Open Access

Markus Kreutzer, Aya Bentur, Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, Romi Mikulinsky, Boris Müller

• To consciously perceive and discuss new developments we need new terms. This paper proposes a speculative vocabulary that describes possible characteristics of phygital spaces, an emerging development where the physical and the digital increasingly merge and fundamentally form human perception of reality. The emergence of phygital spaces is driven by dominant digital-economic worldviews that get projected into the future. This might reinforce already problematic circumstances as well as create completely new issues. The paper explores how this could manifest in certain characteristics through the proposition of speculative terms. The terms attempt to describe possible changes in human-world relationships that affect existence, meaning and behavior. Among other things, this includes changes such as the curation of a person's view of the world by personalization algorithms, the enhancement of a person's understanding of the world through algorithmic pre-interpretation or the organization of social systems through synchronized individualTo consciously perceive and discuss new developments we need new terms. This paper proposes a speculative vocabulary that describes possible characteristics of phygital spaces, an emerging development where the physical and the digital increasingly merge and fundamentally form human perception of reality. The emergence of phygital spaces is driven by dominant digital-economic worldviews that get projected into the future. This might reinforce already problematic circumstances as well as create completely new issues. The paper explores how this could manifest in certain characteristics through the proposition of speculative terms. The terms attempt to describe possible changes in human-world relationships that affect existence, meaning and behavior. Among other things, this includes changes such as the curation of a person's view of the world by personalization algorithms, the enhancement of a person's understanding of the world through algorithmic pre-interpretation or the organization of social systems through synchronized individual action recommendations. Futures within which these reality-forming characteristics would exist need to be explored, discussed, shaped and possibly prevented. Language is thereby a tool to enable new conversations and organize actions across a wide range of people. Just as many analytical concepts supported the understanding of existing conditions, this vocabulary tries to support the understanding of possible conditions, enable holistic implication assessments and shifts in worldview beyond current digital-economic paradigms.…