Ideas to boost tourism

From William Gibson’s Spook Country to “Pokémon Go,” and mixed reality

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to show how tourism can be promoted with advanced technology: virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. Such a series of technological application to tourism promotion is said to be attributed to William Gibson, acclaimed as a pioneer of cyberpunk, a subgenre of S.F. First, this research introduces the intriguing idea of locative art described in Gibson’s work, Spook Country (2007). Locative art is art virtually created on the street or in a room, by accessing the GPA coordinates. Then, the focus is upon on how such an idea is being used to open a new era in the form of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Some cities, such as Bibai City, Hokkaido, and Sekigahara Town, Gifu, have already created their own contents in the form of VR and AR with the aim of their tourism promotion. Finally, through showing that mixed reality (MR) enables you to work with your co-workers who join you in a holographic representation, this research highlights MR has a great potential to promote tourism: MR, along with AI technologies, will make the conversation between a tourist and a holographic historical figure possible.