flogiston

(pronounced flow-jis-ton)

I design things. I'm mostly known for designing immersive cyberspace systems, but I also design products, websites and landscapes. Flogiston is my design company. It has a long pedigree and this site tells its story.

Flogiston was originally a theory of combustion in the 18th century, at a time of transition between alchemy and chemistry. Originated by Becher and promoted by Stahl and Priestley, they believed that matter contained a substance called flogiston (or phlogiston) that was given up when material was burned, and returned to the ether, from whence it came. It was later dis-proven by Lavoisier, who showed that matter got heavier when it burned rather than lighter, because it combined with oxygen. So while the flogiston theory has been a source of dismissal today, for a couple of generations, people thought that was how combustion worked. It was a necessary theory in a time of transition between ignorance and enlightenment. More on the original theory here.

I named my company after this theory because I believe we are in a similar period now, a time of transition between that of living in two spaces, to that of living in three. The first two spaces are the external world of atoms, called realspace, and the internal world of mind, called mindspace. We continually flutter between the two, our attention focusing on what's 'out there', and then what's 'in here'. Information flows back and fore between them continuously. We are naturally bipolar.

Our third space is cyberspace, the digital child of realspace and cyberspace. It is neither one or the other, it is itself, a new kind of space. In the short time it has existed, it has become integrated into the fabric of our society and the way we learn and communicate. It is not just a medium, it is a place where we spend a significant part of our lives. Information now flows between three spaces instead of two. Our children are naturally tripolar, and they will never know what a world without cyberspace was like.

But we have yet to see cyberspace as it truly is. Our displays are windows into cyberspace - we look through them into the space beyond. Flogiston, the company, intends to develop immersive displays that let us go through the window and see the digital void, to make immersion in digital space as natural as being in realspace. We must display cyberspace the way the eye sees. That means full field of view, with no edge to the image.

I started with the flogiston chair, based on the idea of disembodiment - you don't have a body in cyberspace, just an attention vector. The chair was a place to leave your body in its neutral body posture, a minimal stress, minimal attention mode.

Then I integrated the immersive dome into the chair, and it became the flostation. A full field of view display with no face contact, using a standard projector. The dome by itself was called a flodome.

Now I am developing a new kind of head mount display that will give full field of view at high resolution in stereoscopic vision - at a cost that millions can afford. The flogiston eye.

It will open the doors of perception to cyberspace, and we will pour in, never to return. Our existence in threespace will begin.