the general SCOT model. Finally, several tactics emerged from this case which builds on our empirical understanding of contested SCOT concepts such as stabilization and the role of power.

Understanding futures as they happen is methodologically difficult, and inherent in the technology space is a penchant for hype, hyperbole, and secrecy (Borup et al., 2006). One element to recognize is that the power of the futures lies not in its strict accuracy in prediction (Geels and Smit, 2000) but instead in their performative power and how they are made persuasive. This allows researchers to understand emerging technologies using the discourse of its actors in ways that are not wholly reliant on parsing accuracy and intent behind the discourse. Mapping various futures, its content, and analyzing where futures are contested can become a lens for understanding the empirical developments in the material design of the technology and the policies governing these technologies. Something as mundane as screen placement can really be understood as a larger battle over which positive/negative future that device will access and/or avoid. Similarly, where certain dystopic futures may be specific to one design (e.g. private viewing condition of HWDs), the policy decisions can be understood in the context of avoiding certain negative futures. This is one way in which futures and how actors deploy them illuminate differences in technological frames—similar to how Bijker (1995) found that the ordinary bicycle was seen by one RSG as an artifact for young men of means and nerve to show off and race, while other RSG viewed it as unsafe. The response to these negative futures is also an important contribution for understanding the artifact and also the process of stabilization.

Analyzing futures also allows for an accurate mapping of how designers are thinking about and constructing groups as “relevant,” which was a critique of how analysts retrospectively applied SCOT (Klein and Kleinman, 2002; Winner, 1993). When HWD advocates express concerns about future laws banning their devices, add features to preempt institutional actors that might be uncomfortable with the recording functionality of their devices, and change policy to prohibit certain content in an effort to disassociate from certain negative futures, they demonstrate the relevance that certain groups have on the design process, even if they are imagined and not present in place where design decisions take place.

This study builds on futures literature generally, much of which has often analyzed how positive promissory discourse can shape technological innovation (Brown et al., 2000; Fortun, 2008; Van Lente and Rip, 1998). Less work has explored pessimism and how darker future imaginaries are deployed (Tutton, 2011). In this case, we see mobile advocates using market futures to push for their form while simultaneously using negative normative futures to problematize the “compatibility” of an alternate form (HWD) and to challenge the degree to which the innovation is consistent with existing social values and the needs of potential adopters (Rogers, 2003). Through this mapping, we can better understand the relationship between futures and material design not only as a linear one (e.g. promissory rhetoric affects design decisions) but also as a multifaceted one that has short-term practical functions of redefining the problem space (e.g. mobile has solved certain problems that HWD has not) as well as normative long-term goals (e.g. even if you solve those, those futures may still be undesirable).

While proponents of SCOT have conceptualized various stages of stabilization and closure (Bijker, 1995; Kline and Pinch, 1996; Pinch and Bijker, 1987; Rosen, 1993; Siles, 2011), the emergence and theoretical construct of a “pre-stabilized ideal” is a new analytical category that builds on our understanding of the mechanisms that work toward stabilization. Existing studies have mostly examined technologies (e.g. bicycles, plastics, cars) where in the interpretive flexibility of the artifact there was no prior “ideal” future vision of the technology to draw upon. In this case, there is a preexisting object that many people already wear (e.g. sunglasses) that functions as a pre-stabilized ideal for HWDs, in addition to science fiction visions of the pre-stabilized ideal that depict AR specifically.

The role of a pre-stabilized ideal varies depending on the actors’ deployment of it as a future. In this case, mobile advocates are deploying the future vision of AR sunglasses at an early stage of development, as (1) a set of assumptions about users/technology that creates an incredibly difficult bar to clear and (2) a warrant for rejecting all current manifestations and designs of HWDs. The pre-stabilized ideal functions as a barrier for HWD AR on the future technological level, the future adoption level, and the normative future level.

On the technological level, the pre-stabilized ideal of sunglasses magnifies the most difficult problems that HWDs have yet to solve (e.g. eye tracking, high-resolution displays) and introduces an even higher barrier. On the adoption level, this pre-stabilized ideal allows them to dismiss any incremental development in HWDs and elevate the aesthetic issue to the forefront, which is a unique example of how various RSG tactically redefine the problem space (Bijker, 1995). While the designers of Google Glass went to great lengths to limit the perceived weight of the device, ³ the sunglasses framing allowed mobile advocates to dismiss Glass as a viable HWD design because it is still too noticeable. Finally, in terms of normative visions of the future, the pre-stabilized ideal is used to critique HWDs and link those to dystopian futures that play on fears of overload/distraction and surreptitious private viewing. While much of the work exploring the relationship between science fiction and technology has looked at instances where it inspires real world development (Kirby, 2011; Miller and Bennett, 2008), this case problematizes that directional relationship between science fiction and technology by revealing how certain RSG are using science fiction as a pre-stabilized ideal to push against pragmatic developments to realize that vision.

The presence of a pre-stabilized ideal is not inherently negative, but this case reveals how it can be utilized this way by opponents. Once deployed, the question then becomes the degree to which RSG accept the frame of a pre-stabilized ideal. While some HWD companies have put forth intermediary designs that reject the frame (e.g. Glass), other HWD companies seem to implicitly agree with the pre-stabilized ideal and believe they are up to the challenge. An advantage of an ongoing mapping is to see how certain groups are deploying a particular idealized vision as a mechanism for stabilizing and how other groups are responding, which builds our understanding of how stabilization happens in the SCOT process (Bijker, 1995; Pinch and Bijker, 1987). This addresses a key criticism of SCOT, that it does not analyze technologies where there is serious disagreement (Winner, 1993), by identifying a key stabilization tactic that various sides are negotiating around.

Examining the relationship between futures and design can also help illuminate the role of power in these negotiations, as RSG on all sides bring material and rhetorical resources to persuade other actors toward a particular future vision. While mobile advocates have powerful manufacturing allies and infrastructure partnerships, HWD advocates attempt to cast doubts on the future directions these actors will take the technology. Companies like Seebright represent one way that transitioning to HWDs could happen by enrolling actors from both coalitions: not with HWD replacing mobile but as another display option integrated with a mobile device. This example addresses a key criticism of SCOT, that it draws rigid boundaries between RSG (Klein and Kleinman, 2002), by highlighting an instance where we can see overlap and movement between groups. While the contestation started out as two coalitions (mobile vs HWD), this ongoing mapping demonstrates how actors and RSG within these coalitions might be fluid, and could leverage their power to support certain hybrid designs. Some mobile advocates could “defect” and start using their devices to power HWD, to broaden their AR capabilities and capture a different market. Other possible hybrid designs might involve using the mobile device to control and provide inputs to a HWD, which would be one way of bridging the interaction problem for HWDs.

While a hybrid solution could enlist RSG from both sides, it would only stabilize certain problems while simultaneously creating new ones. Mobile-only advocates might argue that a solution like Seebright’s does not solve the aesthetic issues of HWDs and could limit AR use to situations where users are carrying both devices. HWD-only advocates who doubt the processing power of mobile devices would not concede that a mobile device could power AR and would argue that it narrows the potential user population for AR to a subset of smartphone users while introducing new compatibility and standards problems. The emergence of new designs demonstrates that AR is still in a state of interpretive flexibility but also how certain designs could bring about new configurations of RSG. In this case, the power of the actors and the infrastructure they control, which is often overlooked in retroactive accounts of SCOT (Klein and Kleinman, 2002; Russell, 1986), becomes both the motivation for a particular design and a critical factor in understanding which coalition ultimately succeeds by enrolling different RSG.

Conclusion

This case combines futures and SCOT to methodologically and empirically map how two coalition groups are actively negotiating the design and meaning of an emerging technology, which is fitting with Borup et al.’s (2006) call for studies that simultaneously looks into the future and looks at the future to understand the developments in the present. When presented with an emerging technology, the first step is to map the futures that are advanced and to identify the places where they conflict and the various ways that people are deploying them. Scholars can then utilize that framework to make sense of the hyperbole and obfuscation commonly surrounding an emerging technology to help illuminate and explain the subsequent design decisions made about the technology. Finally, the key is to see how stakeholders align themselves around certain futures and designs and bring their power and resources to bear to bring about a particular future.

There are difficulties to this approach, one being the uncertainty of where the stakeholders and the technology will go. Keeping up with rapidly changing developments and deciding how to understand them based on an emerging framework of futures require constant comparison, as well as reflexivity that one is not fitting a narrative onto the framework itself. Therefore, interviews are critical to supplementing observation, to understand the stated motivations for making certain decisions. Finally, the futures mapping is important to understand the debate and the macro level developments but not to catalog the specific accuracy of the claims. The more important factor is the valence, presence, and intensity of these futures, and how they are being deployed.

As AR continues to develop, this battle will continue as designers and stakeholders address new practices and emerging societal concerns while also distinguishing themselves against competing forms of the technology, competing designs, and competing developer platforms. This study attempts to understand these contestations and build our specific understanding of the development and implications of AR technologies and broadly develops methodological and theoretical lenses for studying new media technologies.