Last weekend I attended MIT Reality Hack 2024. For anyone unfamiliar, its an annual hackathon hosted at MIT centered on XR. This was my first time going, and I had a truly incredible experience.
To express what I loved about it, it’s necessary to give a little bit of context. I attended because several close friends of mine working in the VR and AR industry (often described with the umbrella term XR industry) encouraged me to apply. I never would have known about it had it not been for them, much less applied. As a mechanical engineer, when I was accepted I wondered whether it could have been some kind of mistake, and worried that if I attended I would embarrass myself. As it turns out, neither of those are true.
My friend’s clarified that while there are hackathons for the XR industry where acceptance is more restricted, MIT Reality Hack despite being big and well respected is incredibly inclusive, and encourages the participation of people who are less experienced in the industry or who have it skills adjacent to XR.
After attending, I found this proved to be the case. I feel very comfortable with my ability to design and build physical items using parametric modeling software and real world tools, but unity, unreal, and a whole host of software tools employed by XR professionals are well outside my experience. (I have completed the blender guru donut tutorial, so I have experience with blender, but in the time since I completed it I haven’t retained memory of all the shortcuts).
But this is the thing that’s so impressed me about reality hack- despite the event being prestigious in the sense that it’s hosted by one of the most respected engineering institutions in the world, sponsored by the biggest companies in the industry, and attended by the most talented professionals, it’s also inclusive- they openly encourage people just beginning their XR careers and experience professionals from other industries to participate. The result is radical in multiple respects:
- The act of working hard as part of a team with considerable resources but no profit motive feels like something pulled from a utopian post scarcity future
- The inclusion of hard-working amateurs making valuable contributions side by side with teammates boasting years of experience models an egalitarian future where everyone’s contributions are valuable, regardless of their level of experience
- Mixed reality feels almost magical, in literal fantastical sense, as reality itself is subverted through technological wizardry.
Any one of these three factors could produce a positive and inspiring experience, but the presence of all three in one event is what made this feel transformative, even transcendent. Everyone I spoke to, from returning hackers to first-timers like myself described the days they spent working tirelessly on their projects in breathlessly positive terms. This made perfect sense since it matched my own experience.
jack gross 