The future would be a lot better off if all of us – interaction designers, architects, technologists, journalists – would agree never to use the phrase “augmented reality” ever again. Few two-word combinations make me more uncomfortable – each time I hear it I squirm in my seat, holding back the desire to inform others against their will.

A short thought experiment: you have a device that, when you look through it, makes the sign on a restaurant you are looking for appear to flash on and off, to help you recognize it walking by. Is this augmented reality? Ok, you have another device – this one actually triggers a switch in the building itself, so that the sign lights actually do flash on and off, when you walk past. Also augmented reality? OK, a third device, which is actually just a friend with a phone, calls the restaurant, describes what you’re wearing, and somebody sits by the window, and when they see you run to the switch and – you guessed it – flash the sign lights on and off.

Augmented reality is often described as a layering of information on top of what we normally perceive. This draws an entirely unnecessary distinction between data and physical space. Aren’t street signs technically augmenting your knowledge of the city? The fact that you don’t need a special phone to decode them doesn’t mean they don’t serve essentially the same purpose as a GPS. Your brain is already a fantastic device for making connections between places and data, not to mention pulling data directly out of context. The complex interaction between people, site, and data already has a fantastic name – reality.

We’re putting blinders on our (augmented) vision by committing ourselves to this idea. As long as people keep talking about augmented reality, research and thinking about wayfinding, interaction, and mobile computing is going to unnecessarily complicated by ideas of visual layering, holograms, and funny headsets that nobody in their right mind is going to wear out of doors (particularly when it is raining). In the book “Makers” by Cory Doctorow, the protagonists invent a device, shaped like a garden gnome, that uses gait-recognition to identify certain people walking past and give them a simple message- “don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning,” perhaps. There you go- your reality has been augmented. No gps, 4g, or silly glasses required.

It seems obvious to me that as our interaction with data becomes more sophisticated, the interface is more likely to recede than present itself. Auditory or even tactile cues are more efficient, subtle, and robust than anything that needs. Even tech that does show a picture is more likely to use the wall next to you (lasers, projectors) than some complicated extra piece of headwear. And finally, if technology is getting smarter, isn’t it more likely that it can be left alone for longer periods of time, and we’ll be spending less time interacting with it?

Once you replace this idea of augmentation with the observation that reality is simply getting smarter, faster, and more complex, it’s much easier to see where things are going and what we might improve. Let’s hear it for reality. There is nothing more, no matter what we add.