My name is Matthew Markovich and I am currently an Editorial Director for a global digital marketing agency. Throughout my career, I have worked as a writer, editor, and strategic communications professional with an emphasis on technology, cloud computing, AI and ML, and EdTech. Starting from an early age, I have been fascinated by the relationship between creativity and mental illness, and have been similarly fascinated by emerging technologies across medicine, engineering, neurology, and data science. I am based in Oakland, California, but currently live in Helsinki, Finland.
I became involved with Convergent Reality (CR) following a series of conversations with Dominique Moralez after we met during the 90-Day Finn program in Helsinki in 2022. Through our talks, I found that his ideas about CR mirrored my thoughts that we are at a very clear inflection point in the history of human civilization that requires new ways of considering and shaping our experience of the world and our place in it. These conversations soon turned towards identifying ways we could more effectively define CR and communicate its scope and value as a rapidly emerging discipline.
In the face of rapidly accelerating advancements and hyperspecialization across many fields, it is becoming clear that traditional boundaries between realms like technology and biology, physics – even economics – are becoming less clear. We are at a stage that requires a fundamental rethinking of these boundaries, and what the advances from these new disciplines will mean for how we understand our bodies, minds, and how they interact with and encounter the world in new and complex ways. This will demand a new way of comprehending these converging realities – a definition of a new field of study, Convergent Reality or CR. Each practitioner will arrive at their own understanding of it and its value for their work, and that’s the very essence of CR – the convergence of diverse perspectives.
The solution is to explain CR in terms that individuals can fully grasp the practical relevance of CR principles to their worldview and work by defining the organizing principles of CR, its foundational elements, and creating a scaffold – through communications, performances, and conferences – for interested parties to further explore CR concepts, and potentially self-identify as “convergent realist.” A convergent realist is one who accepts the premises of CR and incorporates them into their thinking in ways that have a meaningful impact on their practice -whatever that may be.
CR is a field of study, and a lens for inquiry, that encompasses the very way humans perceive the world and the ongoing evolution of that perception. From the accelerating merging of technology and biology in fields like neurotech, to VR, AR, and XR, and the explosion of AI and machine learning, CR is a framework that encompasses broader concepts of convergence, accelerationism, and intersectionality. It invites researchers, artists, scientists, philosophers, designers, physicians, musicians – across all fields – to step outside of their current notion of reality, and actively seek to understand new ways of engaging with consciousness. In short, CR offers an organizing principle, a common framework, and a shared vocabulary which all of these various disciplines can use to begin to discern common patterns, reveal interrelatedness, and encourage cross-pollination and collaboration.
Increasingly, our shared perception of reality is shifting. We are exiting an era in which the boundaries of our current senses, physical abilities, and cognition are the same as they have been for tens of thousands of years, and entering an era in which we will be able to fundamentally alter what we have previously encountered as “reality.” Popular culture concepts of the metaverse and the multiverse in fiction and film are all useful ways to conceptualize convergent reality, and point towards a growing desire and ability to re-think these traditional boundaries at a mass scale. This is taking place at the same time that hyperspecialization is occurring across a broad range of scientific, academic, and creative disciplines, and strict notions of fields of study are becoming fragments, and compelling traditional boundaries between disciplines to become more porous.
This is not hyperbole, science fiction, or wishful thinking. We are at an inflection point when humans will be able to not only imagine alternate realities (as in science fiction or fantasy), but develop and engage with alternate forms of reality in meaningful ways. In many fields, current research has already surpassed the creative community’s imagination. Just as computer modeling did in the 1980s, new developments in data science, biology, and engineering are extending our ability to imagine new ways of experiencing – and creating – new realities at a fundamental level, and have already led many disciplines to develop new concepts in ways believed to be previously impossible, or not yet conceivable. The opportunity convergent reality represents is limitless because it is, by definition, self-perpetuating and without boundaries as it is based on the notion of identifying and maximizing the potential of complex, emergent systems.
As a result, in the face of ever-increasing emergence, accelerationism, and complexity, the perspective convergent realists bring to creative and scientific organizations, communities – and also corporations and economies – will become essential to maintaining momentum for continued growth and development.
CR is a field of study, and a lens for inquiry, intended to identify and maximize the potential of complex, emergent systems and encompasses the very way humans perceive the reality and the evolution of that perception in any way. It invites researchers, artists, scientists, philosophers, designers – across all fields – to actively seek out cross-disciplinary collaboration and to understand new ways of engaging with consciousness.
A convergent realist is one who accepts the premises of CR and incorporates them into their thinking in a way that has a meaningful impact on their practice - whatever that may be.
Author: Matthew Markovich, Convergent Reality (CR) Advisor Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmarkovich/
Published by Convergent Reality (CR) on 22 May 2023