WHAT IF WE COULD CTRL-Z REALITY
“I was in a rush to get to the office, I had to clear-out the workload from the previous day before assailing the one for the present day.
I already knew the day was going to be as intense as the sunlight, which seemed to be smiling benignly at me. While increasing my pace and hoping transportation delay wouldn’t seep from my already conscripted time; I decided to unbutton the sleeve of my shirt and give it a fold.
Today didn’t seem like that kind of day to look overly corporate; I wanted to hit the office prepared for intense work.
I did the first hand, and moved on to folding the other.
In my haste I realized, the fold wasn’t smooth and didn’t tally with the fold on the other arm.
I had to make a decision to either: leave it that way and lose out on the cool look, or go for the ‘Field-Worker’ look by unfolding the entire sleeve and starting afresh albeit this time more clinical and precise in the folding process.
I was already behind time, and this sleeve-folding business was already beginning to sap out computing energy from my brain.
What If I could just Ctrl-Z the whole damn thing! (For my not too computer savvy friends, Ctrl-Z is that key on your computer you press to undo something or return something back to its original state, especially if you made a mistake)
Yea, I actually thought and wished that Ctrl-Z would work now, as I increased my walking pace almost to a trot.
My thoughts spiraled in a new direction: What If I could use the Ctrl-Z button as we do with digital computing devices to undo my recent bad folds, and if possible use Ctrl-C to copy a nicely well-done sleeve-fold from the internet or from one I had done in the past, and paste it to my current reality using Ctrl-V.”
This brought me to the subject of reality and how Technology, while augmenting our biological computing process can lend us some of its cooler digital computing features, as those I imagined above (Ctrl, Shift, Alt etc).
Our world is fast changing; there is little anybody can do about that. How far will these changes go? Would it cross over the realms of our reality?
Our perceived reality is as a result of the processing powers of our brain. What if machines through super /quantum computing avails us the power to redefine reality? To a great degree, with Virtual reality, AI and many other technological fronts; we may be closer than we think.
So imagine a future where you wake up in the morning, and the first thing you do is reach for your VR headset. With that, you can go anywhere, do and experience anything, as long as it can be digitized.
Your digital personality becomes more real, you can share this Virtual (new world) with others. Distance no longer becomes a barrier. Say your family or friend is having a birthday party, they could invite you to a birthday hangout on Facebook. Only this time, everyone participates in the event by plugging-in or gearing-up as the case may be.
You can virtually feel the likes, and hear the comments as they are spoken. It becomes a shared experience that is entered into your actual memory.
The whole shopping experience is also changed; you could when plugged-in visit Walmart or Amazon virtual stores and say — tryout possible outfits. And when you are not too sure about how the outfit looks on you (even when you are trying them out digitally and can see yourself from third person in 3D).
You can opt to get validation from others, you either invite your fashionista friend to check you out (of course she is also plugged-in/geared-up), or you share the simulation of yourself on this outfit on Social platforms like Instagram and have people give their take (through likes and comments) on whether it really fits on you before you make a final buying decision.
Take another instance of you buying a car; before you make the final buying decision, you take the car out for a spin (digitally simulated of course). You simulate different realities; such as you driving the car in high-traffic, driving in snow, through rugged terrains, you can even simulate your being chased by another car or beating speed-lights (who knows what customers would want).
And then if you fancy the handling and control of the car, and all the cool features you enjoyed within (especially its autonomous driving feature — Self-driving cars are already here to stay) resonated with you, you then make a final buying decision.
The list of things or crossroads where our reality will cross with virtuality will require that we redefine our definition for everyday living. From business, to education, to entertainment; every fabric of life will have new weaves that provides exploitation digitally.
The realities we create with our biological computing powers do not presently give us the option for altering our experiences. One can only begin to wonder if concepts such as Mixed-Reality which is being marketed by Microsoft and its troupe of hardware vendors will provide new definitions for what we call reality.
With Elon Musk’s Neural Link already set to directly connect the biological to the digital, we may just be on the thresh-hold of new powers. We may soon have the power to alter or enhance our consciousness and produce new signals for the purpose of perception. For as they say; “seeing is believing” so as long as we can see and feel these signals, we will begin to perceive them as reality.
So to a human-machine hybrid or more aptly put Trans-humanist, reality will also be a hybrid of both digital and analogue (biological) signals. And as long as our senses perceive such signals as intelligible, they will be processed as our realities.
On a synoptic note; the future is largely uncertain, filled with too many variables and possibilities. While we wait for events such as the singularity or the Omega-point, it may be that we already have entered the threshold of an era, where everything we knew previously, will have to undergo redefinition.
Well, I am still here doing my best to get a perfect sleeve fold, while hurrying-up to make it to the office on time. I am not a perfectionist as such, but it wouldn’t be nice if my uneven and improperly done sleeve-fold send a signal, or make others who share this analogue-reality space with me, perceive me as an untidy humanist.
What do you think, Would a Ctrl-Z feature be good for our present reality?
