In a ritual I’ve undertaken at least a thousand times, I lift my head to consult an airport display and determine which gate my plane will depart from. Normally, that involves skimming through a sprawling list of flights to places I’m not going. This time, however, all I see is information meant just for me:
Hello Harry Flight DL42 to SEA boards in 33 min Gate C11, 16 min walk Proceed to Checkpoint 2
Stranger still, a leather-jacketed guy standing next to me is looking at the same display at the same time—and all he sees is his own travel information:
Hello Albert Flight DL11 to ATL boards in 47 min Gate C26, 25 min walk Proceed to Checkpoint 4
Okay, confession time: I’m not at an airport. Instead, I’m visiting the office of Misapplied Sciences, a Redmond, Washington, startup located in a dinky strip mall whose other tenants include a teppanyaki joint and a children’s hair salon. Albert is not another traveler but rather the company’s cofounder and CEO, Albert Ng. We’ve been play-acting our way through a demo of the company’s display, which can show different things to different people at one time—no special glasses, smartphone-camera trickery, or other intermediary technology required. The company calls it parallel reality.