New Version: Polymorphic Reality - Towards a Smoothly Connected Subjective Metaverse
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TL;DR:
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Human Communication can be understood as a partial sharing and collaborative editing of subjective reality.
- Various forms of communication, such as face-to-face conversations, letters, chats, Slack, Zoom, Nico Nico Douga, Google Docs, VRChat, Cluster, etc., can be understood within this framework.
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There are various elements of shared reality.
- Sensations, perceptions, cognition, and other layers of elements can exist.
- Concrete examples include:
- Face-to-face conversations:
- Sharing the surrounding space.
- Collaborative editing of the space by overlapping voices or using body movements.
- Recognizing the space from sensory data, such as vision, and sharing it.
- Movie theaters:
- Shutting out visual and auditory information other than the movie and sharing the visual and auditory experience with everyone.
- Unless someone suddenly shouts in the theater, collaborative editing of the shared reality cannot be done.
- Slack:
- Sharing a reality called a channel and collaborating by writing messages there.
- Google Docs:
- Sharing the reality of a document page and collaborating on it.
- Face-to-face conversations:
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I think this Subjective Perception of Reality is similar to the concept of Phenomenology.
- In the context of Phenomenology/Phenomenological Sociology, it can be referred to as the inter-subjectivity of reality.
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The way communication is mediated by computers has been developing.
- Email, Slack, Zoom, Metaverse, VRChat, Cluster, etc.
- Through Window Technology, various information can be exchanged.
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In other words, the engineering of “the way of communication = the way of sharing reality” has become easier.
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This raises the question of “what kind of communication should we aim for?”
- It can also be rephrased as “what kind of subjective reality sharing should we aim for?”
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One possible direction is to increase the “degree of reality sharing.”
- Creating a metaverse that is indistinguishable from reality by creating the ultimate VR device, for example.
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However, I want to say that this is a narrow-minded view trapped in the traditional concept of “objective reality.”
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We should aim not only to increase the degree of reality sharing but also to have more control over the degree.
- i.e., We should pursue not only means to increase the degree of reality sharing but also means to decrease it.
- Each element should be able to increase or decrease the degree of sharing.
- We should move away from the binary thinking of either completely sharing or not sharing at all and instead view it as a more continuous spectrum.
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- In the past, the world was like the one on the left, a binary world of either “completely shared” or “not shared at all.”
- What I want to express on this page is a worldview like the one on the right.
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- i.e., We should pursue not only means to increase the degree of reality sharing but also means to decrease it.
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I want to call this “smooth sharing of subjective reality.”
- Inspired by Smooth Society and Its Enemies.
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🍛 Smooth sharing of “dining experience”
- Situation:
- Suppose there is a “metaverse where you can eat.”
- A wants to eat pizza, but B wants Chinese food.
- A and B want to go out for a meal together.
- In this case:
- If it appears to A that they are “sharing pizza together” and to B that they are “sharing Chinese food together,” both of them will be happy.
- They are not sharing the element of “what they are eating” in reality.
- However, they are sharing the experience of “sharing a meal together”!
- Situation:
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💬 Smooth sharing of “conversation content”
- Situation:
- Suppose two people are having a conversation.
- A tends to use the adjective X frequently, but B is not comfortable with that expression.
- In this case:
- If A can filter or replace the word X before it reaches B, both of them will be happy.
- I think it is possible to implement such a feature in chat or Zoom.- Smooth sharing of “space”
- Situation:
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Here, “space” refers to the concept of space in human perception (including virtual spaces like Virtual Reality and platforms like Zoom and spatial.chat).
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Smooth sharing of “space” is similar to the concept of Mixed Reality (MR).
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The following diagram of “MR” represents the smooth sharing between “virtual space” and “physical space”:
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This idea can be extended to the smooth sharing between “virtual space A” and “virtual space B”.
- For example, in a VR experience, both people can see each other’s bodies, but each person can see the background scenery they want to see.
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Smooth sharing of “time”
- It becomes more complex, but this specific example is currently my favorite (blu3mo)(blu3mo)(blu3mo)
- The title “Communication of Virtual Time” mentioned above refers to the binary concept of most current communication: “synchronous = completely shared time” and “asynchronous = no shared time”.
- I believe there is a continuous spectrum between these two extremes that can be explored.
- Related pages on Pseudo-Synchronization, Elastic Synchronization, and Delusion of a Virtual Timeline can be found on the page Exploration of Virtual Time (blu3mo)(blu3mo)(blu3mo).
- One specific application I am considering is ParallelTalk, which is described in Proposal for Non-Turn-Based Communication with Voice.
- It becomes more complex, but this specific example is currently my favorite (blu3mo)(blu3mo)(blu3mo)
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Q. Is this a “dystopia”?
- A. It depends on the definition, but I personally think a world where smooth sharing is possible is better than a world where it is not possible.
- (Based on the belief that Having Many Options is Justice)
- In a world with low freedom of control over the degree of “reality sharing”:
- There are only two choices: strongly share everything or not share anything at all.
- This results in the so-called Filter Bubble Phenomenon.
- In a world with high freedom of control over the degree of “reality sharing”:
- It is possible to smoothly control the degree of sharing and only share the parts that one wants to share.
- I believe this leads to a world where people can connect with each other more easily.
- As a result, connections between people may increase, although that is not the main objective.
- If we are discussing Ethics, it may be better to talk about it in a more specific context.
- A. It depends on the definition, but I personally think a world where smooth sharing is possible is better than a world where it is not possible.
That’s the abstract, but it became too long.
The following is the main text.
(Being written as of January 22, 2023)
0. About the model of communication
- There is a model that views communication as the transmission of signals between people.
- When people live in the same world and share signals on that basis,
- However, this model assumes an objective reality.
- I want to capture the subjective experience that is shared during communication, based solely on subjectivity.
- (This operation is called Transcendental Reduction in Phenomenology).
- From this perspective, communication can be seen as the co-editing of subjective realities during that shared experience.
- The “reality” that is shared can take various forms of experiences.
- There can be sharing of elements from various layers such as sensation, perception, and cognition.
- Concrete examples include:
- Face-to-face conversation
- Sharing the space around oneself.
- Co-editing that space by overlaying voices and using one’s body to edit “that” space.
- Recognizing the space from sensory data like vision and sharing it.
- Slack
- Sharing the reality of a channel and co-editing it by writing messages there.
- Google Docs
- Sharing the reality of a document page and co-editing it.
- Face-to-face conversation
- Related: Window Technology
- In the context of Phenomenology/Phenomenological Sociology, this is a reality with Inter-subjectivity.
Communication media are evolving through computers.- Computers have evolved as interfaces through which humans interact with reality.
- Considering the evolution from telephones to online meetings like Zoom to concepts like the Metaverse, computers are evolving towards a direction where reality is shared more completely.
- For example, in the layers of sensation and perception, there are concrete examples such as:
- Input devices:
- Keyboard -> GUI mouse -> Full tracking
- Output devices:
- Visual: Black and white TV -> Display -> VRHMD
- Auditory: Speaker -> Earphones/Headphones -> Wireless with noise cancellation
- Input devices:
- Similarly, the same can be said for more abstract layers.
- Humans are interacting with the world through software on computers.
- Examples include Zoom, Twitter, Slack, online news, etc.
- These are what is known as Computer Mediated Communication.
The ideal form of “good” communication is not complete reality sharing, but rather “loose reality sharing”.
- “Complete reality sharing”: A state where reality is shared 100%.
- For example, if a “metaverse” is created that is indistinguishable from traditional reality, it can be said to completely share reality.
- However,
- “Loose reality sharing”
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- It can also be seen as the process of increasing the abstraction level of the “shared reality”.
Concrete Example 1: Partial language sharing through language abstraction and machine translation.
- For example, automatic translation in Zoom Webinars.
- Although the actual audio reality is not shared, the meaning of words is shared at a more abstract level.
Concrete Example 2: Partial time sharing through time abstraction and virtual time experiences.
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“Time” can also be seen as part of the elements of experience.
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There are two elements:
- Where it is positioned in physical time.
- (Assuming there is no relativity in physics)
- This is the element of synchronicity.
- The temporal order and duration of the experience.
- Where it is positioned in physical time.
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WIP
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Git vs Google Docs