Imagined Realities: A Human Odyssey
What’s the most fundamental feature that sets humans apart from other creatures in the animal kingdom?
It’s not language; animals have sophisticated communication methods. It’s not art-making. It’s not even the ability to dream. For me, what makes humans distinct from other species is our ability to imagine alternative realities and then transmit those imagined worlds to others. Sharing our constructed realities is a fundamental manifestation of our human expression, from revealing hopes and dreams with a close friend to immersing oneself in a novel or a game.
Some of our first imagined realities were shared via cave painting, storytelling, and oral traditions. Humans reconstructed the past, invariably infusing recollections with imagination, and then passed on those tales. Humans also explored the future in storytelling, art, and dreams, allowing our early ancestors — whether they realized it or not — to prepare for a hunt, raid or famine. The ability to convey ideas, expand our knowledge base, and improve our tools has helped us evolve not only biologically but also culturally.
With this thread of humanity’s unique gift, I believe our journey through history and the future will be understood through the framework of three fundamental transformations. First, our ability to transmit imagined realities to other humans using transactions such as verbal, visual, and auditory cues. Second, our invention of writing to record imagined realities and pass them on through time and space. Third, the arrival of computing — a development that has allowed us to simulate our imagined realities and will soon let us live inside them. This is the extraordinary age we are still experiencing.
The Arrival of Language
Whether humans invented or gained language, it is universally accepted that language is intertwined with the advancement of technology, civilization, and culture. Language affords us the ability to communicate not only what we observe to exist but also what we think might exist, should exist or could exist. As Yuval Noah Harari explains in his book Sapiens, many animals communicate information about things that exist. Conversely, he writes, “The real secret of success of our species is that we alone can talk about things that don’t exist at all anywhere except in our own imaginations, in the stories that we invented.”
Harari argues that without shared imagined realities, humans would never be able to operate within societies or cooperate on a global level. In humanity’s infancy, communication was transmitted in person through oral and body language as well as song and dance. These social tools were enough to give us the advantage over other primates and predators, helping us ascend higher on the food chain and — eventually — migrate and populate the world.
Recorded Words and Images
Art-making and the desire to communicate within groups pre-date humanity. Take cave paintings, for example, which preceded writing by around 30,000 years. Whether cave paintings were inspired by dreams or created for logistical purposes, they are still visual depictions — externalized expressions of internalized thoughts. The oldest known figurative cave paintings (showing recognizable depictions from life) were created by Neanderthals approximately 35,000 years ago in the Altamira Cave in present-day Spain. Writing was invented independently by at least two civilizations in Mesopotamia (3500 BC) and Mesoamerica (300 BC) and spread across human society. Before that, symbols and images were used to record and share information.
Written language transformed communication, opening new avenues of expression. With writing, humans could pass on ideas not only to people in their immediate vicinity, but it allowed for the dissemination of data and imagined realities into the future and across distances. This scaled our ability to imagine a world together as a single global community, albeit one with many fissures and internal conflicts. Nevertheless, the development of science and technology was undoubtedly fueled by the powerful medium of writing. Written language helped set the stage for the next fundamental transformation.
Computers and Simulation Pave the Way to Spatial Mediums
Writing and research helped to actualize the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution, and discovery of electricity, but the next great evolutionary step in the human journey was the creation of computers. Computers are tools utilized not only to store information and convey it but to re-imagine alternate realities. Using computers, we can relay ideas and worlds created in our minds, and from 2D materials like paper, into digital realms that allow us to visualize them via simulations.
The simulation has been an integral feature of the third transformation; prior to this, written words and pictures were mere records of imagined realms. Computer simulations take the concept further by introducing real-time interaction within imagined worlds.
Interaction is a critical element in the third revolution. The first generation of computers abstracted simulations; users were forced to consume data via flat screens. Eventually, with a mouse and keyboard, we gained the ability to interface with the data inside. Consuming the information through a barrier we call a screen is useful, but it is analogous to peering through a window to see a digital imagined universe on the other side. The Internet has been an incredibly important expansion and democratization of information, but it too has still been kept behind the proverbial window. Touchscreens take us further toward interactivity but still keep the glass partition in place.
Immersive computing platforms such as virtual reality and augmented reality will fundamentally advance our progress through the technology journey. No longer are we bound to consume the simulations from behind screens — we’re able to enter those worlds physically and interact in the same way that operates within reality itself. Why is this so important? As humans, we draw meaning from our interactions with the physical and the natural world as well as computer simulations and digital spheres. But window interactions, no matter how high-resolution, are not natural elements of our biology. Thus, we don’t fully believe them.
VR and AR allow us to actually live within imagined spaces. As these emerging technologies continue to improve, our bodies and minds will live within constructed worlds and derive meaning and purpose as intuitively as we do in the “natural world.” The body and mind will adapt to treat our alternate dimensions as cogently as reality itself.
Spatial Computing — A Destination Medium?
I believe that the full emergence of spatial computing (as VR and AR are increasingly known) will be the most important technological revolution in the story of humanity. All other technological milestones, from cuneiform to space travel, have been stepping stones for this eventuality.
The invention of language, communication through written words, the development of scientific methodologies, the discovery and domination of electricity, and the development of manufacturing methods — all of these remarkable developments have led to the assembly and actualization of computers. That has been the goal. Now computers are advanced enough that they can store and simulate elaborately detailed worlds. When those digital realms become livable, we will no longer be bound by the world in which we were born; we will have access to infinite universes, initially of our own creation but later of their own evolution.
Digital spaces will eventually start to learn and evolve on their own, powered by artificial intelligence. They will be governed by their own physics and laws and by their own version of survival of the fittest. There’s no telling what will happen to our bodies and minds once such technological mediums become mainstream. What is critically important today is ensuring that the transitions between realities are as smooth as possible and that the interfaces created for interaction with digital spaces are as biologically natural as possible. This will make digital to physical transitions more seamless, allowing us to enter and exit virtual realms with minimal cognitive load. The lack of friction between worlds will prevent us from getting stuck. Rather than wake up in The Matrix, where our bodies are useless and only our minds inhabit a virtual world, we should strive to create a future where spatial computing enrichens our biological potential with super content, creativity, and superpower. Using augmented reality, we can enhance our current spaces by layering digital content over physical objects. Using virtual reality, we can share spaces and worlds that are limited only by our imagination.
I believe VR and AR will fundamentally transform every industry and society, beyond measure. Language and computing technologies have led us to this extraordinary moment in the human journey. Are you ready to take the next step?
