Modeling a Digitally Enhanced Real World Inspired by Agential Realism—Exploring Opportunities and Challenges

In this paper, we propose a conceptual-model called the virtualizing/reframing (V/R) twin model to construct a digitally enhanced real world. The V/R twin model simulates the real world, and is an extension of the conventional digital-twin model, which can accurately model the real world and provides a general-purpose method for building digital services that enhance the real world. The major difference between the proposed model and the conventional digital-twin model is its consideration of diverse new information-presentation devices that have been recently developed. The V/R twin model is inspired by agential realism to include the “entanglement of the social and the material”, and the proposed observable-world consists of the social and material that are separate, according to the current context. After explaining the outline of the V/R twin model, where four virtualizing-patterns and reframing-patterns are introduced, the potential opportunities for the V/R twin model are examined, from multiple perspectives.