Layers of reality.
Within the next 10 years we will be able to buy contact lenses with the ability to project additional images onto our eyes. The technology is in development and is not too far off. Initially it will provide a screen for us to view information much like we use an iPhone or Blackberry, but there is the potential for it to do much more than this. Remember The Terminator who could access information on a subject just by looking at them? Item recognition would allow us to gain information about something or someone in an instant, and this is perhaps only 20 years away.
It would also be entirely possible to overlay new realities onto the real world. For example: games overlaid onto a mundane street view. Much like listening to music on the commute, contact lenses with built-in screens could make vision of the world more interesting. But at what point would we confuse the real world for a game? What would happen if we were playing a violent video game; is it possible to commit a crime unknowingly, thinking that you were only in a game? Where would the line be drawn in allowing what information is augmented in public?
Another example: If combined with impulses that slowed down or sped up our perception of time, an augmented reality could make repetitive tasks appear skilled. Working on a production line could be overlaid with a ski or dance game, timing jumps or moves for instance. Real life meetings could be overlaid with fantastical characters; presentations, with commanding troops. What if the world that we lived in and the work that we did was made more interesting because our perception of it was altered?
Essentially this idea is halfway towards to the Matrix world of living in a perpetual sleep and experiencing an augmented life solely through your mind. No one would want that, but what if you were paralysed or confined to a hospital bed? Thinking that you were living a normal life or playing an everlasting game may be more comforting than the frustration of being conscious of your inabilities.
