The past 30 years have set the stage for technological and cultural change at an unprecedented scale. The rise of Personal Computing, Internet as well as Smartphones have completely redefined the way we interact with our world as well as each other — today, over 99.9% of the world’s data is stored digitally and half of the world’s’ population is already part of the internet, a figure which is expected to reach closer to 100% by 2020. Every day we’ve been growing more reliant on modern technology as we collectively craft a separate digital universe of information byte by byte — a universe we use to manage everything in our lives from money to our closest social circles.

The digital world, however, holds little resemblance to our physical world — after all, the former is still governed by screens and 2D imagery. Companies have used their mastery of design to make interactions with the digital realm feel more natural through features such as slick user interfaces and touchscreen interaction, but there’s only so much that can be done in a rectangle. Currently, we interface with the digital world at a distance, looking through the windows of the devices we own, but never daring to step any further. The digital world is a world of information, while our physical reality is one of experiences — and because of that distinction those two realities have always remained separate, only connecting to each other through tangents.

But that’s bound to change. The recent rise of Virtual Reality has brought new ways of experiencing information into the light, inspiring a new wave of interaction design and experiential software that enjoys a true sense of presence in digital worlds. Now, a new form of computing stands on the horizon, creating a plane of reality that intersects the physical and virtual world that’s both exceptional and familiar. It is the result of the convergence of several advanced fields of technology that when put together will spur a new age of contextual computing, where digital information seamlessly blends into our physical reality as active parts of our environment — a world where computers can understand our surroundings and where technology feels unbound from the human experience.

This is Mixed Reality — it’s real, it’s here, and it’s one of the biggest technological races since the rise of personal computing.