Facebook is about to expand its platform. The service "Facebook Spaces" is promoted as Facebook in virtual space: "Hang out with your friends in a fun, interactive virtual environment as if you were in the same room, no matter where you are." Thus a new type of medium might emerge under the slogan "Social-VR", to meet and exchange ideas with people in different physical locations.
A study by furniture giant Ikea found even today, only around a quarter of people associate "home" with a physical place, and only 7% with a geographical location. Almost half define it as the place where the most important relationships are cultivated. New technologies like "Social-VR" could render this shift even stronger.
If our social interactions continue to move into digital space, our understanding of home and family could shift into the cloud. And if we increasingly define feeling at home through our social contacts, the cloud itself could soon become home–one that is fixed, no matter where we are globally.
Read more about the transformation of living in the age of digitalisation in the free GDI study “Microliving – Urbanes Wohnen im 21. Jahrhundert” (available in German only).