This is the first of what will be daily posts from our NYU Future Reality Lab. We will all be taking turns here, with each person in our lab posting once every two weeks. After all, only a crazy person would write a blog post on their own every single day. 🙂
We call ourselves the “Future Reality Lab”, rather than the “Multimedia Technologies Lab” or “Virtual Reality Lab” or some such, because we are not so much interested in any particular technology as we are in the possible futures that those technologies might enable.
We humans are, first and foremost, creatures of language. As we evolve the technologies that we use to communicate with each other, those technologies are evolving us right back.
From stories around the campfire to books to photography to cinema to the Web to SmartPhones to augmented reality and beyond, we are continually finding ways to communicate with one another that would have astonished earlier generations. And yet, for better or worse, we remain human — possessed of essentially the same brains and emotions as humans of thirty thousand years ago.
As our technologies for communication continue to advance, how will we evolve culturally as a species? What we will choose to do with this infinitely precious gift of being able to talk to each other?
The Future Reality Lab aims to nudge that evolution into positive directions, toward a future that allows people to communicate with one another in a spirit of kindness, understanding and empathy. We hope that you will join us in our mission.