This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Mark Elliott
Bio: Researching a PhD in large-scale online collaboration
Area of Expertise: Pioneer/Originator
Topic: General, Overarching Remarks
Headline: All Reality Is Hyper-Reality
Nutshell: As GUIs become more interactive and eventually integrate with our physical bodies (think bionic ear), the distinctions between reality and virtual reality will be lost.
Vision:As anybody knows, more responsive, intuitive and "ergonomic" computer interfaces are a major driving force in the global computer market. In future years (10, 20, 50…?) options to interface directly with computers (the mind as the interface) will eventually become available. The impact of this, especially in combination with the internet (even as we know it today) and 3D collaborative environments (MUDs etc.) might blur the stark distinctions between real and virtual reality that we currently live with.
This possible eventuality has already been popularised in the dystopian film "The Matrix" and is quickly working its way into the mainstream’s psychology as "the" example of the dreaded future. But does it have to be this way? Isn’t it possible that the (seemingly inevitable) marriage of hardware and "wetware" will result in profound possibilities of group communion and collaboration?
At the very least it might end up somewhere in between – a world where reality is plastic and concrete, where the experience of mind/machine and mind/mind mergers are possible and where making distinctions between real and dream becomes a paradox (if it isn’t already).
Like the state of the world around us now, it is likely that this possible future will be the product of the present we are creating now. What do we use computers for? What are our lives’ preocupations? What is the ethical and value orientation of the world’s major regulatory bodies, organisations and nations (including the paradigms they support)?
Finding the answer to these questions in the moment and context in which we find ourselves is likely to shed light on the nature of the future reality we are currently creating for ourselves.
Date Submitted: March 8, 2005
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