I believe you are unique, you are one of a kind, extraordinary, you are the ultimate expression of an evolution that started an eternity ago. I respect you for all that is great about you, I have a sense of certainty about who you really are. I didn’t arrive at my opinion of you through naiveté, but through a multi-year research about human needs in 40 countries and by sifting through millions of pieces of data. This research indisputably showed me that the potential for greatness is nested in all of us, that the quality of our individual and combined spirits can climb any mountain, overcome any obstacle and that together “we the people” can accomplish anything we can imagine. And precisely because I hold you in such high regard, I’m sending you the following invitation to join and maybe even co-create a new “shining city on a hill”:

Ever since I was a little child, I always dreamed of going to the moon. I was wondering what it would feel like to fly through space and see earth from a new perspective. Fast forward to December 24^th 2016, when I was sitting next to Neil Armstrong inside the Apollo 11 spaceship. Looking at all the buttons and controls in front of me gave me a deep sense of the amazing technological achievement, accomplished by many thousand scientists, engineers and citizens who had made this voyage possible with their enthusiasm and funded it with their tax dollars. Neil and I landed on the surface of our celestial neighbor and embarked on our first moon walk. As a looked up with amazement, I saw a beautiful blue marble in the middle of a vast sea of uninhabitable darkness. Astronauts returning to earth frequently mention their sense of awe after seeing earth from space. They describe obtaining a new perspective on the big picture. For the first time in my life, I was able to experience a little slice of their sense of wonder. I was given a profound sense of appreciation how rare and delicate our planet and its people are: a beautiful, living blue marble; a beacon of hope in the middle of nowhere. Going to the moon reinforced my love for our common home – our Earth – as an awe-inspiring, rich and diverse Noah’s Arc racing around the sun at 1,000 miles per hour. It made me pause …..  how precious our human experience really is.

The technological wonder of virtual reality was responsible for me to have this once in a lifetime experience. That month I also visited the top of Mount Everest, seeing our mother earth from its own highest vantage point. She looked so beautiful, coated in her pristine, white, innocent dress. I visited the deep sea and had a rendez-vous with a majestic wale, who winked at me, before disappearing into the deep blue. I flew around the Statue of Liberty, before teleporting to the Eiffel tower in Paris, Hong Kong, Rome, the Niagara Falls, the North Pole, the Rain Forest, London, Sydney, and I did all of this in a couple of hours.

Because I have produced virtual reality for the past 15 years, being immersed in a new dimension together with others wasn’t new for me. For many years, I had spent more time in VR than in our physical reality. Sometimes I would drive down to the local grocery store and reality seemed like a high resolution virtual world to me.

But the virtual city I created, offered me certain advantages. I could fly, I could teleport to cities across the world in seconds, I could sit around the conference table with friends from every continent. I could visit the 7 world wonders all in one place, as if going to Disney Land, I could travel into the past and learn what life was like in a small Pennsylvania town in 1876, I could travel into the future and get a sense of life in a mars colony. I could walk around inside of Van Gogh’s famous paintings or participate in a virtual movie premiere in Hollywood. The sky was no longer the limit.

I called this place Peace City after having experienced a devastating chapter in my own life. My intention was to create an oasis, a safe place, a happy place. I was dreaming of a place where what we have in common matters more than what divides us. A town where all people can come together, where we appreciate our differences as an opportunity to learn from each other while celebrating all that unites us.

Peace City was a great place to try new things. We enabled children to rule their world. As citizens, we  could choose our own virtual body, our avatar and it allowed us to experience each other by the content of our hearts and minds, not by the pigments of our skin. Two people from very different cultures met in Peace City and ended up married, and many friendships were forged between people from around the world. Citizens built their own houses in Peace City and used them as their vacation homes. We were a small but tight community years before social media took the world by storm. Peace City became my home away from home. A garden where new ideas could grow, an island that was only a click away from any country in the world.

Then came the Christmas Season of 2016. For the first time technology was capable to offer a truly engaging, convincingly immersive virtual reality experience to the mainstream. I was always certain this moment would come even though throughout the years, many had doubted it. I believed that the history of our media clearly points toward virtual reality. At first our species created cave drawings, later Leonardo Da Vinci introduced the perspective point, a new way to portray the depth of a room. This was followed by motion pictures, black and white, then color then high definition and eventually 3D Imax movies. We as people want our media to match our experience of reality and VR is a logical conclusion to our quest.

The recent rise of virtual reality and its transition into the mainstream has brought with it many new people who are interested in our small community. We’ve been excited to meet them and they told us that even before they knew about Peace City, they were looking for a place like this.

They told us about their definition of their own personal Peace City and that they felt there was a need for a place like this in our challenging times. An oasis, a safe and welcoming place, a town where we can easily and quickly create new things and share them with the world. People told us they want a place that represents a positive vision for the future, a vacation resort full of ideas, boulevards filled with art that intersect with roads where the latest innovations are showcased. Peace City 3D stands for the 3Ds, the 3 stages of progress, Dream it, Do it Deliver it:  Dreamtown where your imagination can soar freely, an action boulevard where we Do the work to turn these ideas into reality and Showtown where our  accomplishments are delivered as a display for all to see.

People may be new to Peace City VR, but they know what their own Peace City looks like. So, on this day, I’d like to invite you to join and co-create Peace City by sharing your own vision, your creativity, your dreams, your hopes, your insights and your accomplishments. As Peace City grows it will be shaped by you.

Peace City Virtual Reality is a “city” designed to provide a platform welcoming people from all walks of life and from all corners of the world – together in a site designed to celebrate the uniqueness and individualism of each community member, while emphasizing that all people have a great deal in common. Peace City aims to aggregate thought leaders, artists and game changers and to connect them with a mainstream audience. Peace City VR is a place to crowdsource and previsualize a clear vision for a positive future, and to invite a global audience to explore the new reality that is upon us.  It is a place designed to encourage connections among all who participate. Conceived as the “Un-Matrix,” Peace City is a monument to people’s ingenuity and is based on the idea that many of the significant accomplishments of human history have been created precisely when creative, innovative people came together to work as one on a common project.

We hereby cordially invite you to this unique exciting experiment in human history and remain with one question: What is your vision for a city like this, what would you like to see, what would it feel like and why would you want it? In other words, what does YOUR own personal Peace City look like?

 

Enthusiastically Yours,

Samy

Founder of Peace City