The HyperEnvironment vision of Sportscope, 13 years later

For my Masters project in 1995, I worked on a project called Sportscope. The goal was to work on the vision for something that was technologically about 5 years out.

The basic concept was a device that could be rented at the ballpark and used to get additional data on the players, see highlights, and even order food to be brought to your seat. The core ID revolved around what we called a "hyper-environment". At the time we envisioned electronic tags (like a longer-range RFID) on items in the environment that could be "clicked" on which would them provide more information. While our implementation was in the ballpark, we envisioned other uses, such as providing tourists with information on sites, or as real estate shoppers driving around and looking at properties for sale.

Fast forward to this week. TonchiDot appears to be doing the same thing. But it's not clear they actually have viable technology, as all of the hard questions asked by panelists at the conference were answered with flip sound bites. With all the technologies available today (GPS, cell tower triangulation, bluetooth, WiFi, smartphones...) it seems inevitable that this will happen soon.