Last week we had a group of 30 inspiring new media graduates come through the derooted studios on a tour (FallTour5) organized by Oddly Studios. One student, Nasir Mohamed later approached me on Twitter with the following question; “What are your views on augmented reality? Do you think it has a lot of potential?”

Simple enough of a question, and with no doubt one which enough people are asking. In reality I believe anything that would bring the technological vs human interaction closer together would have great potential within our society. Augmented reality is still in its primal stage and therefore is full of potential with proper direction and guidance.

It may be that augmented reality proves to be more of a gimmick than a lasting technological revolution, at least in the short term, but perhaps it will eventually become more like a sixth sense for us. Pranav Mistry from MIT’s Media Lab shows how the physical world and our natural gestures can interact with the world of data in such a way that AR would become part of our everyday lives without us having to hold our phones up awkwardly in front of us. Have a look at his astonishing TED talk:

Julian Oliver provides new and alluring approaches to augmented reality. Augmented reality means creating virtual ad-on’s to what is already there. Recently Oliver started working on new forms of utilizing public space that is already dense with advertisements. Just imagine seeing art all around Times Square instead of advertisements for sport shoes and soft drinks. Or imagine some one entering one of those advertisements for soft drinks and thus adding new message and meaning to what it was before. You could be the one who decides what you want to see or be invited by a – preferably famous – curator to look at his selection.

In a spectacular presentation on TEDxRotterdam Julian Oliver takes a different view on reality.

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is the architect of Bing Maps at Microsoft, building augmented reality into searchable maps. He’s also the co-creator of Photosynth, software that assembles static photos into a synergy of zoomable, navigatable spaces.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ background is as multidimensional as the visions he helps create. In the 1990s, he authored patents on both video compression and 3D visualization techniques, and in 2001, he made an influential computational discovery that cast doubt on Gutenberg’s role as the father of movable type.

He also created Seadragon (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), the visualization technology that gives Photosynth its amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or “fly” in for a (much) closer look. Simply put, it could utterly transform the way we experience digital images.

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position — and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.

As an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins has broadened our understanding of the genetic origin of our species; as a popular author, he has helped lay readers understand complex scientific concepts. He’s best-known for the ideas laid out in his landmark book The Selfish Gene and fleshed out in The Extended Phenotype: the rather radical notion that Darwinian selection happens not at the level of the individual, but at the level of our DNA. The implication: We evolved for only one purpose — to serve our genes.

Of perhaps equal importance is Dawkins’ concept of the meme, which he defines as a self-replicating unit of culture — an idea, a chain letter, a catchy tune, an urban legend — which is passed person-to-person, its longevity based on its ability to lodge in the brain and inspire transmission to others. Introduced in The Selfish Gene in 1976, the concept of memes has itself proven highly contagious, inspiring countless accounts and explanations of idea propagation in the information age.

In recent years, Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism, coining the word “bright” (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified. His controversial, confrontational 2002 TED talk was a seminal moment for the New Atheism, as was the publication of his 2006 book, The God Delusion, a bestselling critique of religion that championed atheism and promoted scientific principles over creationism and intelligent design.

“Dawkins … is a master of scientific exposition and synthesis. When it comes to his own specialty, evolutionary biology, there is none better.”

Jim Holt, The New York Times

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10