(xxAT DE) …Then just look at what the scientists are calling mirrorworld: Buried deep in research labs, engineers and scientists are working tirelessly on something that could ultimately culminate in the creation of parallel universe (spooky?). The mirrorworld is a term first popularized by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter. It is an envisionedmixed / augmented reality (AR) platform which would place digital overlays on top of every single feature on earth, writes Kevin Kelly in a long read for Wired. “We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world.” And this reality will come with all sorts of quirks and surprises.

It will at first apply AR to superimpose helpful information observable through wearable devices. “Turn north,” Google might tell you now, but since you’ve never been a boy scout and you don’t live on a grid, that direction might as well be “fly north” in terms of how useful it is. The mirrorworld will offer a solution by lining the streets with directions, pinpointing you to your destination. Already, the Wall Street Journal's David Pierce has road-tested an early version of an AR update for Google Maps which features direction arrows overlaid on the real-life image of your location through your phone’s camera.

The Google Maps update will underlie the mirrorworld. The update is a new type of smart navigation: both GPS and image based. The GPS tells the app where you’re at, the app then uses its bank of Street View data to make sense of what the camera is seeing. Add volume, textures, features and gaps — you get, a mirrorworld. The mirrorworld will essentially be a 3D map as big as the globe. For this to happen, we will need images of all places and things from every possible angle. We will need a planet of cameras operating 24/7. But then the interactive component of the mirrorworld will kick in. Imagine you’re walking around hungry, so you ask your smart glasses for restaurant suggestions. The device will activate a mode allowing you to look at restaurants and find internet ratings popping up in space (an example mentioned in a piece by Wareable clearly explaining AR). The choices you make about how you interact with the mirrorworld (where you decide to go for lunch, for example) will then provide a feedback loop, altering and refining information for other users.

The big enablers are Microsoft and a mysterious company called Magic Leap. Both companies are investing big in lightfield, the technology which makes AR a possibility. Microsoft’s HoloLens, released in 2016, was the most complete mixed reality device out there, until Magic Leap One came around. The vision of the companies is to replace traditional computers with holographic ones, which will eventually create a new paradigm of “spatial computing,” changing the way we receive data from to 3D from 2D (some analysts have even used the term 4D to describe the experience of interacting repeatedly with two different sets of realities). Reviews of both the HoloLens and Leap One, however, suggest that while the experience they provide is enjoyable and opens up enormous possibilities (along with, let’s face it, some pretty daunting questions about its impact on our societies, our psyches and our behavior), the mirrorworld is still decades away from actually being operational.