For convenience, let’s say it started with Photoshop. That program made it obvious not only that we couldn’t believe our eyes any more, but that photographic evidence could no longer be admissible in court. Socioeconomic implications were even wider, as new industries popped up with products purporting to tell unretouched photos from photoshopped ones. (And the trademarked noun gave rise to a verb!)

Then we got virtual reality, AI deepfakes, counterfactual social media memes, state-sponsored (and corporate-sponsored) disinformation campaigns, phishing, the shutdown of reliable government data sources. Financial, medical, and amatory scams. Cryptocurrency. Sales of "unreal estate" in the metaverse.

I’m going to define ‘reality,’ chauvinistically, as what people born in the 20th century have learned to perceive, as directly and unmediated as our physiology allows, through our senses and instruments. Plus, arguably, second-hand information provided by family and neighbors of that era, and traditional journalism. And maybe even what our inner voices tell us is real, for example, that Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon were emotionally disturbed individuals whose utterances shouldn’t be believed, or that slavery was wrong.

In other words, reality is the natural environment, and the built and communications environments, minus what was built or communicated for the sole purpose of fooling and manipulating you. 21st-century babies, no offense intended, but you grew up in a built-to-fool-you world.

On the near technological horizon are holographic projections and programmable nanomachines, both capable of further bending reality, or destroying it altogether. Each of the mentioned technologies causes sociological ripples, as we saw with Photoshop, but could magnify them even further. In particular, they affect our ability to trust our senses, and consequently, to trust other people. Bent reality, in the form of anti-vaccine conspiracy ‘theories,’ has led to deaths from Covid and from measles.

You and I have seen America descend from a high-trust society to one characterized by low trust.

How will we deal with it, when ‘reality’ becomes a quaint relic of a distant past?

In the best case, we could see unreality as an amusing inconvenience, the way we now deal with optical illusions and desert mirages. But I really think it’s not going to be that easy. These technologies, combined with human orneriness, will completely transform how we live. (That is, assuming we survive climate Armageddon, the next pandemic, and so on.)

For a short time, satellite communication could be celebrated: Evidence of bloody dictatorships, for example, in otherwise information-embargoed nations could be transmitted without restriction. But now, the owners of the satellite systems can censor the data passing through.

At first, newer unreality tech will appear only at trade shows, corporate retreats, and disneylands. But all too soon it will be everywhere. Is that wall a hologram, safe to walk through today, and gone tomorrow? Or real stone that will break my nose if I mistake it for unreal? Is that tiger going to eviscerate me, or will it just smile and fade away?

If the new unreality tech is closely held, the billionaires will just get richer, at the expense of you know who. If the tech is democratized – as were sewing machines and personal computers, long ago – mischief will run amok.

Of course it didn’t start with Photoshop. Traveling miracle-cure salesmen peddled lies. The ‘Leave it to Beaver’ TV show sold an impossibly idealized, yet still influential, version of harmonious suburban life. These influences, though, were localized in time and space. Today’s unreality technologies, and those still forthcoming, diffuse across the world almost instantly.

Legend has it that during the first dot-com boom there was company that called itself Reality, Inc. Its receptionist would answer the phone, “This is Reality.” Callers would say, “I can’t handle it,” and hang up.

People who turn to drugs and booze because they can’t deal with reality, cause social problems. I put it to you that these problems will be tiny, compared to those caused in future by people who can’t deal with unreality.

We can take temporary relief from the fact that virtual reality goggles have proven effective, for instance, in training firefighters. And still more relief that these goggles have not yet widely penetrated the household market.

How society and economy might survive, thrive, and trust, in a world of ubiquitous unreality is one of the biggest problems facing us, and one that is still widely unacknowledged. The world’s think tanks need to get going on it.