There will be no slack intellectual conformity here. We are engaged and evolving; we are on a trajectory forward. An age of disconformity is being born; it’s called Virtual Reality.

Should you decide to take residence in Hypatia, you will be held to the highest expectations, for our citizens transcend the banalities of late 20th-century laziness and enter the sublime future where complexity and social engagement are measured by mindful participation.

“Smart” is not based upon archaic measures designed in the early industrial days of the 19th century; we are auto-didactic; we teach ourselves. There is no more secret knowledge; there is only temporary ignorance. The path to enlightenment is now a gesture and investment in one’s own time away. We must teach one another the joy of being hungry for learning. Language, music, art, and other creative endeavors are our currency. Wealth is measured by the creative output and experiences displayed by the mind.

One cannot join this revolution without the full engagement of the 100 billion neurons sitting in their head. We do not often reflect on the idea that our brains are capable of storing the equivalent of between 20 million and possibly more than 2 billion books of information. Maybe David Deutsch, in his book, “The Beginning of Infinity,” is correct that we are on the cusp of the discovery of the infinite due in large part to our exploration of information and the assignment of meaning to all things, which is leading us to an intellectual landscape undreamt of until now.

Then, I posit that knowledge will bring us to a system of wisdom and that VR is the mechanism that, through its immersive nature, will become a teaching tool that exceeds all previous methods of book-transferred information.

In the earliest days of humanity, knowledge was transferred orally between us, and we were slow to advance. With the onset of the enlightenment and, subsequently, the Industrial Revolution, we started making leaping bounds forward in our ability to comprehend the world around us. This was facilitated by books, greater communication, film, and ultimately our smartphones. Some may believe we have reached a pinnacle with these advancements, but the rapid evolution of our scientific minds is not finished.

What will the merger of all media into a virtual universe bring us? One day the entirety of reality may exist for someone to simply ask for any idea or process to be brought forward in an immersive display, the request satisfied instantly, on-demand.

I suggest that these moments will come to be known as the Great Disconformity, the point where humanity separated from its industrial roots to take the quantum leap forward, becoming the people who started altering the very universe.

This is an enlightenment of a new generation, and as a young person, you have an option; participate and evolve or go extinct, and for those unable to adapt, you may be bound to share the fate of the Neanderthals.