Pretty much our entire collective cultural experience of the digital world exists within rectangles. We spend much of our day looking into the little rectangular screens of smart phones or at the somewhat larger rectangular screens of the computers on our desks and in our laps.
When the XR singularity occurs, millions of people will be able to start experiencing the digital world all around them. Those rectangles will no longer be necessary.
Will we continue to carry over the conventions of the early digital age, with all of the digital information in the space around us getting crammed into rectangles because that’s what people are used to? Or will we be able to break free?
I am reminded of early automobiles. Early cars were steered by controls very much like those on a horse and buggy.
Eventually that convention fell away, and the modern steering wheel evolved to take its place. In the coming age of wearables, I wonder what will eventually take the place of the rectangle.