AdBlock's been around the internet for ages, but it only extends to the edges of your browser window. What if a device existed that could block logos and brand names from the world around you?
That's the idea behind BrandKiller, a project developed by four Philadelphia developers named Jonathan Dubin, Reed Rosenbluth, Tom Catullo, and Alex Crits-Christoph as part of as part of Penn's annual PennApps hackathon. Of course, it's not exactly seamless: It's actually a custom-built head-mounted display, the foursome explain on ChallengePost; thanks to the computer vision software OpenCV, their software that can recognize and blur a list of specific logos. "What if we lived in a world where consumers were blind to the excesses of corporate branding?," they ask.
Of course, it's more proof of concept than anything—no one, except maybe William Gibson's legendarily logo-averse heroine Cayce Pollard, is going to walk around with a faceputer to avoid logos. But the point here is that augmented reality tech, in the future, won't just be used to add advertising to our world, as many have feared it might be. It will also be more than capable of deleting or censoring certain it, too. The question, then, is actually whether the companies behind those logos would ever allow that to be legal. [ChallengePost; h/t BrandNew]