Did L. Frank Baum Predict Augmented Reality or Warn Us About Its Power? Lyman “L.” Frank Baum was the author of The Wizard of Oz, numerous other Oz installments, and scores of other books and story collections. He was also an amateur futurist, a writer who once remarked that “Imagination transforms the commonplace into the great and creates the new out of the old.” And, one-hundred and fifteen years ago, he predicted the rise of augmented reality. Did he know that the technology would be initially popularized by Pokémon GO? He did not. But what he envisioned in his novel The Master Key isn’t that far off — and may still be an accurate description of what is yet to come. With Pokémon GO, augmented reality apps have at last broken through to the mainstream. This breakthrough is occurring in parallel to the rise of gamified citizenship apps and big-data driven crowdsourced feedback loops, like those employed by Uber. Will these two technological tracks inevitably merge? Baum thought so.
Cover Unveiled for The End of Oz Book The cover has been unveiled for Danielle Paige’s forthcoming young adult novel, The End of Oz. This book will be the fourth and final installment of the Dorothy Must Die series. Here’s more from Epic Reads: “Welcome to the other side of the rainbow. Here there’s danger around every corner, and magic shoes won’t be able to save you.”
The Daily Ozmapolitan 