I often have the following disheartening experience: I am in the middle of a list of things I need to do, and at some point I get called away.
I then realize only later that I did not complete all the items on my to-do list. Alas, in some cases by then it might be too late to go back and do them.
Which leads me to one the more mundane but useful properties of future augmented reality: We will have the option to keep our to-do lists directly in our field of vision.
So if we are called away in the middle of doing a series of tasks, the queue of “tasks not yet done” doesn’t just disappear. Rather, it stays in a convenient visual location, so we can eventually bring our attention back around to it.
Sure, we could in principle do the same by jotting down notes-to-self on scraps of paper or entering them into a SmartPhone. But that would require an extra layer of focus and planning that most of us would never quite get round to.
I’m hopeful that a well designed heads-up reminder system just might do the trick. Imagine that — a cure for absentmindedness!