Increasingly, the virtual became reality by a hybridization of the world as we knew it: the process that went on in recent years is one of a technically assisted hybridization of both space and self, the »old« world is becoming virtualized and functionalized to a degree never experienced before. For the first time in human history, we have reached a threshold where we have not only to re-assert but to redefine ourselves, as regards our fundamental terms of understanding what world means for us, our base of existence and now an assemblage of mixed realities; and connected, what being human means.

Ulrich Gehmann (Dipl.-Biol., lic. oec. HSG et MA History) is founder of the working group »Formatting of Social Spaces« at University of Karlsruhe and editor-in-chief of the journal »New Frontiers in Spatial Concepts«. Martin Reiche (B.Sc.) is an audiovisual installation artist living and working in Berlin, Germany.