We tend to think of virtual and augmented realities in terms of the power we can get by seeing things that are not really there. In the VR community there has been lots of buzz about all the exotic new objects, creatures and worlds we will soon be able to interact with.<\/p>\n
Yet much of the power of our technologically enabled world comes from things we do not see — and that we do not wish to see: The electrical wires in the walls of our houses, the air conditioning ducts running between floors in our office buildings, the miles and miles of plumbing that allow us to magically turn on a kitchen tap and get running water.<\/p>\n
We have come to expect so many things to be there for us: The gasoline in our service stations, the package from Amazon, the magazine on the rack at our local newsstand. For the most part the means of delivery for these things remain hidden from our sight.<\/p>\n
Our everyday lives in the future, after we have transitioned to living in a visually virtualized world, will contain many more such invisible mechanisms. We won’t think about those mechanisms because we won’t ever see them, even if they are right there in the room with us.<\/p>\n
Of course, anybody looking around that room with their naked eyes would see all sorts of odd machines running about, busily creating the world that most people will take for granted: The objects that float through the air into your hand when you gesture for them, the food that mysteriously materializes when you are hungry, and vanishes again when you no longer want it.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, eventually it will probably become illegal for unauthorized individuals to walk around seeing the world with their naked eyes. Most people will probably wonder why anybody would ever want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We tend to think of virtual and augmented realities in terms of the power we can get by seeing things that are not really there. In the VR community there has been lots of buzz about all the exotic new objects, creatures and worlds we will soon be able to interact with. Yet much of … Continue reading “Not seeing things”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17218,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17217\/revisions\/17218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}