Last revised on September 26, 2024 at 11:56:21. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.
At the foundation there is always a conflict. Abstraction is a way of solving it, yet one that does not eliminate it and creates new problems afterwards.
For example, the credit card was a response to the inconvenience and insecurity of cash. However, it did not abolish cash entirely, but proved itself to be easily counterfeited. And today it is being replaced by mobile payments.
Phygitality aims to bridge the divide between the digital and physical sides of our lives. Therefore, its emergence is not arbitrary. Its fact does not result from creativity for the sake of creativity, unfolding only in the own sphere. Nothing in it is self-contained.
Phygitality reflects the objective technical development. The evolution of electronic-computing machines was hitherto their concretisation. At each next stage they integrated functions previously external to them. Human-computer interaction became more and more interactive.
With the advent of the graphical interface, our every action caused an instant machine reaction, and immediately continued as reactions to reactions, no matter whose, over and over again. The Internet, by connecting many people together, made such communication social. Later, social networks scaled it almost to the entire population.
But this process was limited by the hardware. The experience of this interaction remained circumscribed to the screen, keyboard and mouse. An important part of our sensible faculties was excluded from this. And it demanded its resolution.
Phygitality addresses this enquiry. Digital objects manipulated as physical and physical objects as digital is its goal.
In computer science, abstraction is concrete. It combines structure and operation. The code of a programme is the sequence of the action it performs. The previous development here rendered this latter visible (on the screen) and modifiable (with keyboard and mouse), but not tangible.
Thus, to take everything that happens in the computer outside of it, or to actualise virtual entities, there needs to be the next abstraction, qualitatively different from the preceding ones - the phygital one.
Phygital object is not this or that, it is a succession passing from its simple individuations to increasingly complex ones.
Its evolution is a gradual adaptation of its inner elements to each other. They will tend to be more and more multifunctional and coherent, so that one cannot be eliminated without destroying the entire structure.
For example, in the 1910 internal combustion engine, the cooling fins are on the outside of the cylinder head, and serve for cooling alone. In the 1956 model, they get a mechanical role, and now resist the deformation under gas pressure. In this case, the volumetric unit is inseparable from the heat-dissipating one, and if the latter is removed, the former will cease to work.
Such incremental convergence is relevant not only for thermodynamic engineering but for computer science as well. Phygital object will equally follow the same principle. So at the first stage, it will just be a tokenised chip. Namely, the public key of this latter will be its record in the blockchain. And the lost physical asset would be equivalent to the inaccessible secret key. At the second, it will be represented by two tokens - one responsible for the tangible part, the other for the virtual - and so that the latter will be able to recover the former.
This would require:
marking the physical component of the object as unavailable;
proving control over its respective digital one;
The protocol will then send a request to the creator (PEA), who will reissue this missing piece for a fraction of its cost. Thus, both sides of any phygital entity will be more co-dependent. And they will be able to perform operations previously infeasible for them (for example, the recovery). Obviously, the PAL protocol can be scalable even further.
The horizon of this whole sequence - whatever changes therein - is the material code. This is the limit of phygitality at which things will be identical to programmes.
Despite its impossible today, the state described above is a concrete utopia. Clarify its concept.
Firstly, it expresses what the world has not yet become and thereby introduces this yet-not into it. In this way a multitude of unrealised potencies turn out to be discernible and hence realisable.
Secondly, and in doing so, it addresses a specific contradiction which would appear to be completely sublated after its accomplishment.
How be it, putting forward a utopian concept is a stake, and at the same time a necessity. Since the second nature is dynamic, the finale of any tendency cannot be known in advance. But without prior knowledge of such a finale, no one can navigate anywhere.
A strong phygitality will therefore continue to guide the development of the protocol.
Phygitalisation begins where digitalisation ends. Its ultimate goal is to transfer the laws of the virtual world to the actual one.
There are several stages in this process. Let them be hypothetical at the moment, for only the first of them can be called past.
So, the principle here is the growth of:
In turn, this double movement gradually increases the agency of such entities in relation to their environment. Thus, if in the beginning a predetermined framework sets their role and form, afterwards it is reversed. And individuality establishes its own niche through its existence alone.
Chronologically, this becoming can be presented as follows:
Yesterday. Bank cards. The user owns an account, but not the medium to which it is linked. All data is stored and processed on a centralised basis.
Today. RWA, accessories from the fashion industry. Ownership extends to both the digital and physical part. However, only through the former can the latter be manipulated. Their connection remains one-way. Decentralisation is still partial, as some of the information cannot be recorded on the blockchain. Plus, there is no common milieu that allows an object to be transferred from one realm to another. Each asset is confined to the ecology that created it.
Tomorrow. A phygital object can be anything. Attaching a chip to the thing and registering it in the appropriate protocol is enough. Actions on its physical aspect can change its digital one. There is no more division by realms. All phygital objects share a unified associated milieu.
After Tomorrow. A new type of matter that would give tangible beings the non-tangible plasticity (e.g. Hiroshi Ishii’s Radical Atoms project). Erasing the boundary between a substance and a programme. Treating a certain material is identical to writing code. The exchange of them is similar to the current realisation of software. In addition, a decentralised system able to maintain all the content appears.
Nevertheless, to move to the next stages, the current situation must be overcome. Today, many projects offer a niche usage of phygitality. Their product is usually some chipped goods with a corresponding on-chain records (e.g. pixel art stylised glasses from Nouns). But it stays singular, and as such is hardly capable of taking the digital sphere beyond itself.
To do this, therefore, requires a shift from partial to universal phygitality. Why be limited to one-off adaptations if this latter is applicable to almost every industry? And it could solve some of their difficulties - above all, provide them with a proof of ownership that would be hardly counterfeitable, verifiable and scalable. For example, a digital version of an artwork could no longer be placed for sale without the artist’s consent.
Furthermore, non-fungible tokens would gain a real equivalent along with a social function. And commodities (more precisely, everything that can be chipped) could be traded entirely on the web3 infrastructure.
Phygital Abstraction Conceptual Framework (PACF) is a formal framework that is used to characterize the meaning of phygital object and the entailment relations among phygital environment containing them, they give a detailed account on how phygital abstractions provide some of the conceptual principles that a grounding of phygital concepts.
The PACF itself is just a formal tool. To develop a
The most widely applications of PACF target <> <> rules governing context-dependent application, which pick out different things depending on the context in which the phygital object is used, such applications of PACF are intended to systematize and explain uncontroversial aspects of concept “phygital”.
We defines an Phygital Abstraction as a condensed redescription of phygital and perceptual experience for the purpose of mapping spatial-temporal structures onto conceptual structure represented as a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions that gives coherence and structure to our experience.
In this setting we considers implementation of phygital abstraction as the family structures of object relations in constructed phygital enveronment.
We present a three level hierarchy of phygital abstracion: (1) ‘Spatial primitives’: basic spatial building blocks, (2) ‘Phygital Events’: simple spatial events using the primitives, and (3) ‘conceptual integrations’: phygital abstraction combinded with non-spatial elements such as force or emotions.
The notion of ‘phygital abstraction’ is central to conceptual <> and is increasingly being used in <> approaches and that phygital abstraction can serve as core building blocks for phygital objects in phygital environment. With this in mind, the study investigated different aspects of phygital abstractions in object conceptualisation for the purpose of identifying general patterns in phygital environment and their relationships.
CONTAINMENT: capturing the notion that an object can be within a border (two-dimensional), or inside a container (three-dimensional), It denotes the relationship between an inside and an outside and the border in between. From a dynamic aspect, it also contains image-schematic components such as IN and OUT. The temporal aspect of CONTAINMENT includes the notions of ‘entering’ and ‘exiting’.
CONTACT: Phygital (or sometimes abstract) contact between two phygital objects.
LINK: An enforced connection between objects or physical/digital parts, where transitivity ensures that the linked object reacts to the stimuli of the other object.
SUPPORT: Denotes a relationship between two objects in which one object offers phygital (or abstract) support to the other.
SOURCE_PATH_TARGET: Concerns movement from a source to a target. It contains spatial primitives such as a path and a trajectory.
CYCLE: The returning pattern, such as the daily cycle.
This section propose he idea that combinations of phygital abstractions represent the underlying conceptualisations of complex phygital environment and simple events. Likewise, phygital notion relied on the idea that concepts could be partly defined by their involved object and abstractions. In this section, these ideas are further investigated empirically by presenting an experimental study that define the phygital abstrction behind a series of common objects in phygital environment.
Future work will have to confirm the findings in more refined set-ups, extend the approach to dynamic presentations of phygital abstraction, and address the multimodality of phygital objects beyond the basic