Through augmented reality glasses, one can see the real world in which computer-generated elements have been added. So, in a couple of years, we will be able to walk down the street, and the invisible space where there is nothing will be filled with something.
Just a couple of decades ago, this was a purely philosophical question that had nothing to do with everyday life. When a couple of years ago, I wondered if what we were seeing was the real world or an illusion? Only philosophers. Who cares if we live in the real world or some computer simulation? Only philosophers. However, in the first few years of the 21st century, this issue has ceased to be "theoretical". It is no longer open only to philosophers in cabinets, but is now set for everyone. How do we determine today what the real world is?
there are already other worlds in the West. Not parallel, but other, simulated worlds. Technology changes everything, but does it change reality?
Those who have played video games are known to draw players into a new world. Even parents know that children completely break away from this world while playing games. Sometimes they sink so deep that they forget to eat, drink water and go to the toilet. In South Korea, where gaming is extremely popular, people end up in the hospital because the games drag them in so much that they forget to sleep and drink water. Even a few deaths have been reported.
However, everyone will say that video games are not the real world. As we play them we sit in this world and no matter how well they are done, they cannot physically move us into some new world. People have been trying to simulate reality since the 50's, but they didn't succeed…. until recently.
Today, virtual reality (VR) is well known. We have recently perfected this technology which is basically a computer generated scenario that simulates experience. We put on glasses and with them we enter a computer simulation in which we can do different things depending on what it is programmed for. We can only watch a movie happening all around us or play a game. VR simulations are also used by the United States military to train people. So, if an ordinary video game immerses a person so much in the new world that he forgets to eat, does VR put him in a new reality?
Many are still not convinced that VR is changing our concept of reality. They would say, "yes, he is playing a game in some virtual reality, but it is still just a virtual world and he is still physically present in this world." However, it seems so to us. While we say that he is here with us, he is in another world. He may be in the living room, but it seems to him that he is in a medieval castle or on a spaceship where he is fighting aliens. Isn't his perception what decides whether something is the real world or not for him?
In order to avoid philosophical theses that are not known to everyone, let's take an example from popular culture. At the very end of the last century, the film The Matrix was released, in which the main character, Neo, reveals that he is in a computer simulation. But he discovered that he was not in the real world only when he heard about the simulation. What would have happened if no one in the Matrix had ever discovered that they were in a simulation? Maybe we as viewers would know that they are in a simulated world, but the characters from the film would seem to be in the real world.
After all, we know we are in the real world because we didn’t have someone who discovered that this around us was a simulation. Imagine that we are in a computer simulation, but we do not have access to the red pill that Neo took. To us, the world we are in seems real, and since we decide for ourselves what the real world is for us, it means that this is the real world - although in reality it is a simulation.
Reiki Kawaraha has published a series of "easy novels" Sword art online. Here, people are locked into a MMORPG game (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that they play in virtual reality. They have been in the game world for so long that some even fall in love with other players, but also feel when they touch something. They are completely in a new reality - they live in houses, trade, work… They live normal lives even though their bodies are in the hospital on an infusion to maintain it. What if one day we can really do this?
Imagine that one day you can spend your vacation by turning on the infusion, going to bed, putting on the scientists and entering a new world where you can live for days or weeks? I believe that in this case, most agree that those who spend their holidays like that go somewhere. They are in another world. Basically, this procedure would be the relocation of our cognition center. We would change the reality we live in for a while. Philosopher Edward Castronova warns that as we spend more and more time in the virtual space, there is a gradual "migration to the virtual world". Which is true, portals are replacing classic newspapers today, digital marketing is becoming more dominant than traditional, shopping is done online. It is only a matter of time before the migration to the virtual world becomes complete.
However, today we can only play games and watch movies in virtual reality. We have not yet come to the point where we can live in a virtual space. Some are afraid of shifting the center of cognition, and some can't wait to move into virtual reality and at least briefly experience a life they could never have. But, far from it, technology does not change the real world for us. In addition to VR, there is AR (augmented reality) - augmented reality.
The principle of augmented reality is that there is a direct view of the physical world in which additional elements are computer-generated. In other words, technology combines information from physical reality with digital elements and displays them together on a display. For example, you turn on the camera on your phone and scan the living room, and computer-generated images that hang on the walls, but which are not in reality, appear on the screen. A banal example. There are mobile apps on the market today that can read and display augmented reality, but augmented reality glasses have already been designed. They are not science fiction, they are already on the market.
Through them, one can see the real world in which computer-generated elements have been added. So, in a couple of years, we will be able to walk down the street, and the invisible space where there is nothing will be filled with something. For example, virtual promo banners. Flying commercials. Many would say that these commercials are not part of the real world, but why? The point of the advertisement is to be read and you read it through those glasses, so how is it not "real"?
Augmented reality is a relatively new technology, but it is very much used. It is used by artists, marketing experts, architects… The well-known company Ikea has used AR to enable interested buyers to look at what the furniture they want to buy should look like in their apartment before the purchase. So, with phones, we can see what our room will look like before we buy a sofa that we will put in it, but still many will say that it is still not a changed perception of reality.
The role of the sofa is to sit on it and you cannot sit on a computer-generated sofa. However, what about things that do not require physical contact? The purpose of the commercials is to read them, so AR advertising is basically real. The same goes for works of art. Did the AR artwork become a part of reality?
Hardly everyone will agree. In any case, we must recognize that technology is changing our world completely. It is slowly beginning to change the very concept of reality. There are no longer just abstract philosophical thought experiments, but there are paradoxes from everyday life. What was science fiction yesterday is slowly becoming commonplace. Today, we are not sure what the reality is, and how time passes, how technology advances, well, who knows. What was an idea yesterday is happening today. We miss the basic certainty of what the real world really is.
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