My name is Duncan Cragg and I’m a future computing researcher working on the “Reality Computer” and its “Reality Network”.
A Reality Computer is a radically novel device that doesn’t run Microsoft Windows or Google Android.
Instead, it runs a completely new kind of operating system (a “Reality OS”), one that dispenses with apps (application programs) entirely, along with their backing services online.
The Reality Network
In the Reality Computer’s operating system, all of our messages, posts, photos, articles, calendar events, tasks and documents are simply thrown together within a single, global, shared 3D virtual universe called The Reality Network.
The Reality Network is created by all Reality Computers working together.
All of our digital property is accessed within this universe; all of our digital objects are now "out in the open" there, alongside one another:
But it’s not just our normal 2D stuff that we can access in this world. Now, of course, there’s a need for 3D room and furniture building materials. Further, all of our smarthome devices can have virtual representations: 3D lights and thermostats, etc. And of course, 3D avatars so we can also meet each other there.
The Reality Network can deliver a very natural and intuitive experience of computers and of our digital property:
Instead of a gallery app, you’ll just go to your gallery with photos pinned to the walls.
Instead of sharing a photo online, you just invite people in to the gallery.
Instead of WhatsApp, you can just chat; in the gallery maybe.
You don't need an email app when you can just hand someone a message you wrote for them, or leave it in their virtual letterbox.
Instead of a Facebook group you can have a virtual meeting place, with several noticeboards on the walls for pinning ongoing discussions and relevant media.
Mixing and mashing
In this collaborative universe, all of our digital objects can be pinned, wired, linked, shared, sequenced and collected together in any way we like. You can mix and mash any digital object with any other:
I can meet you in your virtual gallery room for a chat, then get your digital contact card and a photo, then go home to pin them both up together on my calendar on the wall to remind me of our next meeting.
I can make notes about the photo and clip that object to the photo, then write a message to you and go back and pin it up on the message board in your gallery.
You can make a dashboard, pinning three to-dos, one contact, and two photos on it, then just pin that to the 3D virtual kitchen wall
You can have many calendars, and any object with a date can be dropped into one
You can have many maps, and any object with a location can be dropped onto one
In the illustration below, there’s a room which could be a space shared between a number of people. There are 2D objects attached to the walls. Some objects have been pulled out aside, to float in front of everyone, or have been scattered on the floor. At the left of the screen is a place to collect world objects for use in any further context:
Reality Computing is “Spatial Computing but without any apps, just all of our stuff pinned around us”.
Just like physical reality
In the Reality Net, we can gather in virtual spaces and work together on digital stuff all around us, in the same way that we would in our everyday 3D physical reality!
With all our digital objects thrown into the same shared 3D space, we can interact with them and work with them in a much more natural way. By adding the third dimension everything becomes intuitive. Since humans evolved in a fully social, fully 3D world, this virtual universe can be a seamless extension to our physical reality.
In our physical reality we organise ourselves and our stuff instinctively within the 3D space. We know which room to look in for any given item, everything is (usually!) where we left it and can be stacked, placed, pinned and dropped in meaningful ways. People aren’t just contacts and photos, they have presence and body language. It's how we, how our minds, evolved.
For the first time, in the Reality Network manifest by our Reality Computers, we can also interact with our digital objects and with each other in this way. The Reality Net presents the digital universe alongside the physical universe, allowing all of our 2D digital objects to feel tangibly real and part of our natural experience … especially when seen through Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality headsets or glasses!
The future merge of the physical and digital
We will be increasingly experiencing the digital realm through Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR, VR) and Spatial Computing. I want to rebuild the underlying technology ready for such a future. A future when AR glasses, driven by miniature PCs, replace smartphones in our pockets. A future where we can experience the merging of the physical with the digital without apps getting in the way!
Everything is live and interactive
Every object in the Reality Net is live and interactive. Just like in physical reality, objects have predictable appearance and behave and interact consistently and intuitively. All paragraph, event, media and collection objects look and feel the same in any context.
Of course, we ourselves are also present, live and interactive, as avatars.
Objects can be wired or pinned together in ways that bring out their internal animations and behaviours. An obvious example is wiring a smarthome lamp to a dimmer switch.
Your Reality Computer owns your own stuff
The Reality Network universe is created by all Reality Computers working together, whether little smarthome devices, smartphones, PCs and games consoles, or huge online server clusters.
Of course, your stuff on your own Reality Computer remains yours, even if mixed up with someone else's in the Reality Net.
And of course, you can set it to private at any time. You get to choose who can see your stuff in the Reality Net, and who can try to interact with it or change it.
You can work on any of your own digital property offline, alongside the latest known state of everyone else’s. When back online, everyone will sync up again.
Those “huge online server clusters” can contribute their own digital property to the Reality Net, such as news and weather, reference information and documents, shared maps and calendars for various purposes, game worlds and shopping centres. However, if you leave a review on an item being sold, you should still own that yourself, and host it on your own device.
Building a new type of computer from the metal up
Of course, until AR is ubiquitous, most Reality Computers will be repurposed PC-class devices, such as the Surface Go 2 tablet:
The Surface Go 2 tablet, that can become a Reality Computer.
The Reality Computer is a new type of computer, and I’m building it, its operating system and decentralised network, from the “metal” up.
Of course, like the Web, the Reality Net will be built from open source with open protocols, and I will always favour the most open hardware.
Do You Want This?
As a famous innovation-enabler once asked!
Reality Computers, running a Reality OS, both Local and online, work together to manifest the experience of all of our Little chunks of Live digital objects being Linked together into a shared 3D virtual universe, merged with the physical universe, called The Reality Network.
The Reality Network Computer offers casual “ambient” engagement with our shared digital lives. It will be a simple and intuitive, freeing and empowering experience.
The Reality Net is a digital universe that offers us everything that’s familiar from our physical reality: chatting, sharing, co-creating, writing, sketching, thinking and playing. You’ll no longer spend your time juggling apps, you’ll spend it just getting things done, or enjoying and sharing your digital world.
The Reality Computer and Reality Network offer us empowerment and freedom over our own computer technology and can deliver “mashability” and sovereignty over our own digital property.
It would be great to hear from you if you like this idea or have any questions or suggestions. If you want to help out in any way you’d be very welcome here (3D HX and other creatives and tech evangelists especially so). You can be part of a community of people who want to make computer technologies more humane!
You can subscribe here, then just reply to the emails you get.
Read on…
Why not pop open some tabs with some more detailed example scenarios to read later:
Also, there is an article here that gives a basic background to how this site began.
Epilogue: The Inversion
I call this radical approach “The Inversion”.
I propose literally turning all computer technology inside-out!
Here’s another view of that:
The Inversion turns apps inside-out: now your data is the first thing you see, not your apps.
All of the functions of each app (along with all functions provided by their online backing services) are now wrapped up inside your data objects, as their “internal animation”.
(Note that “the Object Network” is another name I use for “the Reality Network”)
