Immersion and the Internet of Things
I haven't written anything since Tumblr died nearly a decade ago, but recently I've been wanting to dive deeper into topics that have required me to be a bit more verbose. I've been on the internet for a long time, and I've seen lots of things come and go.. and come back again.. then disappear completely. I think we sometimes flock to the hottest places simply to be where the people are, but we rarely find connections in the crowd.
When you think of the term "Immersive" - we often tie this to physical aspects. Virtual and augmented reality, teleporting you completely to a low-poly grass block. While yes, these experiences can be incredibly immersive, there are multiple aspects to this experience. Immersion comes from many places, but first and foremost with the interfacing technology. The metaverse is not just transportive, it's spatial.
Even back in 1994 we viewed "Mixed Reality" as a spectrum on the "virtual continuum". [Milgram, 1994] The interleaving of realities between the digital and physical worlds can create an entirely new plane of interaction that can exist not only out of physical space, but time. When we communicate with each other in virtual spaces, most of these communications happen asynchronously. Conversations spanning days, weeks, even years.
The simplest example of this dates back to early message boards. People from all over the world at different times contribute to a transactional conversation, or "thread", that grows outside of time. Just how reading a good book can transport you to another place, having a deep conversation in this manner can also provide a level of immersion. Have you ever seen a text notification and smiled? Or heard the sincerity in a voice memo and felt calm? This is the same of any asynchronous level of communication. We experience these interactions in our own time.
With text-based interactions, you also have the variability of using your words to illustrate descriptive narratives.
Marchy takes a deep breath, calming himself before continuing.
These action beats create an avenue for expression that may not be viable for real-time interactions. You can bring a level of depth to your communication that allows you to be "seen" more clearly by the other user, regardless of the visualization on the screen. This type of role play has been common in many platforms, especially text-first systems where avatar expression might be muted or limited to emojis.
Some of these spaces have been sped up to almost greater than real time. Overlapping conversations in a text chat to relay information quickly between multiple people is commonplace among platforms like Discord, or even legacy social MMOs like Habbo Hotel. Unlike with verbal communication, you don't need to wait for someone to stop talking to begin typing. Thoughts can come out more quickly, causing each party to be responding while reading the last few responses, accelerating at a compounding rate depending on the number of people in the conversation.
But what does the future hold for immersion? Augmented reality aside, I think that the next level of technical immersion will come from spatial interfaces. The best example of what this could look like exists within the Apple ecosystem. I can copy a photo from Ipad and paste it to my phone, all through my macbook. I can see what and who is near me with findMy. I can airdrop files, or cast whatever i'm viewing to the big screen. These interfaces interact with and extend each other in new ways that we are still only scratching the surface of. What if instead of wearing something on your face, we could embed the technology throughout your entire home?
Smart Homes are becoming more mainstream as devices are becoming more available and easier to use. We've eliminated a lot of the technical hurdles and over-promised fantasy features for practicality in every day life. I can change the lights with my voice, set reminders, find my phone, play some music.. all without picking up a device at all. As homes develop more intensive networking infrastructure, I think we will begin to see people expanding their technological integration within the home.
There are many different levels to "immersion". It's so easy for us to sell ourselves short by focusing only on market spaces instead of looking at the underlying technologies and history of these technologies. It can be difficult for us to look beyond the "next-gen" graphics and expectations of the future and see what is right in front of us - tools for communication that can take us to other worlds, both mentally and physically.
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