What is Immersive Shared Reality (ISR)?

Using VR, AR and similar technologies so that people in distant places can enter the same virtual space and share an experience through many senses. The book *Plurality* presents it as a tool for building empathy and community by experiencing someone else's situation with your body.

We are often told to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. But imagining a life unlike your own with your head alone is hard. What if you could live for a while through that person's eyes, ears and body? Immersive Shared Reality (ISR) is the idea of making such experiences possible with technology, to deepen understanding between people.

In short

Immersive Shared Reality means using VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality) so that people in distant places can enter the same virtual space and share an experience through many senses [1][2].

VR is technology in which you put on a headset and enter an entirely constructed world.
AR overlays digital images on the real scene around you.
MR mixes the two.

The book ⿻ Plurality presents ISR as a tool for building empathy and community by experiencing someone else's situation with your body [1]. The book's chapter summary puts it this way: "'Immersive shared reality' technologies aim to allow the sharing of remote multisensory experiences that build empathy and community" [2].

For example

1000 Cut Journey. A VR work by Courtney Cogburn and the Cogburn Research Group at Columbia University in the United States. Participants "experience life through the eyes, ears, and body of Michael Sterling, a black man", in which "Small moments of casual racism build to a crescendo of hopelessness". The book places it at the opening of chapter 5-2 [3].

Becoming Homeless. A work from Stanford University's research on empathy through VR. You go through selling your possessions, losing your home, and then losing dignity, safety and health one after another [3].

The Portals Policing Project, between police and citizens. An effort that "shares the lived experiences of people with law enforcement in a controlled, yet realistic virtual chamber, improving understanding and trust on both sides" [4].

Tang attending as a hologram. The book describes "hybrid reality", in which remote participants appear at a conference as full-size holograms, as "a technique one of us frequently uses for remote appearances" [4]. In 2018, when Glen Weyl invited Audrey Tang to a conference in the United States the following year, she replied that she had a way of appearing through telepresence robots, holograms and the like [5].

In more detail

How it differs from post-symbolic communication

According to the book, ISR is less personal and less sensorially intense than Post-Symbolic Communication (sharing sensations themselves without going through symbols). Instead, it "presents a broader canvas for human interaction, enabling people to engage in shared, multisensory experiences". Though less intense, it creates meaningful connections that resonate, the book writes [1].

In a review, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, sums up ISR as something that includes what is called "VR" or the "metaverse" but is broader than them. He places it between post-symbolic communication and ordinary conversation [6].

Being together has always meant the most

Religious rituals, parties, political rallies, concerts: being present together, through many senses, has long been among the most meaningful experiences people have. The book takes this "copresence" as the starting point for ISR [7].

As uses today, the book names gatherings in VR, massively multiplayer online games, online worship, virtual music festivals, e-sports, virtual tourism and immersive art, among others [7].

ISR tomorrow

The book sketches several future forms [4]:

conveying touch, smell and taste, as well as sight and sound
conveying feelings to one another
"civic spaces" in which local people debate and decide in a virtual town hall
immersive learning and exchange across cultures
experiences that teach the climate through the body, like the VR work Tree, which transforms the user into a rainforest tree and exposes them to the threats of deforestation and climate change
mental health treatment using VR

As a further "frontier", the book also sketches shared dreams, simulations of the future and the past, virtual design studios in which people design together, and "Collective memory palaces" that gather the memories of whole communities [8].

Origins

Chapter 3-3 of the book writes that Jaron Lanier wanted to enable deep sharing of experiences that can only be expressed through touch and the internal sense of the body, and through his research and entrepreneurship in the 1980s developed the field of "virtual reality". From the wired glove to today's latest headsets, the book says, VR has been a continual source of innovation in how users interact with machines [9].

In Taiwan, Tang said in 2018 that the opinion-gathering tool Polis carries much less information (bandwidth) than a face-to-face discussion. She described an idea called "Holopolis", which would add bandwidth by having synthetic personalities speak as the face of a group, in augmented or virtual reality [10].

What is debated

Could it turn into a science-fiction dystopia? The book itself holds up stories such as the novel Snow Crash and Ready Player One as warnings: in both, people retreat into virtual spaces in response to social and environmental decline, and further reinforce that decline "as they abandon civic engagement in the physical world" [11].
Specific dangers. The book lists escape into the virtual, effects on mental and physical health, gaps between those who can use it and those who cannot, corporate control, surveillance and monopoly, and problems of identity and authenticity. Access, it writes, should be treated as a human right, like access to the internet [11]. → digital public infrastructure, Identity and Personhood
Not a rush into the "metaverse". The book writes: "We must, therefore, prevent a headlong rush into a monopolistic and dystopian 'metaverse'", by understanding ISR in relation to the other tools that must complement it [11].
Immersion, or story? Buterin compares the book with another book making similar arguments: that one values shared, game-like stories and lasting over time, while Plurality puts weight on sensory immersion and brief experiences. Which will work out, he says, remains to be seen [6].

Where it fits in Plurality

Part 5 of the book sets out seven forms of collaboration, and ISR is the second. It comes after the most intimate, Post-Symbolic Communication, and before Creative Collaborations [2].

The virtual design studios are sketched as an idea that combines ISR with the methods of tools that help discussion (Augmented Deliberation) [8]. Virtual town halls are also sketched as places to discuss and decide local matters [4].

The book writes that unless ISR networks are built according to the principles of rights and interoperability emphasized in the chapter on the rights operating system, and governed in a ⿻ way, "they will become the most iron monopolistic cages we have known" [11].

Chapter 5-5, "Adaptive Administration", writes that ISR might make up for how hard it is to see inside AI, and build the kind of trust between people that lets them hand over decisions [12].

Sources

Plurality, 5-2, the two paragraphs after the break following the opening — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, chapter summaries (Chapter 5-2) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/86158859464aee75633acd854c656928121a7fd8/contents/english/8-blurb.md ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-2, first two paragraphs — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-2, section "Immersive shared reality tomorrow" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Audrey Tang, "Meeting with Glen Weyl" (2018-11-21) — https://archive.tw/2018-11-21-meeting-with-glen-weyl ［CC0］
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html
Plurality, 5-2, section "Copresence today" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-2, section "Frontiers of immersive shared reality" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao" (the paragraph on Lanier) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］
Audrey Tang, "Conversation with Tom Atlee and Colin Megill" (2018-04-06) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2018-04-06-Conversation-with-Tom-Atlee-and-Colin-Megill.md ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-2, section "Limits of immersive shared reality" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-5, section "Limits of adaptive administration" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-5/eng/ ［CC0］

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