as someone who has put a lot of thoughts into what 'technology' is & the paradigm shift that came from 'modern computers' & what the next step beyond that is, i'm pretty certain that nothing is going to meaningfully change in the concept of 'computer' until that no longer involves screens.
at its core, virtual reality & augmented reality are still some form of 'looking at a screen'. putting on glasses/goggles/headsets/something to 'look at a screen' will always be less impactful & useful than looking at a screen directly in front of you. the epitome of 'looking at a screen' is the most portable screens we have, and how powerful they are. to shake that up, to have any meaningfully different experience, it has to be something other than 'looking at a screen'.
when i wrote ESC, i decided on 'normal glasses' as the most logical final form for screens, because millions of people wear glasses already, and HAVE to, so wearing a thing that people are already used to every waking minute of the day is the only way to change the paradigm within 'looking at a screen'.
i won't claim that i predicted a lot of where technology was going, because there's been signs way before i started writing & thinking about it, but back in 2012 when i wrote ESC, it was 1 year before google glass, 4 years before the oculus rift, my weirdly specific idea of what 'frames' were kept getting announced one after the other as i went from 'thing i wrote' to 'releasing a visual novel' in 2018. we'll probably get to powerful glasses-shaped AR thingies given enough time, and like the story i don't think "AR" or "VR" will ever fully take off until it's in that form.
kinda spoilers for the end of ESC below the jump
anyway, my thoughts then are the same as they are now: which is that what comes after 'computers' isn't possible yet, and may never be possible. it's an integration with reality in a way that involves the human mind & a state of existence that interfaces with what we consider reality. augmented reality can't be a truly augmented experience unless we're adding to the actual conscious experience, versus simply looking through a screen. because then you're still reliant on what's on that screen & the lack of it is superfluous.
in ESC's final scene, when the navigator wakes up and feels what it's like to exist for the first time, that's what i imagine as the actual paradigm shift that is not likely to ever happen. at least i hope not, in a 'science fiction doesn't make for good reality' kind of way.
anyway, please look forward to project astray releasing 20XX
