Ignite is a world-wide series of fast-paced talks that focus on just about everything. Cities all around the world wrangle up participants to speak for 5 minutes at a time about a topic they are passionate about, and each gathers a unique group of speakers.

In San Francisco, Ignite speakers tend to be of a techy/geeky persuasion, and this was the status quo Monday at the most recent gathering. You know how we know it was geeky? Layar’s own Gene Becker was one of the speakers, as he spread the good word about augmented reality.

The focus of Gene’s talk was “Hijacking the Here and Now: Adventures in Augmented Reality,” which featured examples of engaging augmented reality content. Here’s how Gene describes the talk in his own words:

“Augmented reality is all about webcam marketing gimmicks and filling the world with geotagged logos, right? Nope, wrong. Instead, we’re learning that the natural mode of expression for AR, is enabling people to *hack time and space*. In 5 minutes, I’ll show you ~20 solid examples of how artists, journalists, historians and citizen activists are using augmented reality to hijack the here and now.”

Videos of the Ignite speeches should be viewable online in a short amount of time, but we thought we’d help give you a head start in case you missed his talk. Embedded below are the slides from Gene’s talk, so have a look and see how augmented reality is helping us hijack our everyday lives.