The potential of what can be unleashed in XR is tremendous, something we can see when we look at the deep history of text.
At its core, we can think of interacting with text as interacting with symbols.
Every school child who uses a pen for writing and for drawing experiences writing and drawing as intimately related, something which his taken away in the transition to word processors where the text is typeset and drawing is either relegated to drawing programs or allows in small boxes and is semantically separate.
Our deep ancestors who painted on cave walls experienced the knowledge they passed on from generation to generation, both as figurative and symbolic notation, in a dynamic environment where the shape of the rock gave shape to meaning the the flickering light from torches animated the experience.
We have gained interactivity with digital text–we can easily undo our writing, we can check it and we can link it–but we have also lost these basic attributes of symbol interaction. This might be partly to do with how we think we know what digital text is and thus our imagination space is limited.
What we have now with XR is both an opportunity to think anew, and it affords us new interaction potential.
Expansive & Creative
The expansive potential of XR is realized when we put on our headset and ‘kick back’ from our desk on our swivel chair or stand up and look around. No longer is our knowledge constrained to rectangles, we can think with our entire space, whether we are at our desk, in a coffee shop or in a lab.
Our experience of working with XR over the last two years have taught us that we are only beginning to unlock its potential. ‘Being’ in a fully immersive knowledge space affords us entirely new ways to see, interact, think and create–as well as being creative.
Imagine this: You are working on a complex problem on your modern, large computer display with dozens of concepts and you put on your headset and now the information is a bit bigger and the display fades away. This is your starting position, similar to your display but a bit larger.
Then the magic starts to happen, when you pinch and move things not only in the original frame, but anywhere in the space. You are building knowledge spaces.
As you come to be familiar with working in such an expansive environment your abilities also expand, to add new knowledge objects at will, to easily see only what you need to, to see and connections and to truly author in space.
When you are done it is flattened for you to continue working on your traditional systems–keeping the dimensional qualities intact–and allowing you, or anyone you share it with, to re-expand into XR.
It’s an entire space powered by your imagination, supported by advanced technology, instantly interactive to give you the views you need.
Or don’t imagine it, try it in one of the experiments we have built to experience expansive thinking in XR by going to https://futuretextlab.info in your headset.