If I showed you a picture of a space decorated with lush plants, like green clouds suspended on bark-clad trunks reaching into humid soil, you might have a specific emotional response. Perhaps you imagine this space feels quite relaxing, welcoming, and soothing.
Perhaps you, like me, remind yourself that you should get another plant for your workspace — but pay attention to how your idea of what the image represents changes when I tell you that all plants above are plastic.
No really. Look at the picture again.
Nothing about the pixels, the luminosity, contrast, or saturation has changed, but it’s not the same picture. It’s not the same space.
It’s as if, though, we have an unnamed sense that feels the “vibe” of a room, something, a spatial awareness. This spatial awareness is deeply rooted in language because language helps us paint the world with more than just descriptions, it helps us create context or a layer of reality. You could even argue that language is the original augmented reality technology.
This substrate layer of emotional context colors our perception and paints our spaces in dimensions not captured by the bits and bytes of the actual photograph.
Nurturing is a human desire
Why do we buy plants?
If it were purely a visual aesthetic consideration, we wouldn’t care if they were plastic. That the plant is alive, perhaps that it can die, is a big reason why we want plants. It is reassuring, in a profound, visceral, evolutionary way, to see living things thrive in your space.
It is gratifying and rewarding, in a profound and naturally intuitive way, to help things grow.
Perhaps this, too, is a deep embodied memory of our ancestors harnessing the power of agriculture to ease the burdens of living. I submit that nurturing things is an essential and foundational human desire and instinct, as necessary and natural as our desire to eat, mate, and shelter from the weather.
It is ultimately the same impulse to nurture a plant that makes us buy a puppy. We want to love. That the puppy can love us back is just a bonus.
Our deep desire to love and how gratifying even a one-sided interaction can be is readily observed in the rising trend of parasocial relationships.
Humans want to love and nurture. It’s part of what makes us human. Transhumanism teaches us that embracing a merge with the machine will extend our physical capabilities. Building better machines is ultimately about building better humans, the physical transhumanist observes.
As a cultural transhumanist, I believe that we must take care to engineer our memes, our culture, and our consciousness to enable us to transcend our biological starting conditions.
Migrating to the Metaverse
If the metaverse only becomes an avenue for expressing individuality and consumption, then we are missing the opportunity for a much more meaningful revolution.
We clearly live at the dawn of a truly transformative era, where humanity is transitioning, dipping its toes into the alluring waters of virtual spaces and experiences. Countless avatars, digital fashion, virtual accessories, tokenized versions of this, that, and the other are being promised to lure us deeper into these designer realities.
As we migrate to new digital realities we craft for ourselves, we are not only inhabiting bespoke environments but also experiencing bespoke consciousness. How mindful of your psychological well-being are the architects and creators of your next digital space?
If the metaverse only becomes an avenue for expressing individuality and consumption, we are missing the opportunity for a much more meaningful revolution. Why not make spaces that connect us, things to care for and nurture, and ways to bring us into the present?
At Auki Labs, we choose to use these powerful new technologies to build an outlet for our human impulse to love and play together. To embody the world we already inhabit, and enrich it with matterless domains full of wonder.
My question to you is: if you had the ability to paint spaces with companionship, community, and connectedness, how would you do it?
— Nils Pihl, CEO, Auki Labs
About Auki Labs
Auki Labs is at the forefront of spatial computing, pioneering the convergence of the digital and physical to give people and their devices a shared understanding of space for seamless collaboration.
With a focus on user-centric design and privacy, Auki Labs empowers industries and individuals to embrace the transformative potential of spatial computing, enhancing productivity, engagement, and human connection.
Auki Labs is building the posemesh, a decentralized spatial computing protocol for AR, the metaverse, and smart cities.
About The Posemesh Foundation
The posemesh is an open-source protocol that powers a decentralized, blockchain-based spatial computing network.
The posemesh is designed for a future where spatial computing is both collaborative and privacy-preserving. It limits the surveillance capabilities of any organization and encourages sovereign ownership of private space maps.
The decentralization also offers a competitive advantage, especially in shared AR sessions where low latency is crucial. The posemesh is the next step in the decentralization movement, responding to the growing power of big tech.
The Posemesh Foundation has tasked Auki Labs with developing the software infrastructure of the posemesh.
Twitter | Discord | Medium | Updates | YouTube | Telegram | Posemesh.org
