Metaverse definition
AR, VR, AI, IoT and blockchain are advancing fast. Similarly, their penetration into our daily lives, too, is increasing rapidly. They are being used across healthcare, manufacturing, fintech, hospitality, customer service, and many more industries. Looking at how things are, these technologies can significantly enhance the services offered in these various sectors. For example, the future of fintech can be transformed completely by using VR for conducting virtual meetings by financial institutions and enabling customers to pay for products virtually, forgoing the need to step out of your home.
However, one application of these technologies that has everyone excited is the metaverse. Metaverse promises a universe beyond our real world. It’s a place where our real world, augmented reality, and virtual reality intersect. The intersection gives birth to an interactive, immersive, and collaborative shared virtual 3D environment.
Exploring
But because it’s still just an idea, there’s no single agreed definition of the metaverse.
Apparently, it’s the next big thing. What is the metaverse?
Hype about digital worlds and augmented reality pops up every few years, but usually dies away.
However, there is a huge amount of excitement about the metaverse among wealthy investors and big tech firms, and no-one wants to be left behind if it turns out to be the future of the internet.
There’s also a feeling that for the first time, the technology is nearly there, with advancements in VR gaming and connectivity coming close to what might be needed.
VR has come a long way in recent years, with high-end headsets which can trick the human eye into seeing in 3D as the player moves around a virtual world. It has become more mainstream, too – the Oculus Quest 2 VR gaming headset was a popular Christmas gift in 2020.
The explosion of interest in NFTs, which may provide a way to reliably track ownership of digital goods, could point to how a virtual economy would work.
And more advanced digital worlds will need better, more consistent, and more mobile connectivity – something that might be solved with the rollout of 5G.
For now, though, everything is in the early stages. The evolution of the metaverse – if it happens at all – will be fought among tech giants for the next decade, or maybe even longer.
Philosophising with VR as a media of metaverse
With VR, what we experience, and thus who we are, or choose to be, is up to us. The ultimate realization of VR will allow us to, at will, have any kind of conceivable experience. For this reason the technology of Virtual Reality could be a fruitful addition to the philosopher’s toolkit. It is the perfect aid to exploring hypothetical scenarios. VR acts as a catalyser for thought in many ways. It instantly re-forges and actualizes philosophical themes.
Some of the questions that the technology of VR poses to us can be deemed existential. The existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) famously described anxiety (ängst) as the dizziness of freedom, the result of constantly having to make choices and decisions. The technology of Virtual Reality poses an existential problem to us in exactly this way. VR extends the reach of our freedom, and therefore also our existential responsibility, and along with this, our anxiety.
Or consider for instance René Descartes’ Meditations (1641), in which he presents the idea of the Evil Deceiver – a demon that can alter his experiences at will. This has an obvious VR application, that has been well exploited in movies such as The Matrix and Existenz. Hilary Putnam’s idea in Reason, Truth and History (1981) of a ‘brain in a vat’ also illustrates the possibility that our entire universe is a simulation created by some powerful technological civilization. The idea is ever-extending, and we now have modern day philosophers such as Nick Bostrom actively discussing the possibility that we are living in a simulation. As the prime example in which VR acts as a catalyst for thought, I will finish this article with this simulation hypothesis.
This idea is also quite simple. As Bostrom has argued, there are essentially three potential scenarios in relation to the simulation, the ultimate VR. The first is that humans and any other beings will never achieve the technological capabilities for full, convincing, immersive VR – for simulated worlds, such as simulating previous times and our own history, or alternative histories – ultimately, due to our extinction. The second possibility is that we or some other species do reach the technological maturity, but aren’t likely to run such simulations simply because of who we (or they) are as a species: for moral reasons, perhaps, or maybe just due to lack of interest. The third option is that we are almost certainly already living in a computer simulation.
How may that be? If it can happen with us in the future, it might have already happened in the past. If ultimate VR is possible, then our own world will mostly likely be just one amongst myriads created by technologically advanced species. Only one world is the biological, physical, originally one; but there will be an unfathomable number of simulations created by advanced species. The likelihood that we should in be the original one is very small, Bostrom argues. At that point we are no longer a species with a future and a past in our universe: we must instead consider ourselves as ever-duplicating in a myriad of possible simulated worlds.
Whether one thinks it likely that we are living in a simulation or not, the potential implications of VR technology are still looming over us. One of the most interesting food-for-thought experiment for us all, after all, is to ask ourselves: If we could do anything we liked, what would we do?
© Joakim Vindenes 2020
Joakim Vindenes is a PhD Candidate researching VR at the University of Bergen, Norway. He also runs the VR philosophy blog Matrise, accessible at http://matrise.no as well as the VR & Philosophy Podcast.
Future of work and life in Metaverse
With the metaverse having an independent, whole economy of its own, cryptocurrency and digital currency will likely become the key transactional method. The most widely known cryptocurrencies today are Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the list of digital currencies will likely become more and more diverse as new ones are introduced continuously. Either way, such currencies will be key to trading across the real world and the digital world, all while being supported and distributed by technologies such as blockchain.
Among the companies that are already first comers in this new economy are gaming companies — namely Epic with its Fortnite game that has been completely transforming virtual games as players know it by creating a convincing, realistic world around the game. Among the game’s biggest initiatives sparking the metaverse were the concerts, the game hosted, including shows with Travis Scott and more recently Ariana Grande. Other industries will be swift to follow as the lines between reality and digital get more and more blurry.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Future ambitions
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg announced a rather ambitious plan for Facebook’s future — to become a provider of next-level digital and virtual experiences rather than a family of interconnected social apps. In an essay in January 2020, venture capitalist Matthew Ball also took a stab at creating explicit definitions of the metaverse. These characteristics included encompassing the physical and virtual worlds, both; having its own economy; and introducing a new element — interoperability, meaning that users would be able to use their characters and objects from one platform or metaverse to another.
Tony Fadell’s concern about Metaverse
Tony Fadell – the creator of the Apple iPod and lead developer of the first three generations of the iPhone– has expressed concern about the metaverse and its implications on social connection.
The metaverse describes a digital platform that will combine gaming, social media, augmented reality, and cryptocurrency for an integrated user experience.
Fadell said that the virtual world will remove the ability “to look into the other person’s face.”
“If you put technology between that human connection that’s when the toxicity happens,” he added.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long been vocal about his plans for the metaverse, and most of the world’s tech giants are following suit, including Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
“Welcome to Meta”
“Our aim has always been to empower as many people as possible through our products, and we’re taking the same approach in the metaverse.”
“The metaverse will also make it possible for more people to see the world without having to travel. And we’re building new technology like Horizon Workrooms to help remote employees feel more connected to their team.”