The New Reality
The tale below was originally written in the form of a foreword to Mike Pell’s first book, Envisioning Holograms, titled “A Postcard from the Bleeding Edge.” On the eve of publication of Mike’s new breakthrough book, The Age of Smart Information, I’m reminded of how the ideas in here are still so resonant for me — my north star as I continue to pursue my own journey in immersive computing.
In the summer of 1977, I was one of millions of American nerd boys who flocked to see Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Of its many iconic scenes, one that really stuck with me was the scene where Princess Leia delivered Obi-Wan Kenobi a message of vital importance to the resistance – via a tabletop video hologram. Though George Lucas was telling a story that happened long ago and far, far away to other people, he was really envisioning our future. And as it turned out, it wouldn’t take that long to become a reality.
Looking back, I think that scene from Star Wars is in no small way responsible for drawing me to immersive computer interfaces. I eventually became a professional software programmer, working on random boring stuff for a few years, but at every job I would find excuses to work on 3D graphics. 3D charts rendered to inkjet printers. Real-time wireframe models to visualize data on workstation computers. Nothing fancy back then; the tech to make the really cool stuff wouldn’t land on laptops for another decade, and mobile phones for another decade after that. All this 3D tinkering eventually led me to a fellow named Mark Pesce, and an absurdly ambitious project to build the Metaverse: virtual people in 3D-rendered environments, communicating in real time, transcending time and space. That project, which came to be known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language, or VRML, was ultimately too early by twenty years.
Forty years have gone by since the premiere of Star Wars, and computers have come a long way. We appear to be at the cusp of a next great wave of breakthroughs, including XR, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. Combined with genetic engineering and advances in materials science, the possibilities are magical and limitless, and without a doubt will shape the next several decades of human endeavor.
3D interface is no longer a theoretical possibility; it’s the new reality. And with all this new potential comes the need for a new approach to design. To create XR applications, the software designer must transform, becoming parts and alternately architect, interior designer, information designer, storyteller, filmmaker, game designer, and social engineer. But most importantly, we need to learn to envision.
Can you envision what a 3D Wikipedia will be like? How 3D maps, with elevation and physical features, operate when displayed as holograms on your tabletop? Speaking with 3D video holograms of your loved ones in some future version of FaceTime? Or a 3D PowerPoint, with persuasive presentation graphics rendered all around you?
You can? That’s great! But sorry; pretty much anybody can do that. Now, really challenge yourself: for any of these scenarios, imagine where and when they are used, by whom, and for exactly what. Go even further: how will these experiences not just be cool, more facile and more intuitive, but really change our lives? I don’t think that, a decade ago, most of us imagined the extent to which a phone-turned-computer would upend the world the way it has. I think we could have predicted Yelp. Maybe even Tinder. But Uber? AirBnB? Snapchat?
What are the holographic analogs to those wildly disruptive, life-changing applications? And how will we make them? How will we design and build the interfaces that save the planet, monitor and control automation, take us into outer space, and store and present the world’s information? Holograms, and more broadly, XR, will without a doubt be an integral part of any future civilization, in many more ways that George Lucas ever dreamed of.
Envision that.
