Metaverse
Brave New (virtual) World(s)
In October last year Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta and the term metaverse was catapulted, from technical vocabulary, into common vernacular. It has since become a household name and prompted various reactions, from fear and loathing to enthusiasm and excitement.
We all now know that metaverse stands for the next evolution of the internet envisioned to enable people to interact with each other via their chosen digital identities or avatars. Going ‘online’ will no longer mean typing on a keyboard or browsing, but rather ‘walking’ into a virtual world ‘inside’ our chosen avatars to live our virtual lives.
We also know that Facebook is spending $10 billion on technologies to build its version of the metaverse. Other giants, such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google are investing equally heavily in the rapid development of building blocks, competing to design their versions of metaverse that will enable people to move seamlessly between all aspects of their lives, working, shopping, playing, socialising, even parenting, in one digital environment or landscape.
What forms these landscapes will take is not yet clear.
Some, like Meta (Facebook) are investing in an immersive experience where users will exit their human worlds, (and bodies) the moment they affix their wearable hardware, enabling them to enter purely virtual worlds where they interact with others via their chosen avatar.
Others envision the metaverse more like an integration of the physical environment with the digital, where the world we call ‘real’ will be overlaid with digital objects and surfaces.
Unsurprisingly, those two visions, (and they are bound to be others), have been linked to two different versions of virtual reality; first to ‘The Oasis’ in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One and the second to the Pokémon Go game.
Regardless of which version you might prefer, both have the potential not only to change how we interact with technology but, more importantly, how we interact with each other and our physical world.
Some would add — providing there is still a physical world around us, but that argument is more about utilising cynicism to hide fear, than rational thought. Because if or when our physical environment can no longer sustain human lives, we will perish and all our ‘toys’ with us. After all, living, breathing humans are needed to create and maintain even the ‘brave new virtual worlds.’ Even if filled to their virtual brims with goods we have grown so fond of: currencies, properties, possessions, as metaverses are intended to be. People are already buying virtual properties and filling them with virtual furniture, art, cars, and yes, even weapons. Moreover, even some countries governments are reaching into the metaverse; Barbados plans to open a diplomatic embassy in the metaverse.
And while all that might sound scary and exciting at the same time, none of it is completely new.
Not only have humans made every effort, from drugs and alcohol to movies, arts, and games, to (however temporarily) escape the realities of their physical lives ever since they became aware of both; the realities and the escape routes, but they wrote about it too.
In his 1992 novel, Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson coined the term metaverse and described it as the next-generation virtual reality where one’s status depends on technical skills and ability to enter restricted environments. Several online communities emerged based on the concept, including Second Life. In the already mentioned Ready Player One, people escape the problems plaguing the planet Earth when they enter, with the help of special visors and gloves, a virtual world called ‘The Oasis.’
Immersive video games, even applications like Zoom and social media, the use of which proliferated during the Covid pandemic, all foreshadowed the arrival of the metaverse. Or have they?
The most important question — will the metaverse be open to everyone or will it be a gated experience controlled by the biggest companies — remains open.
As does a number of other questions; from sophisticated data collection from users, including heart rate, pupil dilation, gestures, and gaze direction, to the question of regulation, individual and national identities, protection of children and vulnerable people and many others. In essence — what it would mean to be a human in a world in which most, if not all, interactions take place in digitally altered forms of reality?
While some gaming communities claim that their large numbers of globally registered users (in some cases equal to the population of the USA), and their own in-game currencies that can be earned and traded, serve as prototypes for metaverse, they all still operate inside the internet as we know it.
The same internet that has transformed our world and advanced our lives in many aspects has also created some new and unexpected problems. The metaverse, based on what is currently known, is likely to impact our lives far beyond endless entertainment, and convenient commerce.
We are all familiar with the alluring powers of ‘likes,’ ‘clicks,’ and ‘shares’ and how the platform providers use them to shape our experiences, create needs, then sell us products that satisfy those needs. Imagine the future users of the metaverse, navigating their lives in environments designed, accessible, and controlled by large corporations, or, for instance, authoritarian regimes, or, most likely, a mixture of both.
I do not wish to sound alarming or to imply that all is doom and gloom, only to highlight the potential risks that stem from the metaverse’s current concepts and structures.
I am aware that, ever since Socrates lamented about the danger of books that, he feared, will corrupt the young by offering them the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant, every older generation expresses some degree of fear of the future heralding its new and risky developments.
That said, it seems to me that, in our model of surveillance capitalism the risks are amplified many times. While the internet, by far and large still exists alongside our lives, the metaverse seems designed to become our lives. If necessary, we can still function in our respective societies with or without limited use of the internet, something the metaverse is likely to extinguish even as an option.
We all know how internet surveillance by governments and corporations infringes on civil liberties, individual agency, and privacy. How social media feeds polarisation and creates echo chambers. It is no secret that users are often not aware that their data is being harvested and sold to companies that target them with specific products or news as a result. As it currently stands, the metaverse seems ideally positioned to intensify such activities, amplify our society’s current problems, and create new ones. As hard as I have tried to find public debate on the developments of metaverse(s), its potential benefits as well as risks, there is hardly anything out there.
How much then do we really know about it?
We have all heard how loneliness, isolation, addiction, depression, and anxiety are plagues of our times that have only escalated during the last three years of pandemic and compulsory isolations. Suicide has been young people’s leading cause of death in the developed world for decades. Despite the prevention campaigns, rigid classifications, and adjusted statistics.
It is not hard to imagine how the metaverse — where users create and inhabit not only their surroundings exactly as they would like them to be, but also their bodies and personalities — can become highly addictive. How it can lure users into further withdrawal from their physical realities in which their humanly imperfect bodies dwell, and equally imperfect lives unfold, into digital realities in which their perfectly shaped avatars conduct equally perfect lives.
In her book AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence, Catriona Campbell, a British behavioural scientist and leader in human-computer interaction (HCI) predicted that within 50 years, technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world. I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world, she said. These babies would grow up in the metaverse, but only to the age their parents (headsetted and gloved) prefer, have photo-realistic faces and bodies, respond to their parents through voice analysis and facial tracking software, and replicate a human child’s emotional responses. Amongst other benefits, virtual babies will, writes Catriona, aid the much needed slowing of the planet’s overpopulation.
Kenichiro Yoshida, a chairman, president and CEO at Sony Group Corporation, speaking of the metaverse said: I strongly believe that this aligns with our purpose to fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology.
Both Catriona and Kenichiro, and many others, believe that artificial intelligence will help us achieve our new renaissance.
I wish to believe they are right. That, as Kenichiro said, the world would be filled with emotions, through the power of creativity and technology.
But something inside me, it might be the dusty Socrates voice, tells me that to fill even one human heart with genuine emotion, bring a broad, sparkling smile to even one human face, one needs to stand close enough to open arms in a hug, watch the web of fine lines crease in the corners of the eyes, feel the brushing of hair strands against one’s face, listen to the bouncing of words in the air around us.
I could be wrong of course. My reluctance might be fuelled by the fear of a world I cannot fully comprehend, just like those before me were when contemplating the challenges of the future opening before them. I accept that might be so.
Still, my old human mind cannot help but note that I, and many of my contemporaries, still remember the world before the internet, smartphones, and apps. We still remember the interplay between facial features and body language as words were spoken face-to-face, the unique scents each person brings, the warmth of human touch, our friends and colleagues quirks, colours of their voices, the sound of rain bouncing on the roofs, feeling grass as it bends under our feet.
For me, the main question is not whether metaverse(s), however sophisticated and clever they might be, will be able to recreate the crackling of fire in a fireplace, or the smell of coffee, or even how to most discreetly collect information about our every habit, but whether the coming generations will have the opportunity to experience any of it in our physical world. Will they retain enough of their humanity to remember that the existence of the metaverse(s) or any other digital world depends on the movement(s) of their imperfect, human fingers. To switch the power button on or off. I believe that the answer to this question is what will determine the future of humanity.
What do you think?
Thank you for reading.
Daniela
