My name is Duncan Cragg and I’m a future computing researcher working on the “Reality Computer”. A Reality Computer is a novel device that doesn’t run Microsoft Windows, Apple’s OS or Google Android; it runs a completely new kind of operating system that has no apps, application programs or online services.
Currently, all of the messages, posts, photos, articles, calendar events, tasks and documents that we currently access through those mobile and desktop operating systems are tightly wrapped by their “owning” applications, and often then get sucked into remote online services like Facebook, Google, Apple and so-on.
In the Reality Computer’s operating system, all of these chunks of our digital property are instead thrown together into a single, shared 3D virtual universe called The Reality Network. Now, all of our digital objects are "out in the open" together, in the Reality Network universe.
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.
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.
In the illustration below, there’s a room which could be a space shared between a number of people. There are relevant 2D objects attached to the walls, plus some objects have been pulled out aside to float in front of you, or have been scattered on the floor.
At the left of the screen is a place for you to collect world objects for use in any further context.
Reality Computing is “Spatial Computing without apps, just stuff pinned around”.
A digital universe like the physical universe
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, because humans evolved in a social 3D world. It 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.
Your Reality Computer owns your own stuff
The Reality Network universe is created by all Reality Computers working together, whether smartphones or smartwatches, PCs or games consoles, smart devices 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 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.
Building from the metal up
We will be increasingly experiencing the digital realm through Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR, VR) and Spatial Computing, and 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.
This is the only way to truly bring to life the exciting potential in the merging of the physical with the digital.
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 is all built with open source and open protocols, and I will always favour the most open hardware.
More scenarios
You can pop open some tabs with more detailed examples to read later:
There is an article here that gives a basic background to how this site began.
Do You Want This?
As a famous innovation-enabler once asked.
The Reality Net Computer offers casual “ambient” engagement with our shared digital lives. It can be a simple, intuitive, freeing and empowering experience. A digital universe for 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.
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.
Note that many articles on this site refer to the Reality Computer as the Parallel Reality Computer or PRC and The Reality Network as The Parallel Reality. But I didn’t like the implication that this virtual reality was separate rather than seamlessly merged with physical reality, so I dropped the word “Parallel”!
