Paranovirus: Bridging Realities Using Digital Media Simulations

What is "real" can become muddled when immersive media, the imagination, and our senses overlap-as anyone who has read a scary novel on a stormy night will tell you. In the spirit of making dreams tangible, this paper reimagines how concepts from science fiction films and novels can be applied to interactions between physical reality, simulations, and the imagination. Models of presence and cognition inform a set of design principles and tactics for displaying simulations in the form of subliminal or preconscious media, which evoke the imagination to cause the simulations to appear to be physically real. Potential for abuse of such technology is illustrated through Paranovirus, a malicious software concept which infects Augmented Reality (AR) glasses and enables bad actors to covertly influence the behavior and mental states of individuals.