It’s the technology, in one application, that displays the down and yardage on your television display as if it is painted on the field. It’s also the technology that will enable you view a street scene through your iPhone camera and see posted restaurant reviews/ratings for all the eating establishments on that particular city street. Augmented reality is pretty exciting stuff.

And that’s just the beginning, it appears. There is work in progress to apply this technology to a wide range of life experiences, media, and services. It could be very exciting.

It’s name — Augmented Reality — also, in my view, begs some larger issues. Before we embark on augmenting the reality around us, there would seem to be a screaming need to improve our very grasp of the reality around us. One of the pitfalls of emerging technology is that it often gets out ahead of our human capacities. This is not an argument to slow down, or even limit, technology. It’s perhaps the clarion call to advance more rapidly and thoroughly our human capacities. Augmented reality challenges us to be better at reality itself.

If you’ve tried to visit this blog in the past weeks, you’ve either found it unreachable or without new content. An explanation is in order.

The Vox Blog was infected with a vicious automated virus/worm that perplexed even my loyal and diligent technical wizard. H1N1 notwithstanding, this was a tough one to get past. The virus kept taking down the site. Currently, you’ll see past blog postings but no comments, and no accurate dating for the postings. We’re working on it.

It’s maddening that I’ve been a victim of a faceless vandalism, and now an expensive remedy. There are probably numerous lessons about the nature of our digitally connected world, and I’ve not begun to sort all of them.

However, it seems even more important to not back away from the opportunity to speak and write and engage ideas. So I won’t.