IoR Whitepaper
"Internet of Realities:
Beyond IoT to Bridge Human Understanding"
Published at September 28th, 2025
Vision and Challenges of Internet of Realities
The concept of reality—what it is, how we perceive it, and how we share it—has always been central to human thought. Traditionally, reality has been grounded in the physical world, shaped by immediate surroundings, social norms, and the limitations imposed by geography and communication methods. The emergence of mass media unified large populations around shared narratives delivered via television, newspapers, and radio. While this relatively homogeneous perception of reality provided a common foundation for public discourse, it was also constrained by the limited scope of accessible information.
Over time, the rise of the internet and mobile computing dramatically transformed this situation, enabling individuals and communities to create their own "realities" based on personalized content streams, social media feeds, and algorithmically curated recommendations. Consequently, what was once a relatively uniform public sphere of information fragmented into countless customized content segments, each associated with unique beliefs, facts, and values.
In contemporary society, this fragmentation presents both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, personalization allows individuals to access information closely aligned with their interests, cultural backgrounds, and cognitive styles. On the other hand, the formation of "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers" can reduce exposure to diverse perspectives, potentially exacerbating social polarization and misunderstanding. The nature of reality, once anchored by shared experiences, has become increasingly subjective, rapidly evolving, and deeply influenced by technology. New paradigms such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), the metaverse, digital twins, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models are reshaping how we experience and define reality. We are witnessing the emergence of "Realities," dynamic, multilayered, and distributed phenomena that blend physical, digital, social, and personal dimensions.
Within this context, we propose the concept of an "Internet of Realities" (IoR). IoR is envisioned as an information communication infrastructure that provides not only facts, data, and multimedia content but also representations of subjective experiences, worldviews, and cultural narratives. Just as the Internet of Things (IoT) integrates physical devices into the digital domain and the Internet of Services structures functional offerings globally, IoR aims to connect and harmonize diverse perceptions of reality. Through this unified framework, individuals from different regions, disciplines, and backgrounds can share overlapping realities, facilitating greater understanding, empathy, and collaboration.
IoR relies on several foundational research directions. First, methods are needed to represent subjective and intersubjective realities. Computational tools for "Reality Embedding" must capture how individuals perceive, interpret, and emotionally respond to their environments. Second, effective ways to present these diverse realities to users individually and collectively must be developed. "Reality Hosting" will leverage immersive technologies such as VR, AR, metaverse platforms, and AI to selectively display and manage individual or group realities. Third, IoR requires an underlying infrastructure—"Reality Networking"—to connect these complex realities, enabling transitions between different perspectives while maintaining context, nuance, and trust. Finally, "Reality Transformation" must be supported through societal demonstrations and large-scale implementations to demonstrate how these technologies can address social issues such as loneliness, misunderstandings in multicultural contexts, and enhancing citizen participation in global smart cities.
Each of these efforts faces common challenges. Technologically, systems must be scalable, interoperable, and capable of processing diverse data types while maintaining user privacy, safety, and agency. Socially and ethically, inclusivity must be ensured, preventing an expansion of the digital divide. Additionally, as AI systems become capable of generating highly personalized realities, it becomes critical to carefully balance personalization and authenticity, ensuring these advanced technologies promote mutual understanding rather than arbitrary manipulation.
In proposing IoR, we acknowledge that we do not have all the answers. Rather, we aim to foster a new interdisciplinary exploration merging insights from computer science, cognitive science, psychology, urban studies, ethics, and other fields. Achieving this requires developing new computational models reflecting human cognition, scalable infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks. IoR aspires to transcend mere information exchange, evolving into a next-generation internet paradigm characterized by dynamic interactions among multiple interwoven realities. By explicitly recognizing and addressing the complexity of subjective realities—through embedding, hosting, networking, and transformation—we believe it is possible to guide technology toward supporting global well-being, cultural understanding, and collaborative problem-solving.
Written by Takuro Yonezawa