Mixed Reality or One Reality: a Socio-Semiotic Approach to Hybrid Multiagent Environments

This paper is a terminological discussion of the term "mixed reality" (as used in "mixed reality environments", "mixed reality information spaces" and "mixed reality architecture"). It departs from a sociological definition of "reality" and concentrates on multiagent system interactions involving human agents and artificial agents. The conclusion is that for the agents participating in such interactions there exists only one reality (in the sociological sense of the word). The notion of "mixed reality" is therefore not applicable to such contexts, and neither is the notion of "augmented reality", focused on the perceptual integration of "real" and "virtual" space on the part of the human user. The term "hybrid multiagent environments" is introduced to describe the context in which interactions take place. What should be terminologically stressed as "mixed" (i.e. "hybrid") in the case at hand is the nature of the context of interactions (involving two environments and two types of agents) rather than the notion of reality resulting from these interactions (which is not "mixed" or "hybrid" but "one", in the sociological sense of the word.) Such a view of "one" or "shared" reality should be adopted both for the purpose of analysis and for the purpose of programming human agent-artificial agent interaction in artificial agent modelling.