Public Spatial Computing
Examples
About us
A framework for public spatial computing
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. Spatial computing can empower communities to tell their own stories, understand their cities and other systems, and collaboratively steward their shared environment and culture in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
What is spatial computing?
The blending of physical space with digital computation, where real-time sensing and modeling drive environmental experiences across networked screens, projectors, speakers and more, extending role-based interfaces to massive local multi-participant experiences.
Spatial computing encompasses the many ways computation can influence and augment a user's relationship with the space around them. Unlike augmented reality—the computational paradigm that layers information and capabilities onto space—spatial computing doesn’t necessarily require use of personal devices.
Unlike augmented reality—the computational paradigm that layers information and capabilities onto space—spatial computing doesn’t necessarily require use of personal devices.
Many of the world's largest companies, like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are investing heavily in spatial computing. They believe technologies like augmented reality, combined with their heavy investments in AI, may be the next big shift in consumer computation—away from the phone as the ubiquitous platform relating digital services to their paying customers.
Widespread spatial computing services include Google and Apple Maps, while products like Meta Oculus and Apple Vision Pro represent efforts to intermediate and transactionalize their users’ very relationship with the environment that they inhabit. Amazon Alexa, as well as Google and Apple home products, present a paradigm of domestic automation inside the walled garden of corporate platforms.
These choices are increasingly popular due to their utility and convenience, thanks to the innovation budgets these large corporations dedicate to improving technologies in the race towards market capture.
Why does spatial computing need to be public?
While spatial computing grants new capabilities, it also detects and gathers more data about its users. Private platforms are racing to define the future of immersive technology. But when culture, history, and public memory are at stake, we must ask:
Who owns the interface? Who designs the experience? Who controls the data?
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. It can empower communities to tell their own stories, navigate their own cities, and interact with shared heritage in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
Public spatial computing ensures:
Open standards for interoperability across institutions
Civic accountability for how environments are sensed and shaped
Cultural sovereignty over digital representations and experiences
Long-term preservation of digital spatial assets
What is Digital Public Infrastructure?
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) refers to foundational systems—like open data, identity layers, protocols, and platforms—that are governed in the public interest. They can be used to store an enormous amount of information about space at geographic, architectural, and personal levels.
Just as roads and libraries were 20th-century public investments, spatial infrastructure is a civic responsibility in the 21st. It is how we will map, share, and co-create the spaces we live in—digitally and physically.
For spatial computing, DPI might include:
Shared geospatial datasets for urban and cultural environments
Open-source tools for creating and managing 3D experiences
Infrastructural AI models trained on public policy and cultural content
Distributed archives that protect against loss or manipulation
Our framework
We propose a modular, interoperable framework for cultural institutions to:
Prototype immersive experiences with spatial authoring tools and frameworks
Collaborate across sectors with shared ontologies and spatial vocabularies
Generate ethical governance for inclusion, consent, and data stewardship
Future-proof their investments through open standards and governance models
A network of public institutions: scaling digital infrastructure for culture across borders
Cultural heritage doesn’t stop at national borders—neither should the infrastructure that supports it.
As spatial computing and other emerging technologies reshape how we engage with culture, a new paradigm is emerging: a network of governments collaboratively investing in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to support public cultural institutions at scale. Rather than acting in isolation, national, regional, and local governments can co-develop interoperable systems, co-fund shared platforms, and align around public standards that preserve cultural diversity, data sovereignty, and democratic access.
Why a networked approach?
1
Shared cultural challenges
Like digitization, preservation, and public engagement, these are too complex and interconnected for any single government to solve alone.
2
Economies of scale
Co-investment in DPI reduces costs, avoids duplicated effort, and accelerates innovation for smaller institutions.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
3
Cultural sovereignty
By cooperating across jurisdictions, governments can resist extractive platform models and retain control over how their cultural data and experiences are used.
4
Global public value
Open, interoperable cultural infrastructure benefits not just individual nations but humanity at large.
What might this look like?
A European Cultural Spatial Infrastructure funded by a consortium of EU member states
The opportunity
Just as UNESCO helped define heritage for the 20th century, a network of governments can now shape the digital spatial commons of the 21st. Public funding, aligned across borders and focused on shared infrastructure—not siloed apps—can ensure that cultural institutions thrive in the next technological era without becoming dependent on extractive platforms.
This is not just about technology. It’s about reclaiming the future of cultural memory, civic imagination, and shared space.
Interested in collaboration toward shared resources?
Are you a cultural institution interested in the future of public cultural space? We’re already collaborating with a global network of like-minded organizations.
Join the effort to define the next generation of spatial culture!
Email us
Contact us
Public Spatial Computing
Examples
About us
A framework for public spatial computing
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. Spatial computing can empower communities to tell their own stories, understand their cities and other systems, and collaboratively steward their shared environment and culture in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
What is spatial computing?
The blending of physical space with digital computation, where real-time sensing and modeling drive environmental experiences across networked screens, projectors, speakers and more, extending role-based interfaces to massive local multi-participant experiences.
Spatial computing encompasses the many ways computation can influence and augment a user's relationship with the space around them. Unlike augmented reality—the computational paradigm that layers information and capabilities onto space—spatial computing doesn’t necessarily require use of personal devices.
Many of the world's largest companies, like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are investing heavily in spatial computing. They believe technologies like augmented reality, combined with their heavy investments in AI, may be the next big shift in consumer computation—away from the phone as the ubiquitous platform relating digital services to their paying customers.
Widespread spatial computing services include Google and Apple Maps, while products like Meta Oculus and Apple Vision Pro represent efforts to intermediate and transactionalize their users’ very relationship with the environment that they inhabit. Amazon Alexa, as well as Google and Apple home products, present a paradigm of domestic automation inside the walled garden of corporate platforms.
These choices are increasingly popular due to their utility and convenience, thanks to the innovation budgets these large corporations dedicate to improving technologies in the race towards market capture.
Why does spatial computing need to be public?
While spatial computing grants new capabilities, it also detects and gathers more data about its users. Private platforms are racing to define the future of immersive technology. But when culture, history, and public memory are at stake, we must ask:
Who owns the interface? Who designs the experience? Who controls the data?
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. It can empower communities to tell their own stories, navigate their own cities, and interact with shared heritage in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
Public spatial computing ensures:
Open standards for interoperability across institutions
Civic accountability for how environments are sensed and shaped
Cultural sovereignty over digital representations and experiences
Long-term preservation of digital spatial assets
What is Digital Public Infrastructure?
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) refers to foundational systems—like open data, identity layers, protocols, and platforms—that are governed in the public interest. They can be used to store an enormous amount of information about space at geographic, architectural, and personal levels.
Just as roads and libraries were 20th-century public investments, spatial infrastructure is a civic responsibility in the 21st. It is how we will map, share, and co-create the spaces we live in—digitally and physically.
For spatial computing, DPI might include:
Shared geospatial datasets for urban and cultural environments
Open-source tools for creating and managing 3D experiences
Infrastructural AI models trained on public policy and cultural content
Distributed archives that protect against loss or manipulation
Our framework
We propose a modular, interoperable framework for cultural institutions to:
Prototype immersive experiences with spatial authoring tools and frameworks
Collaborate across sectors with shared ontologies and spatial vocabularies
Generate ethical governance for inclusion, consent, and data stewardship
Future-proof their investments through open standards and governance models
A network of public institutions: scaling digital infrastructure for culture across borders
Cultural heritage doesn’t stop at national borders—neither should the infrastructure that supports it.
As spatial computing and other emerging technologies reshape how we engage with culture, a new paradigm is emerging: a network of governments collaboratively investing in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to support public cultural institutions at scale. Rather than acting in isolation, national, regional, and local governments can co-develop interoperable systems, co-fund shared platforms, and align around public standards that preserve cultural diversity, data sovereignty, and democratic access.
Why a networked approach?
1
Shared cultural challenges
Like digitization, preservation, and public engagement, these are too complex and interconnected for any single government to solve alone.
2
Economies of scale
Co-investment in DPI reduces costs, avoids duplicated effort, and accelerates innovation for smaller institutions.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
3
Cultural sovereignty
By cooperating across jurisdictions, governments can resist extractive platform models and retain control over how their cultural data and experiences are used.
4
Global public value
Open, interoperable cultural infrastructure benefits not just individual nations but humanity at large.
What might this look like?
A European Cultural Spatial Infrastructure funded by a consortium of EU member states
The opportunity
Just as UNESCO helped define heritage for the 20th century, a network of governments can now shape the digital spatial commons of the 21st. Public funding, aligned across borders and focused on shared infrastructure—not siloed apps—can ensure that cultural institutions thrive in the next technological era without becoming dependent on extractive platforms.
This is not just about technology. It’s about reclaiming the future of cultural memory, civic imagination, and shared space.
Interested in collaboration toward shared resources?
Are you a cultural institution interested in the future of public cultural space? We’re already collaborating with a global network of like-minded organizations.
Join the effort to define the next generation of spatial culture!
Email us
Contact us
Public Spatial Computing
Examples
About us
A framework for public spatial computing
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. Spatial computing can empower communities to tell their own stories, understand their cities and other systems, and collaboratively steward their shared environment and culture in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
What is spatial computing?
The blending of physical space with digital computation, where real-time sensing and modeling drive environmental experiences across networked screens, projectors, speakers and more, extending role-based interfaces to massive local multi-participant experiences.
Spatial computing encompasses the many ways computation can influence and augment a user's relationship with the space around them. Unlike augmented reality—the computational paradigm that layers information and capabilities onto space—spatial computing doesn’t necessarily require use of personal devices.
Many of the world's largest companies, like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are investing heavily in spatial computing. They believe technologies like augmented reality, combined with their heavy investments in AI, may be the next big shift in consumer computation—away from the phone as the ubiquitous platform relating digital services to their paying customers.
Widespread spatial computing services include Google and Apple Maps, while products like Meta Oculus and Apple Vision Pro represent efforts to intermediate and transactionalize their users’ very relationship with the environment that they inhabit. Amazon Alexa, as well as Google and Apple home products, present a paradigm of domestic automation inside the walled garden of corporate platforms.
These choices are increasingly popular due to their utility and convenience, thanks to the innovation budgets these large corporations dedicate to improving technologies in the race towards market capture.
Why does spatial computing need to be public?
While spatial computing grants new capabilities, it also detects and gathers more data about its users. Private platforms are racing to define the future of immersive technology. But when culture, history, and public memory are at stake, we must ask:
Who owns the interface? Who designs the experience? Who controls the data?
We believe spatial computing should not be locked behind proprietary walls or limited to commercial entertainment. When built as a public good, it can serve the missions of libraries, museums, archives, schools, and urban spaces. It can empower communities to tell their own stories, navigate their own cities, and interact with shared heritage in equitable, ethical, and inclusive ways.
Public spatial computing ensures:
Open standards for interoperability across institutions
Civic accountability for how environments are sensed and shaped
Cultural sovereignty over digital representations and experiences
Long-term preservation of digital spatial assets
What is Digital Public Infrastructure?
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) refers to foundational systems—like open data, identity layers, protocols, and platforms—that are governed in the public interest. They can be used to store an enormous amount of information about space at geographic, architectural, and personal levels.
Just as roads and libraries were 20th-century public investments, spatial infrastructure is a civic responsibility in the 21st. It is how we will map, share, and co-create the spaces we live in—digitally and physically.
For spatial computing, DPI might include:
Shared geospatial datasets for urban and cultural environments
Open-source tools for creating and managing 3D experiences
Infrastructural AI models trained on public policy and cultural content
Distributed archives that protect against loss or manipulation
Our framework
We propose a modular, interoperable framework for cultural institutions to:
Prototype immersive experiences with spatial authoring tools and frameworks
Collaborate across sectors with shared ontologies and spatial vocabularies
Generate ethical governance for inclusion, consent, and data stewardship
Future-proof their investments through open standards and governance models
A network of public institutions: scaling digital infrastructure for culture across borders
Cultural heritage doesn’t stop at national borders—neither should the infrastructure that supports it.
As spatial computing and other emerging technologies reshape how we engage with culture, a new paradigm is emerging: a network of governments collaboratively investing in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to support public cultural institutions at scale. Rather than acting in isolation, national, regional, and local governments can co-develop interoperable systems, co-fund shared platforms, and align around public standards that preserve cultural diversity, data sovereignty, and democratic access.
Why a networked approach?
1
Shared cultural challenges
Like digitization, preservation, and public engagement, these are too complex and interconnected for any single government to solve alone.
2
Economies of scale
Co-investment in DPI reduces costs, avoids duplicated effort, and accelerates innovation for smaller institutions.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
3
Cultural sovereignty
By cooperating across jurisdictions, governments can resist extractive platform models and retain control over how their cultural data and experiences are used.
4
Global public value
Open, interoperable cultural infrastructure benefits not just individual nations but humanity at large.
What might this look like?
A European Cultural Spatial Infrastructure funded by a consortium of EU member states
The opportunity
Just as UNESCO helped define heritage for the 20th century, a network of governments can now shape the digital spatial commons of the 21st. Public funding, aligned across borders and focused on shared infrastructure—not siloed apps—can ensure that cultural institutions thrive in the next technological era without becoming dependent on extractive platforms.
This is not just about technology. It’s about reclaiming the future of cultural memory, civic imagination, and shared space.
Interested in collaboration toward shared resources?
Are you a cultural institution interested in the future of public cultural space? We’re already collaborating with a global network of like-minded organizations.
Join the effort to define the next generation of spatial culture!
Email us
Contact us