Imagine a world where the city's buildings talk to you, the pictures in a newspaper play videos and manga comics jump off the page to become interactive 3D animations.
Welcome to augmented reality, an enhanced version of your world that can be accessed through a smartphone or computer.
It sounds like the science fiction world of Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report but it may just be around the corner thanks to our love affair with smartphones.
These hand-held devices boast two key ingredients that make augmented reality possible: high-quality video cameras and enough computing power to rival a desktop machine.
As smartphones continue to saturate the mobile market, augmented reality will sound less like fiction and more like reality.
'Augmented reality is sophisticated video technology where you always need a camera, so it can be a phone camera or a webcam connected to your computer,' said Eberhard Schoneberg, the head of Hong Kong-based Artificial Life, which is developing augmented reality technology for a range of applications. 'It's like reality plus something.'