Super Torch Ritual

As I’ve been saying since 2014, artificial reality (VR/AR) is a key component of the New World rising at the end of history in the 21st century…

Dec 13 The Race for AR Glasses Starts Now

Key passages from the article:

• …we know pretty much what [the Next Big Thing] will look like: a lightweight, always-on wearable that obliterates the divide between the stuff we see on screens and [reality]
• “these glasses will offer AR, VR, and everything in between, and we’ll wear them all day and we’ll use them in every aspect of our lives”
• In 2018, you’ll see the building blocks on your mobile phones [for AR glasses]
• There’s been an increasing consensus that artificial reality—the technology that tricks the senses into seeing, hearing, and interacting with digital objects and scenarios as if they are as substantial as the furniture we sit on and the people across from us—will become the Fourth Platform in computing
• The pressure of the competition has forced [the companies] to begin releasing interim products, now
• The impact on society will be mind-boggling and, in some respects, troubling and even dangerous
  .

Pretty closely echoes what I wrote in Point of Divergence, though I took it further, comparing the birth of VR/artificial reality to the Big Bang:

Virtual reality is the new “Big Bang”, opening up a whole new reality/dimension/universe. It’s not entirely a metaphor. There is a serious parallel there. Augmented reality (AR) – half reality, half simulated reality – will be like a bridge between those two worlds. With it, you become like an “angel”, one foot in this world, one foot in another world.

Both VR and AR will be spreading like wildfire during the next several years, revolutionizing the way we live more dramatically than the internet and mobile devices have done so far. Constant, real-time global online communication. That was a big deal. But now we are about to step outside of reality itself. That’s a cosmically huge deal. As big a deal as colonizing Mars (and the two happen to interact quite heavily).

There will be a transition period that will feature “smart glasses” – basically a smart phone on your face – a la Google’s original vision for Google Glass but with a bit more augmented reality elements added (i.e. not just notifications, etc.). Google Glass was too ambitious for its time. The world is almost ready now. […]

With Spielberg’s Ready Payer One coming next spring, the digital “Big Bang” is now officially underway…