The Spatial Web: How Web 3.0 Will Connect Humans, Machines, and AI to Transform the World

by Gabriel Rene

Today, we can’t share knowledge all that effectively because we cannot share our mental models and maps of the world directly between brains. We can’t copy/paste ideas and concepts between ourselves, much less create, edit, or share them with AI, or IoT devices. The human mind constructs a 3D mental model of reality that (today) cannot not be directly shared between others. Whereas we think and reason spatially, traditionally, we’ve relied on language, words, and visual representation in the form of 2D or 3D drawings to convey spatial information and context to others. The capture, transmission, and interpretation of objects in space acts is like a Private Virtual Reality (VR) that must be translated into a foreign tongue of words, text, or pictures in order to be shared. We’re forced to use 2nd order mediums that reduce and degrade our internal models. Along the way, we lose much of the fidelity, nuance, and context. But what if we had the technology to collaborate with machines and artificial intelligence to share collective 3D models and maps of our experience and knowledge directly? Instead of being locked in our Private VR we could share in a kind of multi-dimensional Public AR—a digitally-mediated consensus reality — an idea as exciting as it is concerning. However, using Distributed Ledger technologies like Blockchain could enable us to reliably verify factual data about the world while enabling the freedom to collaboratively explore, edit, mashup, and remix reality...