Humanity is about to leave the terrestrial world behind for the virtual one ahead. We may not be able to escape our solar system, and for many of us, we’ll never find ourselves walking the surface of an alien planet. But the instinct for nomadism is still raging and propelling people to explore the unknown. Where do you go when the Earth we live on has already been trekked, mapped, and brought into the imagination of our species?

You start to explore the mind!

Yes, philosophers have already been doing that for thousands of years. They wanted to know who we were, why we were here, and what it all meant. Lofty ambitions for this tiny cadre of explorers of the obtuse and not exactly the entertaining Dionysian revelry that appeals to the average person.

So how does this “Average person” start to explore the mind?

We build a bridge.

This bridge is called Virtual Reality. Our contribution is but a small part of the larger ecosystem, just as a tree is part of the forest. Our bridge (or branch) connects the abstract with the known the real with the imagined. It’s an interface that links knowledge discovered by humanity to all who gain access to this immersive virtual world. It is different from reality in the fact that many of the laws of physics, space, time, and economy do not apply here.

In the real world, I cannot summon actors from across history to present themselves before me. I cannot make a book materialize in my hands because I desire it. I may not have the resources for or access to mentors, tutors, or services that would otherwise benefit my intellectual standing in the world.

Virtual Reality changes this and does so dramatically.

You see, in VR, we can bring to you the likeness and words of Benjamin Franklin or Sir Isaac Newton. A holographic representation of any book could be yours for the asking. While a student might live in Monkeys Eyebrow, Kentucky, he or she could have instant access to a tutoring avatar by dropping into a VR classroom without the need to travel to the next big city of Nashville, Tennessee, 160 miles (260km) away.

Some may counter that the internet already offers this type of service, and the student merely must visit Khan Academy, Coursera, Lynda, or Wikipedia to find knowledge and start exploring learning opportunities. This is partly true.

I’ll give you an example of why I believe that. When those of us who live in big cities are out wandering and strolling by a shop front and see a Zumba class, we just encountered serendipity. Maybe we stop in and talk with the manager or pick up a flyer and read up on it, possibly even join. Likewise, the local Center of the Arts is featuring a performance of Whirling Dervishes – do you even know what that is or who they are? Big cities bestow great opportunity upon those of us growing up in them by offering us serendipitous moments of finding novel and exciting things to do and learn. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I happen to know where to find lessons in Navajo rug weaving. Do you know where to find that in your community?

In Virtual Reality, this workshop will be available to everyone where they might learn about it while wandering the streets of somewhere like Timefire’s Hypatia.

Hypatia, then, is not only a bridge, but it is also a kind of philosopher’s stone in that we are taking the electrons, photons, and math behind a bunch of complex code and turning what might be just so much noise into a learning opportunity, gold in its own right.

Education is our age’s gold and building a bridge that allows more of humanity to cross the delta from ignorance to opportunity is an essential road we must construct. As we at Timefire lay down the stones that pave the way, we will be looking for and recruiting like-minded architects of digital culture to help bridge this span.

A casual observer sees “something” and immediately begins to critique the situation, narrative, characters, or appearance. They do not see the underlying background, conflict, cause, science, or events that brought this “something” to the state of being observed. On the other hand, a participating mind has a sense and consideration of the effort, thought, or creativity that has been put into play to bring such a “something” to our attention.

Let’s take any old game, for example; the observer offers their glib opinions regarding the environment, characters, other players, or gameplay. They do not see the conditions or efforts of those who have created the story and its constituent parts. This is true about most observations that pertain to others performing in their career or craft. We tend to have an immediacy of perception that forces us to make instantaneous judgments, often hostile, especially if we don’t like the other side. While this served us in the early stages of human evolution due to the need to evaluate potentially dangerous situations or form alliances, our current age is pushing us toward participation and mindfulness.

While this likely does not pertain to the current generations of adults, when we look at the kids who play Minecraft, we are witnessing a phenomenon that should amaze us. As of one year ago, there were over 100 million global participants playing Minecraft, which is nearly a third of the population of the United States. These players are not battling for supremacy; they are collaborating in a massive experiment in group social participation.

Does this imply that humanity may be on the verge of a shift from passive observers to active participants? I’m certain some social scientists would call me out for my casual proposition and non-scientific approach, but I see that nothing short of a radical move is occurring in our global relationships where, for the connected kids of today, earth’s borders are falling.

The implications of these changes are noticeable already. One is no longer a non-acting cog in the machine of their work. We do not train for one day and work the following 40 years doing roughly the same task. Nearly everyone will agree these days that their jobs require full participation with continual training and learning of new ways of working and handling information. While at this time, this may be one-to-one’s self-participation in order to hold a job, it is a harbinger of what is around the corner.

Watch eight-year-olds play Minecraft, they do so in groups of four or five with their tablets in their laps and the world tuned out. What should make us think this isn’t turning into a future habit and they will expect to work the same way? And then why wouldn’t they approach learning and handling tasks cooperatively, too?

We already know that television usage is dropping among younger generations, and while some may belittle their non-stop consumption of texting, gameplay, and watching viral cat videos, the point is that they are in group communication and learning new social skills that are different from older generations.

What else can be understood about a participative generation is that they are not so emotionally affected by differences. They do not care as much about appearance, orientation, or belief systems as much as they do about communication, compassion, and skills. They are oblivious to the disdain and bias shown to them by an intolerant bunch of old people. These characteristics of our emerging generations will be fundamental traits of their culture. And it will be a culture different from our own.

The tools, education, and guidance we supply to the next generation are imperatives that rest on our shoulders to properly mentor and allow their forward evolution to occur. We should not stymie their progress because of our antiquated social conditioning that arguably served the generations of the past two centuries, though at the same time, created a mass of passive observers who have essentially, through laissez-faire attitudes crippled the environment, may have set in motion the sixth great extinction, and produced a one-sided economy with a less than noble quarreling government.

Participation is the only apparent solution to these intractable problems of our current age, but it won’t be us that lead the way. It will be the 100 million-plus players of Minecraft and the approaching hundreds of millions of people who, in the next ten years, will be playing and experiencing vast participative environments being created for Virtual Reality.

I am certain a sea change is at hand and while it is us “old-timers” that have created the stepping stone, it is also our hostility to change that could derail this important next step. Humanity must put to rest this yoke of disconnection with personal responsibility along with the arm-chair criticism formed out of passive observation and invest in and empower responsible participation for the health and vibrancy of our future.

It has probably always been within humankind’s ability to create music, be it with clapping hands, hummed melodies, or tapped objects.

Today, though, we are entering a new age by extending those abilities with an infinite digital toolkit for audio doodling.

For many years, we have had small analog and digital devices that allowed us to flirt with rudimentary musical patterns, rhythms, and “doodling.” Apple’s iPad has certainly extended the ecosystem by bringing hundreds of apps to the market, allowing people everywhere in the privacy of their earbuds to experiment with sound. One of the biggest innovations here was “Gesture” input, as this opened the ability to play as one would with an expressive instrument – a type of instrument characterized by continuous tone manipulation instead of triggering sounds on and off.

This, though, will pale in comparison to the next wave of sound authoring and composition. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 series of tablets might be just a continuation of portables to many, but to me, this will represent a breakthrough product.

It is rumored that this new tablet will have more RAM, more storage, a larger screen, a faster CPU, and faster graphics, and it will all be tied together with Windows 10. While the previous version of the Surface certainly had many of these attributes in one form or another, it is the advent of this portable workstation-class tablet paired with a powerful, full-fledged operating system that will transport the work we do to new heights.

Not only will I have the power to operate Adobe’s Lightroom, create 3D objects and animation in Blender, paint with Krita or Black Ink, and sculpt using 3D-Coat, but I’ll also be able to use the full functionality of a major DAW – Digital Audio Workstation.

This is significant and deserves further exploration as to why I see this as a watershed moment.

Recently, I started flirting with some digital audio tools to make electronic music. I’ve had a long interest in this genre starting back in 1977 after first listening to Throbbing Gristle, who gave us Industrial Music, followed by noise auteur William Bennett with Whitehouse. Synthpop gave way to EBM (Electronic Body Music) with Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb until Techno was officially born (America called it Electronica). Today, young people from around the world listen to EDM, Dubstep, Trap, House, Trance, Ambient, and a host of other sub-genres, all tracing their roots to the beginnings of electronic music.

Creating this or any other form of recorded music was traditionally rather expensive, not only did you require a lot of gear, you needed a recording studio, engineer, record label, maybe some bandmates, and a distributor. That all changed with MP3s and Napster using the Internet to create a new music industry, but you still needed a load of equipment.

Today that is changing rapidly, and now I, too, have the opportunity to explore making music on my own without the backing of a corporation or the outlay of large amounts of money.

This brings me back to the Surface Pro. On this one-third-of-an-inch thick device (9mm), I can and will install my favorite DAW – Bitwig. Not only is this my recording and mixing studio, but it is also the container for all of the instruments (the band members) and effects that I could hope to want. What I won’t need is a MIDI input device, drum machine, or analog synthesizer. Keyboards tend to be large, and even small drum pads are bulky when trying to go mobile.

Using the Surface Pro as a multi-touch input system, I will be able to use three dimensions of operability. Sliding my finger up and down the screen might affect the oscillator, while left and right motion can alter the pitch. From there, I use the included pen and the instrument responds to the pressure I’m pushing into the Surface with. With a push of a button, I have my drum pads on the screen.

Now that I have my music studio, a host for instruments, and an input device, I can start to extend the capability of the DAW. I should emphasize that this is another major reason why a tablet with an operating system in this small form factor is a game-changer.

First, I load up my VST’s. These are add-ons that offer functionality that no one manufacturer could hope to create in their DAW. For example, Xfer Records (of Dead Mau5 fame) created Cthulhu, which allows the artist to play chords with one key; this is great if you don’t know how to play the piano or you’re not carrying around a keyboard with you. Also, from Xfer is Nerve for beat creation. In an instant, the artist has access to hundreds of beat patterns and percussion instruments for laying down the first part of a track.

From here, I turn to Bazille from U-He or Circle 2 from Future Audio Workshop. While Bitwig comes with a couple of synthesizers and hundreds of presets, these aftermarket synths are amazing toys to play with while exploring the creation of sounds. Next up, I can rely on any number of tools from Glitchmachines, whose plugins mangle and churn my creations into truly unique soundscapes.

Between these VSTs and Bitwig, there is a kind of glue that pulls the elements together in the form of various devices, filters, containers, effects, and utilities that can be sandwiched between instruments and VSTs or tacked onto the end or beginning of the chain that yet again alter my audio experiments.

The point is I have a nearly infinite amount of options to play with that can create exquisite sounds and maybe even occasionally music.

So just as previous generations might have sketched their ideas in a notebook or kept a diary, strummed their guitar or played harmonica on a Saturday night, or penned a book on their laptop, we are on the verge of a new mobile revolution where the universe of musical production is sitting in your lap.

The complicated but short answer is we are Temporal Immersive Multidimensional Enlightenment For Intraspecific Rebirth Emergence.

Let’s tease this apart:

TEMPORAL is understood as things relating to worldly affairs to material existence; it is secular as it relates to time as opposed to eternity.

IMMERSIVE is where we generate a three-dimensional image that appears to surround the user. This comes from the word “Immerse,” which means to be fully involved in an activity or interest.

MULTIDIMENSIONAL involves several dimensions or aspects. For example, while existing in the real world, we can now experience a multitude of virtual worlds, too.

ENLIGHTENMENT can be seen as finding insight and understanding. It is awareness, wisdom, education, learning, and the acquisition of knowledge.

FOR – conjunction bringing these ideas together

INTRASPECIFIC occurring within a species or between individuals of a single species; between us.

REBIRTH – the action of starting to flourish or increase after a decline; revival.

EMERGENCE is the process of coming into view or being, of becoming important or prominent, being exposed after being concealed.

Our goals are that lofty; they must be as we are exploring a new language of communication using Virtual Reality. Not only might our name appear pretentious once you understand its meaning, but the engineers who are a part of this collaborative effort are referred to as Geometric Ontological Designers. They are a new class of scientists/artists that, as the description suggests, are trying to make sense of this visual paradigm that has no precedence in the history of humanity. As such, they are creating new worlds, cities, and creatures in a digital cosmos that is about to enter the consciousness of all of us. This age of TIMEFIRE is the beginning of witnessing the infinity of our minds.

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.