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Sorry, But There Is No ‘After’
Instead of waiting impatiently for the future to arrive, use the concept of ‘dual reality’ to find peace in this weird pandemic moment
If 2020 was the worst year ever, 2021 is on track to be the weirdest. Not bad, per se — or at least, not as bad as what we’ve all survived to date. More like, a year that’s shaping up to be more than a little bit… off.
As I write this, most U.S. states have freshly expanded Covid-19 vaccine eligibility to all adults over the age of 18. Yet, at the very same time, states across the country are seeing an alarming surge in cases. The same is happening across Europe and in Canada. In Brazil, the pandemic is at its worst point yet. So while for many of us, it may feel as though the end is in sight, it’s hard to ignore that “the after” is still a target we’re collectively chasing. Navigating this moment can seem like you’re straddling two competing realities, strategizing where to put your weight.
Ambiguity is not a state that the human brain particularly enjoys dwelling in (more on that here). But, as luck would have it, there’s an old web theory concept that offers a perfect analog for this strange moment in pandemic reality — and provides a path through it. It’s called “dual reality,” and by understanding it, you can restore your sense of late-pandemic direction.
Is it all a simulation?
Allow me to explain. In 2009, a pair of researchers at the MIT Media Lab presented a paper that introduced the concept of dual reality, which hypothesized that the virtual world we all inhabit online coexists with the real world that our bodies move through. Both worlds are complete and real unto themselves. But each world also has the ability to influence the other, and they can even merge together. The researchers predicted that the experience of a dual reality would play a greater and greater role in shaping the ways we absorb and produce media. Technological advancements would, they wrote, increasingly blur the lines between human beings’ sensory, meat-suit existences and the reality we partake in online.
Dual reality anticipated how smartphones and social media would change the way we communicate and consume information. But…
