Advancing Technology for Humanity and Earth (+Water+Air)

TL;DR

The paper argues for eXtended Reality (XR) as a unifying framework that fuses physical reality (Atoms), virtual content (Bits), and social interaction (Genes) within the Socio-Cyber-Physical Space to reason about and design immersive technologies. It introduces core constructs such as Mersivity, XRspace, and XRscalespace, and highlights underexplored areas like Diminished Reality (DR) and city-scale sousveillance, using wearable AI eyewear as a concrete vehicle (XI) for sustainable healthcare, frontline work, and daily life. Through historical context and a triadic taxonomy, the authors outline a pathway to technology that is unmonopolizing, observable, controllable, and communicative, with the overarching aim of benefiting people and the planet. The practical impact lies in providing a rigorous framework and design principles for AI-enabled wearables and XR-enabled systems that advance sustainability, safety, and inclusivity while reducing environmental footprint.

Abstract

As technology advances, the integration of physical, virtual, and social worlds has led to a complex landscape of ``Realities'' such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), metaverse, spatial computing, and other emerging paradigms. This paper builds upon and refines the concept of eXtended Reality (XR) as the unifying framework that not only interpolates across these diverse realities but also extrapolates (extends) to create entirely new possibilities. XR is the ``physical spatial metaverse,'' bridging the physical world, the virtual world of artificial intelligence, and the social world of human interaction. These three worlds define the Socio-Cyber-Physical Taxonomy of XR that allows us to identify underexplored research areas such as Diminished Reality (DR), and chart future directions to {\bf advance technology for people and planet}. We highlight the six core properties of XR for applications in sustainability, healthcare, frontline work, and daily life. Central to this vision is the development of AI-driven wearable technologies, such as the smart eyeglass, that sustainably extend human capabilities.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: S.W.I.M. (Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine) is a spatial computing system invented in Canada in the early 1970s that allows large numbers of people to see, understand, grasp, touch, and feel electromagnetic radio waves, sound waves, and other phenomena at exact 1:1 scale with perfect alignment between the physical and virtual content, updated at effectively millions of frames per second (instantaneously) mannwyckoff91. It may be used with the XR eyewear, but it can also be seen by thousands of people in the surrounding space without the need for any special eyewear, as shown to an extremely large audience at this recent tradeshow.
• Figure 2: Sicherheitsglaeser presented at Ars Electronica 1997 used a wearable computer with both an inwards-facing eyeglass display for the wearer to see, as well as an outwards-facing eyeglass display (on the same eyeglass) for local participants to see. It facilitated a direct and meaningful connection between the virtual, physical, and social worlds of more than 30,000 remote participants and hundreds of local participants as a form of performance art.
• Figure 3: Example of XR for situational awareness during icewater swimming. A wearable computer with XR eyeglass connects each participant to the others and to their surroundings. XR is about connecting us to each other and our surroundings, without imposing limits on what we can do or experience.
• Figure 4: CampfireVR/XR: Technology should connect us to our environment, and should work everwhere, not just in the home or factory. The MannLab Mersivity underwater VR glass as well as the Vuzix SmartSwim are examples of technology that works well in nearly any environment.
• Figure 5: Technology as a generalized vessel that has a symmetry of connectivity (i.e. both immersive and exmersive). The resulting signal-flow symmetry to/from and through the technology gives us six signal flow paths and therefore six desirable properties for Mersivity.