From Flatland to Airspace

"Our ‘agreement’ on reality is subject to common shared limitations that evolved to ensure the biological survival of the race. All humans may agree on certain events only because we are similarly limited in our very structure as well as limited in our culture. Like the double-seeing son, it is very easy for us to confuse our common agreement with an external reality. If everyone ‘saw' double, for instance, we would believe that two moons existed."

Robert Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness.

In the Industrial Age, the drawing board shaped our world.
A 2D model of reality.
Our land became a grid of lines.
Our cities a grid of streets.
Our cars drove that pattern into the ground.
Pick your address and buy that plot of land.
Land rights for cashed-up investors.
Maximize your investment, extrude vertically.
A chocolate cake built layer upon layer, upon layer.
Would you like a set of balconies to go with that box of flats?
Same context, same design.
Different city, different street corner.

In the Information Age, a return to tribal space.
A pre-literate reality of a single universe.
Pick your view and buy that parcel of air.
A visiting permit in space.
A 3D address book.
A new reality of electronic space.
Transportation without moving a muscle.
Shop, work, party, games.
Friends visiting without leaving home.
First the TV dinner, now a computer lunch.
Have every Christmas at home.
Who said the telephone would never work?


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