Recently, the mobile game Pokemon GO has taken the world by storm (China is generally not included in “the world”), and it is worth noting that this should be an emblematic game: a classic application of AR (augmented reality, mixed reality) technology. From this game we can glimpse a possible image of the future world. Although the game’s effects are still very crude at present, it is not hard to imagine what it will become as the relevant technologies develop in the future (those lacking imagination can simply look up the promotional video for Pokemon GO, for example here).
Researchers in philosophy of technology are well worth paying attention to these cases. Such cases not only help us foresee the future, but also help us understand the history of technology in the past.
When philosophers discuss new technologies, they often prefer to consider ideal cases. For example, when talking about artificial intelligence, they like to ask whether robots can have intelligence or consciousness; when talking about VR (virtual reality) technology, they like to ask whether complete immersion is possible. But actual technological development has always been gradual. In fact, while philosophers, starting from extreme cases, say one “impossibility” after another, artificial intelligence technology has long been developing step by step, and VR technology has also been developing step by step.
A typical carrier of AR technology is Google Glass: put on the glasses, and what you look at is still the original real world, but the glasses add a layer to it. Within this layer, many extra elements can be provided for you—for example, overlaying a route map onto the road beneath your feet, or displaying information about the restaurant in front of you or the passerby beside it. Pokemon GO lowers the technical threshold even further: you can play this game with the most ordinary smartphone. Put simply, it means that we can search for and capture little monsters in the real world; we can take our Pikachu to “gyms” to challenge others; we can show off to our friends or exchange our little monsters, and so on.
This is not a game you play alone at home, hunched in front of a computer, but a strongly social game. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future our world will become like this: everyone goes out wearing AR glasses; you can see Pikachu perched on your friend’s shoulder, you can see Charizard circling above your head, you can see that an unremarkable little shop by the roadside is actually a supply station or a gym, you can see wild little monsters playing in the green belts, you can see hundreds of people forming teams to besiege a big Boss in the square…
You can only see these things when you put on the glasses. People without glasses can only see a bunch of lunatics gesticulating at empty ground, speaking in words that you half understand and half don’t, carrying out some kind of mysterious ritual.
So are these little monsters real? Is this crazy world real?
As the name AR suggests, these little monsters are not only real, but “more real”: they are an enhanced version of reality.
Physicalists believe that only things like atoms and electrons are real, but in fact the physical world composed of atoms and electrons is also a version of “augmented reality.” We need to rely on certain scientific theories and certain instruments and equipment in order to see this aspect of the world as an atomic world. And the world of little monsters that we now need to understand a certain amount of background knowledge, and then rely on AR glasses to see, is just another augmented aspect.
Every technology provides the real world with a layer of “augmentation.” Borrowing a term from PS as a metaphor, we might say that it adds a “layer.” The whole real world that eventually presents itself to us is not any single one of those layers, but the superposition of all the layers after they have been loaded in sequence. Sometimes the layers cover one another; sometimes they complement one another.
Learning a technology means that your world gains another dimension. Looking at the same nail, the meaning presented to the eye of someone who knows how to use a hammer and someone who does not know what a hammer is will be different; for someone who understands certain traffic rules, or knows how to drive, the various lines on the road are all meaningful. But if a person from a primitive tribe enters the city, they will probably be dazzled and unable to find their way. By contrast, in the jungle, the various traces of animals that they can easily recognize are completely invisible to city people.
Before electronic technology, writing can be said to have been a crucial “augmentation.” Imagine modern city life as seen by someone who has no idea what writing is. In their eyes, the signs and notices by the roadside mean nothing, and things like business cards and menus are merely strange little sheets.
Naturally, they would find it hard to understand why, upon just meeting, two people should exchange a small card and then be able to know one another’s background; they also cannot understand why, without any conversation, one can tap a few times on a slip of paper and obtain the dish one wants; still less can they understand why a group of people gather around what is called a notice and point at it. This is because the world in their eyes lacks a dimension of meaning.
Of course, it is easy to see that this situation is not quite the same as the world of Pokemon GO, because although illiterates do not understand writing, we believe they still see the “same” things as we do—they just do not know how to discern meaning from these lines—whereas if we do not use AR devices, we cannot see those “little monsters” at all. But that actually does not matter. We also cannot see infrared rays; we cannot see electromagnetic waves. Whether something can be seen directly with the naked eye without instruments is not, in the first place, the standard for determining whether it is real.
In any case, the world enhanced by AR technology is at least as real as the world of writing; or rather, writing itself is also a kind of AR. The VR of writing is probably being completely immersed in a book, whereas the AR of writing is this world filled with road signs, shop signs, billboards, business cards, menus, and notices.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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