Cultural awareness and integration will continue to evolve as important essential keys to finding success in the global realm of ideas. Isolationism and nationalism will increasingly be seen as impediments to joining the stage of economic growth that relies on goods and ideas crossing borders. In the market of commodities where wood, steel, and coal are traded, there are simply raw materials that do not convey any information about those who harvested or created them.
Today raw materials are more frequently coming to be defined as software, energy, financial transactions, art, music, ethnic foods, and clothes from all corners of our earth. This type of trade is happening more and more by individuals who are imprinting important cultural information on their products. Through global communication and custom small-scale manufacturing, the localized contribution of the creators will continue to color the final product and influence its viability in the market of ideas. Ethical human behavior, as demonstrated by one’s social footprint, becomes part of a product’s DNA, and the way we do business evolves.
In consideration of this awareness, in designing my virtual world called Hypatia, it had been my goal to try to bridge these needs and offer a platform where young people could start to cultivate the acquisition of skill sets that would better allow them to compete in the global workforce. In this virtual world, creativity is the currency and sharing of the product.
We tried to facilitate this by creating a virtual international commercial area that encourages collaboration and learning through doing and exploration, which is nothing more than what helped usher in modernity, such as back on the Silk Road when traders would become aware of others’ cultures and practices. Through this exchange and over time, humanity moved into the Renaissance, where we saw an explosion of creativity in the arts and the beginning of modern science.
Our ambition was nothing less than the creation of a new Silk Road and Renaissance where art and science would enter a new dimension driven by the possibility that we are about to explore the infinite. Our age requires a boldness hitherto unseen in education to expand the scope of learning beyond borders, but this will require visionaries who will take risks with us to help shape what this future might look like.
One thing is certain: regardless of who leads this charge, the idea of the necessity of change is now in the wild and will, like all human thought, spread through our societies to those prepared to venture into the unknown, becoming the leaders and trailblazers who will chart a course for our future.
You can find this labor of love called Hypatia at TimefireVR and download it for FREE from Steam, Vive, or Oculus.