Future personal space

When everyone is wearing SmartGlasses, many things will change. One of those things may be the way we negotiate personal space.

Right now my personal space in the physical world pretty much ends with my body. I can reach out my arms to shake somebody’s hand, or to pick up an object, but generally speaking, that’s about it.

Of course I could choose to pick up an object and throw it at you. But that would generally be an example of my invading your personal space.

But when everyone is wearing SmartGlasses, we will each likely have a visible and sometimes audible cloud of information hovering around us. Objects in the world will also have such clouds of information, depending on their purpose and on our relationship with them.

Where will these clouds of information go? Will they hover between us, over our heads, or float around our hands and fingers?

Whatever the scenario that ends up being widely adopted, the result will be a realignment of physical space. Much like the daemons in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the virtual extensions of our physical selves will become an intrinsic part of our physical presence for one another.

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