Computing power is increasing rapidly, while prices of digital electronic devices continue to fall. Daily use of electronic appliances is considered a fact in most parts of the world. In urban centers, it is almost unthinkable for a person not to have a computer and a cell phone. While all this computing force starts to be everywhere around us, and to constitute henceforth an integral part of our everyday lives, there is a “network” of interconnected calculating systems that starts to build up, that strengthens our perception of our environment and also changes the way we move and experience the real world.
In such an environment, we perceive our body, simultaneously as both real and “virtual”. As real or fictitious, as the body of a remote person, with which we converse via the screen. We witness the creation of a “second self” within us, one that socializes, works, learns and has fun, through the internet.
As long as spaces in which we live and work continue to be “augmented” with more calculating systems, “virtual spaces” (internet, virtual environments) will continue to grow in size and quantity, and with them, the importance of our “virtual selves” in them.
This will lead to the creation of a “hybrid reality” where real and virtual space coexist, and have the same importance in our everyday routine.
Today, many researchers, seek a common “place” where these two worlds can coexist. The projection of “virtual space” on real space, via “augmented reality”, can constitute the spark for the achievement of this goal, and if it does, it will create the need for a new “hybrid architecture”, one which not only provides for the material needs of a person, but also takes into account the needs of calculating force, instant information access and “virtual socializing” that our “electronic nature” seeks.