The author provides a model of eight “realms” of experience, that begin with the tangible real-world experience, consider how technology enables us to depart from real environments, physical objects, and linear time to overcome some of the limitations of real-world experience. It’s a different way of considering “waht can technology do for me” that is a bit more structured than the daydreaming approach to physical reality. A brief overview of this model follows:
1. Reality (actual time, space, and matter)
Reality is the real of physical spaces and objects and linear time, and is the space with which people are most familiar because it is where they live and have the majority of their experiences. Examples are numerous: go for a walk in the park, leaving your gadgets behind, and you are immersed in a real experience.
2. Mirrored Virtuality (virtual space, actual time and matter)
Mirrored virtuality represents actual time and matter in a virtual space. Consider the experience of watching a live sporting event on television: real people acting in real time, but the space in which you watch them (the television screen) is a virtual environment – you are not at the stadium watching the actual athletes, but see exactly what is happening through a device.
3. Augmented Reality (virtual matter, actual time and space)
Augmented reality layers virtual elements over a real environment in linear time. The purest example would be a cell phone application that enables you to view your actual environment, with an overlay of data: point it at a person, and see their name pop up beneath their face, with a link to view various details about them.
4. Warped Reality (virtual time, actual space and matter)
Warped reality depicts actual environments and things, but allows the user to play with the timeline. A good example of this might be online video, where you can play it in real time or slow motion, skip back and forward in the timeline, watch the sequence out of its normal order.
5. Augmented Virtuality (actual space, virtual time and matter)
Augmented virtuality depicts actual spaces, but virtual time and matter. Take the example of an application that demonstrates the construction of a building. The lot on which it will eventually stand is an actual space, but the depiction of the building that will someday be there is a virtual object that is depicted outside of linear time (in the future).
6. Physical Virtuality (actual matter, virtual time and space)
Physical virtuality depicts real objects in imaginary environments. An example might be an application used by a realtor to depict how your current furnishings would look in a home that has not yet been built.
7. Alternate Reality (actual time, virtual space and matter)
Alternate reality relies on a linear experience in a virtual environment filled with virtual things. Most video games offer a form of alternate reality, in which the only aspect that is locked to the real world is that your character progresses through a linear plot or progression.
8. Virtuality (virtual time, space, and matter)
Virtuality divorces itself from real life experience altogether: imaginary objects in an unreal setting that do not obey linear time. It’s difficult to describe a truly virtual experience – a depiction of a dream-like state in which objects and places are unreal and there is no logic to the sequence of events.
Nothing is Completely Real or Completely Virtual
My main problem with the examples, the book, and the theory in general is that it creates a false dichotomy between “real” and “virtual” time, space, and matter: neither of these extremes is ever fully realized.
What is depicted in the virtual extremes of time, space, and matter are often representations of reality: a completely imaginary “alien word” contains components taken from reality – the environment is a pastiche of elements from the real world: the rocks may be green, but the rocks are based on what we understand to be “a rock” based on our real experience.
What is experienced in the real world, restricted by time, space, and matter, is created by imagination. The experience of the user is all in the mind of the user: give any child a stick and a stack of cardboard boxes, and he becomes a knight in a castle fighting an imaginary dragon. This sense fades in adults, but is still present: who reads a book projects himself into an imaginary space and time.
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In spite of the shortcomings and the blurred lines of theory, my sense is the book remains a good read, and provides some structure for brainstorming digital value: how could the experience of shopping for tires be improved if we removed the need to travel to a physical location (space), look at a limited selection of options in inventory (matter), and do so during store hours (time)?
If you consider escaping the constraints of the real world in one or two dimensions, a flood of ideas come to mind – more than if you simply asked the vague question “how could tire shopping be better?” So ultimately, it’s worth applying a theoretical model that may not be theoretically perfect.
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