RealitySynth: How is Reality Constructed?

Posted on September 29, 2007
Filed Under Society, Spirituality, Consciousness |

We all have our own ideas, concepts and beliefs on just what reality is. I view reality as multi-contextual - built from infinite perspectives upon infinite subjects. The other day I saw a video presentation on some software from Microsoft called Photosynth, and it has to be one of the closet descriptions on reality-perception I have yet seen. I say reality-perception, because I am referring to how we as a culture jointly perceive reality as a whole.

What is unique about Photosynth is that it creates full images of environments from individual photos. Not specific photos mind you, but any old photos. In the example from the video a photo of Notre Dame is shown, the photo is a fully scalable panoramic image, which you can view from any angle. What is so amazing about this technology is that the image is constructed from random photos pulled from the Internet. For example all the photo’s of Notre Dame can be pulled from a photo gallery like Flickr, the software will then piece all these photos together, regardless of perspective - into a coherent whole.

Now how close does that sound to reality-perception? Each of us have our own unique perspectives - which knit together via our communications, the end result is a cultural perspective on reality. All built from random individual views, regardless of perspective. We could call this RealitySynth.

This is why so much emphasis is placed upon conditioning our perspective or breaking out of that conditioning. It is also how reality as a whole can and is changed. There is a strong relationship in this to the idea of Spheres of Awareness because as you gain a greater perspective (and more of them), you end up with a greater image of the whole. It doesn’t even really matter if the perspectives are contradictory - because they all help to form a clearer and more balanced awareness. The mind is quite capable of working in the same manner as this Photosynth software - and will stitch together all sorts of information into a whole. The key is in realizing that a lot of everyday mainstream information out there is designed precisely to stop this process.

Take a look at the video; if you don’t fancy watching the whole thing - let it load up and skip to 3:55, which is the starting point of the part I am talking about here: