From Directional to Dimensional

The transformation of communication mediums throughout history has significantly shaped humanity, continuously merging many past traditions with future possibilities and revolutionising the way we express ourselves and our identities. Cultural practices, including different art forms, have evolved alongside technology. Fashion, arts, music & entertainment are being digitised in new ways, while dematerialisation of creative industries continues to become adopted at all levels; from content creators to brands, businesses and everyday users.

Dematerialisation is a natural human process. Humans have been practicing dematerialisation for thousands of years, beginning through using our imaginations, before the use of these immersive technologies we see today. Through the art of storytelling, these dematerialised realities became shared realities and over time the medium has evolved from written languages, to printed books, to now digital devices and immersive technologies. This evolution reflects a broader human trend: moving away from only valuing physical objects and things we can only harvest from the earth. We continue to see this shift in storytelling like in movies, and gaming, where we create and share imaginary worlds and realities. This concept then extends to creative industries like fashion, which, like music, is continually experiencing dematerialisation and democratisation.

The Convergence of Realities

In this new digital era, we are constantly coming in and out of a convergence of realities. With technology evolving at an exponential rate, soon enough, reality will be like a perpetual lucid dream. The downfall of our beloved hand-held devices and 2D user interface has already begun. In such a short period of time we have already seen the introduction of AI into everyday use-cases, Apple’s Vision Pro (AR), the Humane AI pin and this is only the beginning. Not only will the way we interact with these technologies become more immersive and blend our realities even further, but the next iteration of the internet truly breaks us free from these 2D surfaces and centralized platforms.

The more time we spend in the juxtaposition of these virtual environments, the more we will want to express ourselves there. The new chapter for humanity during this process is the opportunity to explore what identity expression means in a reality where we are not limited to an identity that was given to us - the identity each person has is created first-hand and the limitations in the physical world are no longer present. Through reputation systems, customisation of avatars, unique social handles, gamer tags, online communities, building worlds, and more, online culture and identity systems are continually explored and subcultures emerge. Similarly to the evolution of storytelling in our physical dimension, identity expression and communication in our virtual environments will evolve exponentially with technologies that enhance our digital experiences. I see ourselves now as the MIT Media Lab students in the 80’s, who were strapping TV’s to their heads with the vision of having VR sets. Just as they charted new paths and laid the groundwork for future technologies that have since become widely accessible and normalized, we are forging ahead to create the next generation of innovations. We have built an ever-present revolving door where we can step into and out of our virtual reality, from anywhere, at any time, and this door sits right at our fingertips.

Rethinking Time in the New Digital Era

The internet has collapsed time and space. Digital Globalization is revolutionising governance, businesses, culture, economics, and so much more - at a speed in which decentralisation, dematerialisation and demonetization become pillars for being able to sustain the open network needed to continue to seamlessly connect all. We are no longer bound to space or time.

Silo’d industries are collapsing. The limitations we have become used to in our physical reality are becoming barriers and are slowly dissolving in virtual environments. Many structures or practices which were widely used to support innovation across these sectors in our physical world have become obsolete. This is as simple as the board room, which has now transformed into a digital meeting room, where people around the world can join in and collaborate with a click of a button. Generations ago, an experience like this would be considered magic, a holographic experience. The barriers of geography are long behind us and has bought us back time to collaborate, connect and innovate in new ways.

Imagination; the earliest form of dematerialisation, is the starting point to everything that’s been created. Pablo Picasso spoke on the transformative power of imagination, as he famously stated, "everything you can imagine is real”. Transformative innovations can be introduced into society on a non-functional level through imaginative prototyping and design fiction, inspiring many generations to come to the point of materialisation. One of my favourite examples is demonstrated in the 1964 film "2001: A Space Odyssey”. This film was astonishingly prescient, featuring technologies throughout the movie decades before they materialized in the physical world, that only now mirror common household devices. Devices were depicted in the film similar to today’s iPads and tablets long before these existed, demonstrating how the future, in many ways, is already interwoven with our present realities.

The future is around us and is truly what we make it. It has never been more clear that leaders need to be prepared to continually adapt to the hints of past, present and future that surround us and we must be open to rewiring our mindsets. In the past, communicating with someone across the world without speaking out loud may have easily been referred to as “Telepathy”, but now this same action can simply be explained through texting. Technology is not only changing the way in which we interact with each other, but also the way we define these interactions and experiences.

If you have not caught on yet, the “IRL” era is long behind us. Everything is happening in real life, whether something is being experienced virtually or physically - reality goes beyond the physicality of things, and this term cannot be used to differentiate between the physical and digital dimension. The times we are in are extremely exciting! Generations are being born into a multidimensional reality where technology and digital experiences are reshaping the human experience like never before.

Zooming out from it all, we realise the future is present.

MH

“All language is a set of symbols, whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past” ― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph