The experts\u2019 answers to our questions about the future of the metaverse that are reported in this section are somewhat longer than those in the previous section, and they often have a more panoramic perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sam Adams<\/strong>, artificial general intelligence researcher at Metacognitive Technology, previously a distinguished engineer with IBM, commented, \u201cCognitive immersion can occur anytime a mind focuses intensely on something to the exclusion of everything else. Musicians experience it, as do athletes, artists, assembly line workers, mothers giving birth, authors and computer programmers. In all cases it requires a focal point as well as the engagement of some number of senses and muscles. The stronger the focus, the broader the engagement of the senses, the lower the latency between muscle twitch and sensory response, the easier it becomes to slip into that state of immersion. As a college student in 1980, I found myself fully immersed in the original adventure game, \u2018The Colossal Cave.\u2019 The interface was minimal, the visual and auditory distractions many, but I was entirely oblivious to them as I wandered in the cave and puzzled over the various challenges, ignoring the hunger and exhaustion from lack of sleep for as long as I could. Simply put, it was immersive and addicting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith the development of XR technology and content over the next 20 years, I expect this experience of cognitive immersion to be commonly available on demand to anyone with access to the bandwidth and sensor\/effector interface equipment. As with the original PC wave, then the desktop\/Internet\/browser wave and the mobile Internet wave, the XR wave will be driven by device access, bandwidth and content. I fully expect device access to be a non-issue, as XR by 2030 will be delivered to the human senses via ubiquitous wearable devices, probably in eyeglass format. Broadband beyond 5G and low-Earth-orbit satellites like StarLink will provide the low-latency bandwidth required to trigger full immersion of the senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis leaves the content, which will largely be a predictable mix of passive (music and movies) and active (social, gaming, sports) offerings. But the rest of the metaverse ecosystem, the massive cloud computing centers with their daily exabyte data feeds and the trillions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices will usher in a kind of content we have only hinted at in today\u2019s XR experience: David Gelernter\u2019s \u2018Mirror Worlds<\/a>.\u2019 And just as it is nearly impossible to engage in modern life and society without hours of daily Internet interaction today, it will be even more difficult to separate the \u2018real world\u2019 from the manifold mirror worlds we will be engaged in and \u2013 yes \u2013 addicted to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPositives include broader life experiences and the development and maintenance of personal relationships, especially with those we will never likely meet \u2018in the flesh.\u2019 Remote work and, especially, collaborative remote work will be greatly enhanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNegatives may sound like a broken record, but less and less of life will be spent in-the-flesh-present with other humans, breathing the same air, feeling the physical closeness of companions and crowds. A larger segment of the population will choose to live as solely digitally as possible, with their physical existence and needs being minimally met so to allow maximum time \u2018in the \u2019verse.\u2019 Early examples of this are the \u2018sleep, eat, game, repeat\u2019 crowd, who have no ambition outside spending more time \u2018in-game.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChanging the world? It will amplify the existing cross-border unification and hyper-balkanization of society that we have been experiencing with the global mobile internet for the past 10 years. Changing our lives? For the connected, more time away from real life, but this will also create a desire to unplug, at least for retreats and vacations. Look for \u2018Faraday Retreats\u2019 that use technology to digitally isolate guests from the \u2019verse. Extremes will include Faraday communities (anti-digital communes) where people chose to live their lives in \u2018the real world,\u2019 without being jacked into the \u2019verse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut in the end, people are still people. Until the highly unlikely full-brain interface that no longer requires the physical senses, experiences will still be modulated by the human interface: eyes, ears, touch, taste, smell, motion, speech, etc. Blockchain will fade into the core of the internet to provide anonymous but irrefutable authentication and transactions, including the securing of content (like the fledgling Web3). But its anonymity when applied through XR will create a different kind of trust, where you can trust the transaction but never really know the other party. Transactions-only trust leaves behind many of the societal notions of reputation and branding and allows for parties of currently illegal\/bad-reputation (e.g., narco syndicates, mafia, terrorists) to easily conduct \u2018legitimate\u2019 business which income supports their antisocial agendas without the transactions being tarred with their true purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jamais Cascio<\/strong>, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, responded, \u201cBy 2040, the technologies that fall under the \u2018metaverse\u2019 umbrella will very likely be in ubiquitous use, even if the term \u2018metaverse\u2019 has fallen out of use. Fully-immersive virtual environments distinct from the physical environment will likely be occasional-use tools, as we see today with games. More commonly, we\u2019re likely to be using a kind of everyday mixed-reality system that allows for both the physical and the digital worlds to overlap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 2040, the technologies that fall under the \u2018metaverse\u2019 umbrella will very likely be in ubiquitous use, even if the term \u2018metaverse\u2019 has fallen out of use.<\/p>Jamais Cascio, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are multiple reasons why a full-immersion non-physical environment will be used in a more-limited fashion, but primary among these is the sensory limitation. While visuals and sound may be reproduced at better-than-real clarity, touch, balance, smell\/taste and other bodily senses that are outside of sight and hearing do not get the same kind of immersion. (For the sake of this discussion, I\u2019m not talking about direct neural interface \u2013 the technology is plausible in this timeframe but has impacts and cautions that go well beyond the \u2018metaverse\u2019 conversation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI believe that we\u2019ll confirm that bodily sensation is necessary for a truly immersive experience and that being disconnected from the body for extended periods will lead to both physical and mental health issues. Conversely, mixed (blended, augmented) reality technologies that allow experiencing physical and digital sensory inputs simultaneously will likely be far more widely used. This can even include experiences where all visual and audio input is digital \u2013 but working in concert with the real-world environment (such as virtual decoration and imagery for clothing, rooms, faces, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToned-down versions of this technology can be extraordinarily useful for both work and personal enjoyment. We already have narrowly-focused iterations of this technology in use; this 2040 version would be much richer and more environment-aware (e.g., will not require beacons indicating the size of a space, as with current VR technology).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are two significant concerns that arise from this kind of technology. The first is more blatant, the second is more subtle but it is ultimately a bigger problem. Mixed reality, by definition, allows for the imposition of digital imagery over physical reality. The potential for abuse is clear, from censorship to non-consenting pornography. The technologies needed to police such abuses are even more complex than trying to block harmful images and text from Facebook, and would likely be similarly ineffective. The more subtle problem would also apply, at least to some degree, to all forms of metaverse technology: enclosure, in the classical economics sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThings that in \u2018real\u2019 reality are free to see (architecture, clothing design, street art) can in a metaverse system be paywalled off, such that only people with the right token can see the \u2018true\u2019 shape of the building or the full details of the dress. The nightmare iteration of this is that essentially everything has to be paid for to experience \u2013 it\u2019s a world where everything is an NFT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t let legitimate concerns like this force us to set the technologies aside entirely. The ability to see the world at greater depth (look closely at the plant and see its taxonomic description, or how it circulates water, or its life cycle, or its total carbon captured), to allow for creative people to intermix the surreal with the physical (giants wandering off in the distance, or clothing that leaves an echo of itself in its wake, or tattoos that offer commentary on what the wearer is doing), and even to clear away visual clutter (and you know<\/em> that ad-blockers will be the first thing many people install) can be a source of delight. But having to subscribe to reality? No, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Avi Bar-Zeev<\/strong>, an XR pioneer who played important roles in developing and creating the technology of HoloLens, Google Earth and Second Life and has worked with Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Disney VR and more, agreed to share several segments of his writing and talks about the metaverse as his contribution to this report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a November 2021 talk at Augmented World Expo<\/a>, Bar-Zeev, predicted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAR is going to be bigger than \u2018the metaverse,\u2019 not by volume but by ubiquity and user experience. The fact that we will be wearing our AR glasses for potentially 18 hours a day makes it more personal to us. The same interfaces that work for us in the real world will work for us in the virtual world, so we will be applying these same ideas across any reality, across any world. The fact is that we want to interact with stuff that is personal. So, if the metaverse is essentially the next generation of the internet, and XR hardware is essentially the browser and we are the browsers, then AR-like user experiences may be the most common user interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is why AR goes beyond what people talk about today when they talk about the metaverse. Really, there will be states of presence and co-presence. I propose \u2018coreality\u2019 as the best way to describe the collection of spaces where we can be present or co-present. We are working to form the XR Guild<\/a> in order to come up with a set of principles for XR developers that they can own and use to get better results for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a February 2022 interview with Spatial Reality<\/a>, Bar-Zeev said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy biggest worry about all this is that we\u2019re rushing headlong into it without all the safety measures that we need. There is no regulating force in this new world, other than for-profit companies with their own territories. There is no force coming in to say, \u2018Here are the ways we should behave, and here\u2019s what we do with the small percentage of people who misbehave.\u2019 And unfortunately, one bad actor can cause grief to thousands or millions of people. It\u2019s a really important thing to get it right before we all rush in and say we\u2019re going to live there. It\u2019s nowhere near ready for us to live there. There are no rules. Everybody is just rushing in to grab whatever pickaxe and gold they can find on the ground. \u2026 What is the harm of moving slowly? What\u2019s the downside of actually being careful? It might cost us a little more money upfront. But the cost of doing it wrong, the cost of making a mistake, the cost of hurting people or leaving people out? That\u2019s tremendous \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPrivacy is critical. And the biggest threat to privacy, honestly, is the ad-driven business model. It\u2019s not that the ads by themselves are evil. Ads often are just giving us information or creative expressions, and they\u2019re largely protected by the First Amendment. The problem is the way that our personal information is being used to deliver ads. What I\u2019m arguing for, and other more-prominent people are arguing for, is that we need to regulate the business model, not the expression of the ads themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen XR has eye tracking and emotional analysis, the computer is going to better understand how we think and feel about everything in our environment. It\u2019s going to know more about how we feel about people in our lives. It\u2019s going to know how we feel about political issues. It\u2019s going to be able to know about our emotional triggers. Whatever our hot-button triggers are, the companies will know how to get us into a much-less-rational state, which is the perfect state for making us susceptible to all sorts of influences. By optimizing the system, driving it for the maximum extraction of ad revenue, we\u2019ve turned people into data mines and no longer truly free-thinking individuals. Ultimately, if we take it to its extreme, we lose our autonomy, we lose our ability to think for ourselves because the systems are pushing our buttons for profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe best computing interface of the future is the one that knows us so intimately that it can help us get our work done. If companies continue to exploit us, then we\u2019re going to have to just come down and say, \u2018No, we can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s too dangerous.\u2019 Let\u2019s be cautious and human-centered about these things. Let\u2019s act on the negatives we see today. We can\u2019t ignore them and just hope things will get better over time. Taking action is the only way we\u2019re going to steer this stuff toward the best outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in a column he wrote for uxdesign.cc<\/a> Bar-Zeev predicted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cImagine 10-20 years from now. We\u2019ll each have a pair of contact lenses that can create AR and VR as well as we want (except maybe for touch, taste and smell). By then, the words \u2018AR,\u2019 \u2018VR\u2019 and \u2018meta\u2019 will likely be relegated to academic writing and old-timey company branding in favor of something more hip, now and organic. Open your eyes and you\u2019ll see 3D holograms in the real world perfectly mixed with real objects and people. Close your eyes (or otherwise elide the natural light) and you can be virtually anyplace else. Audio must also mix perfectly. But AR and VR are only two points on a spectrum. If you start with AR and add enough virtual stuff to distract you from reality, you\u2019re effectively in VR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you add digitized 3D \u2018twins\u2019 or otherwise live camera feeds of your real-world environment into VR, you\u2019re essentially back in AR again, or at least a simulation of it. VR fundamentally strips away the most common constraints of reality: location and travel, physics, even sometimes time,<\/em> where hours can often seem like minutes, and we can travel to the historical past or imagined futures. We can also pretend to be someone else in VR (or perhaps more of our truer selves?) to temporarily remove the constraints of our births: sex, appearance, even changing aspects of our personality. We can gain \u2018superpowers\u2019 inside these worlds too, like flying, invisibility and content creation. Eventually, everyone will just call them \u2018abilities.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn the way to that ubiquity, power imbalances invariably lead to social strife. Without the normal constraints of reality or other ways to defend ourselves, we are more vulnerable to other people\u2019s powers, personalities and agendas. If we increase our individual power beyond prose and memes today toward experiences with effective superpowers, we also turn up the volume on the negative expressions as well. This is not an arms race that anyone can \u2018win.\u2019 Even in a virtual world of one<\/em>, with no multiplayer capability, we have to consider the owners of the space as unseen, god-like entities who may want to influence our thoughts and actions in positive or negative ways. And some will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat AR really does is provide a new way to see and interact with the real world and the people in it. It can improve the signal-to-noise ratio of our daily life by filtering out what we don\u2019t need to see and enhancing what\u2019s most relevant and impactful to us, individually, contextually, based on what matters most. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMark Zuckerberg recently touted a desired feature of his company\u2019s future AR glasses as being able to carry on other<\/em> conversations while we\u2019re talking to someone in person. Let\u2019s also figure the glasses can secretly bring up the social media profiles, criminal records and posted vacation photos of the people we meet. These particular features are clearly anti-social,<\/em> even sociopathic<\/em>, giving the wearer much more power over others. If the goal is adding presence and connection, then being distracted by information and social anxiety about the contents of each other\u2019s AR displays yields the opposite result.<\/em> However, if the glasses monitor our own individual emotions and let us know when we\u2019re getting too emotional or otherwise less present<\/em> (e.g., lost in past memories or worries of the future), then they will provide a tool for us to be more present<\/em>, more grounded and better connected with others around us. Why don\u2019t we ever hear about that as a feature?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow we design these experiences will largely determine how this goes. Do we add unhelpful saturating layers to reality, or do we help strip away some noise? People with more money than sense will routinely make bad experiences and occasionally wonder why they don\u2019t work. Hopefully we can all learn from these mistakes and do better ourselves. Our hope is that the marketplace and other social institutions will help get rid of the bad ideas fast enough and help ensure a brighter future for us all. The better path is to find and fund the better designers now, to build that future proactively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephen Downes<\/strong>, expert with the Digital Technologies Research Centre of the National Research Council of Canada, said, \u201cOpportunities for fraud and scams will abound. As well, there is the risk of a non-traceable shadow economy developing. It will be hard for people to grasp the idea that something could be both digital and \u2018real\u2019 and, despite the reassurances, it will be very hard not to believe that they could simply cease to exist. The danger here is that people will think of very real things \u2013 like, say, digital currency debts \u2013 as non-real, and suffer harmful consequences. Complicating matters will be the fact that digital objects may also embody artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Opportunities for fraud and scams will abound. … The danger here is that people will think of very real things \u2013 like, say, digital currency debts \u2013 as non-real, and suffer harmful consequences.<\/p>Stephen Downes, expert with the Digital Technologies Research Centre of the National Research Council of Canada<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy 2040 (probably much sooner), it will not be possible for most people to distinguish between avatars representing humans and AIs. The proliferation of AIs will enable actors with more resources to simulate a much greater presence online (just as we have seen with social media bots). A lot of these will be laughable (there will<\/em> be the metaverse equivalent of the Nigerian prince), but there will also be serious cases of impersonation and worse. It is perhaps too early to demand specific legislation, but it is not too early to develop frameworks describing what will be acceptable and unacceptable uses of the metaverse both legally and commercially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaving said all that, despite the risks, we will not be able to resist developing, entering and using the metaverse. It will be very difficult to enjoy flat-screen media entertainment after watching an immersive movie or sporting event. Today\u2019s games are not yet more compelling in VR, but as the interface improves play will be much more fluid and natural, making traditional gameplay on a screen with controller or keyboard seem awkward. Just as it\u2019s hard to get up from the television or pull the plug on a video-gaming marathon, it will be difficult to put down the controller. Psychologists will undoubtedly talk about dissociation disorders afflicting people after long VR sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaving said all that, the metaverse will eventually draw us together. Just as radio and television created the common experience, just as social media created shared memes, we are going to find we share our world more deeply and meaningfully with people (and ideas, and representations) we could not have imagined before plugging in. being closer to each other isn\u2019t always pleasant (as we\u2019ve certainly learned!) but being closer leads to deeper dialogue, greater understanding, and more empathy. No, this is not universal \u2013 the divisions in our global society will also be magnified. We will need to ensure that these divisions are not incentivized and monetized, as they are in some social media today, because the experience will be that much more personal, the hurt caused by these divisions is that much greater. More, because digital resources are not scarce in the way that physical resources are scarce, there will be more opportunity for people in less-advantaged positions and societies, providing they can gain access to the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe saw manufacturing develop worldwide with the development of a global supply chain infrastructure. People worldwide can today offer digital services thanks to the global internet. A person does not need to own a factory or a farm to earn wealth in a digital world. This depends, though, on a shared digital infrastructure. If the inhabitants of the metaverse are merely tenants, then most likely they will be excluded from any prosperity the metaverse may create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDecentralization is the great promise of the metaverse, especially some of the enabling technologies such as blockchain networks and self-sovereign identity. In a truly decentralized system each of us might enjoy more autonomy to design our own lives and our own worlds. If we are indeed moving toward a world of less regulation and oversight, it will have to be a very different from today\u2019s world. Personal autonomy and self-governance can thrive only in a world where authoritarianism and coercion are difficult, and where people are protected from the ill effects of inequity and exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout mechanisms to ensure reasonable levels of personal freedom and prosperity, we can enter a dystopian world very quickly. Without regulation, not only governments, but corporations, schools, gangs and even individuals can use their freedoms to oppress others. The rise of the metaverse will lead to a renewed discussion of rights. This discussion will be partially focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, reflecting the current dialogue flowing from events in the physical world, but will it also reflect the requirement to enable people to participate fully in a digital society? Issues such as access, consent, transparency and openness, ownership and association, among others, will shape the great debates of the 2020s and 2030s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris Labash<\/strong>, associate professor of communication and innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote, \u201cRemember that part in \u2018The Matrix\u2019 where Agent Smith and Neo are fighting in the subway and the train is bearing down on them and Smith says, \u2018Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.\u2019 That\u2019s the metaverse today and the likelihood of it being real, ubiquitous and normalized by 2040. Right now, I have a student research team creating \u2018An Investor\u2019s Guide to the Metaverse.\u2019 Right now, I have a student doing an independent study on creating and managing products in the metaverse. Right now, a friend of mine has just launched an NFT Asset Management company. [Here are] my top five [questions about the metaverse], starting with the most important:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5.0<\/strong> –<\/strong> The most important question about the metaverse is about its fundamental ontological impact on what it means to be \u2018human.\u2019 Will it make us more civil? Will it represent an opportunity for \u2018augmented humanity?\u2019 What happens when AI-enabled \u2018entities\u2019 can be part of the metaverse? Every great leap in technology is inextricably interwoven with fundamental human questions. As we move forward, the questions get harder, the answers more challenging to put into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4.0<\/strong> –<\/strong> Apropos of the above, what about diversity, equity and inclusion? The metaverse offers a great opportunity for specific groups to establish safe spaces where they can share experiences, desires and dreams and then have the tools to actualize them. It can also, as we\u2019ve already seen, be a dark alleyway where the most horrible elements of our global society do most-horrible things, often with no consequences. It could potentially level the playing field both economically and socially for those sidelined in the physical world. And note that I say \u2018physical\u2019 versus \u2018real\u2019 world. The metaverse being digital doesn\u2019t make it any less real; in fact, by 2040, it may be considered by many people to be as real or even more real a space than \u2018physical\u2019 space. The blurring line between the physical universe and the metaverse is potentially very empowering. I taught on the Second Life platform years ago and it was interesting that people with physical disabilities made their avatars reflect those disabilities, rather than be a \u2018perfect\u2019 character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3.0<\/strong> –<\/strong> Similarly, will the metaverse drive social participation or social isolation? Both are likely. One potential problem is the possibility of over-participation. In the early days of Nintendo 64, traders on Wall Street were staying home to play \u2018GoldenEye\u2019 rather than showing up for work. The metaverse will be even more addictive. The metaverse can also be a safe space for the painfully shy or introverted to interact with others on their own timetable and terms. The obvious minus: right now 37% of 12- to 17-year-olds have been bullied online, 30% more than once, and more than 50% of LGBTQ+ young people have been bullied. The metaverse can exacerbate this and\/or help mitigate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2.0<\/strong> –<\/strong> What will be the role of government? When it comes to how real the metaverse will be on a global scale, consider the possibilities. As I write this, Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has intensified, and the show of support for Ukraine is both global and unprecedented. Fast-forward to 2040: If such a conflict took place in the world of an interconnected metaverse, imagine the power of seeing millions of digital people dressed in blue and yellow all gathered in a vast open space in a profound show of support for Ukraine. Now couple that visual support with digital sanctions \u2013 economic and otherwise; with the sharing of blockchain-verified real-time information that goes beyond a government\u2019s control, with the sharing of real-time crowdsourced information about Russian troop deployment, supply and logistic issues, with the humanitarian needs of Ukraine and fundraising and other efforts to get help to those in need \u2026 and you begin to see both the power and the possibility of a world where the metaverse has become an elemental part of everyday life, intertwined with physical reality, that allows for immediate action and reaction. We will also see \u2018digital alliances\u2019 emerging just as we are seeing in the response to Russia\u2019s invasion: pan-government groups that span finance, media and the social sector that can bring enormous pressure to bear. We will also likely see the rise of \u2018digital states.\u2019 If Facebook were a country its population right now would outnumber that of China. The metaverse will be far bigger (and more participative) than Facebook. That\u2019s a lot of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1.0 –<\/strong> Finally, one of the most basic questions that people will have is \u2018Can I trust it?\u2019 Participation in the metaverse requires trust, trust requires governance, governance requires accountability and accountability requires redress. How, in an entity that belongs to no one, can any of that be achieved and achieved consistently? Will people not just participate but continually<\/em> participate in the metaverse? One potentially strong attribute is that people will turn to the metaverse for \u2018trusted\u2019 communication; misinformation, disinformation and state- or group-sponsored information terrorism could be mitigated by the real-time public verification that a blockchain-powered metaverse allows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are so many other areas for discussion: How will the metaverse\u2019s infrastructure be used to make business, government and everything else faster, more efficient and more accessible? Will there be the metaverse equivalent of bilateral trade, which research suggests reduces conflict? What are the microverses that will comprise the metaverse? Will it be a technical oligarchy or truly democratized? What will the economics of it be? And maybe most interestingly, What\u2019s the future? What\u2019s beyond meta? What will it help us become? I\u2019m excited to find out. See you in 2040.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Weinberger<\/strong>, senior researcher at Harvard\u2019s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, wrote, \u201cLet\u2019s assume that that the metaverse will be like the web in that it does not consist of a single, wholly owned place, but rather is composed of many, many, many linked metaverses. There is reason to think that metaverses are highly likely to become the primary way we participate on the Internet. The Internet has pretty consistently tended toward richer media, so metaverses seem like a \u2018natural\u2019 next step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis assumes that access to affordable bandwidth and low-cost VR\/AR devices will increase, and the like. And that, in turn, will further increase the digital divide. We should therefore be, from the start, designing metaverse protocols that will scale from full-sensory user experiences to accessibility on low-end 2D devices. This should not require add-ons or third-party transformers, any more than viewing a webpage on a huge, high-resolution screen or a mobile device does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet\u2019s make a further optimistic assumption: metaverses are made deeply interoperable in exactly the way that social media platforms are not but webpages are. You can open a website on virtually any device because webpages and web browsers follow protocols. That\u2019s why any proper browser can display any non-broken webpage and even lots of pages that are broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet\u2019s hope that metaverse interoperability means not only that you can display and interact with a metaverse on any metaverse \u2018browser,\u2019 but that metaverses know how to use the information you choose to provide. For example, a metaverse should be able to display your chosen avatar, which you might also use in other metaverses; this would help provide continuity of perceived identity across these spaces. Simply having the same avatar across metaverses \u2013 especially if you\u2019re in third-person view so you can see yourself in the metaverse \u2013 will give us a sense of digital personhood that we don\u2019t generally have on the web or Internet. It will also enable others to recognize you, enabling a deeper sense of social connection. Being on a thread with a player named \u2018Excal143a\u2019 is very different from joining a conversation with a person you recognize because of their pink frog head and by their sense of fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut your avatar is the least of it. You should be able to carry into each individual metaverse what you want that metaverse to know about you. We\u2019ve long had this dream of each of us controlling what various sites and services can know about us, but perhaps efforts like Tim Berners-Lee\u2019s Solid<\/a> will start to gain a foothold. There\u2019s every reason to think that metaverses will take on some of the most important properties of games: an emphasis on engagement, a sense of play, sociality and mods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Engagement:<\/em> Metaverses will compete for our attention by looking great, but also by encouraging exploration and participation. Exploration might manifest itself by leaving much hidden but discoverable. Participation means that we will often be able to build permanent elements in a metaverse, by ourselves or with others. Just look what happens with Minecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Play:<\/em> The web has already eroded the wall between the serious and the playful. That is not only usually a false wall, but it keeps people away from explorations we\u2019d all be better off engaging in. Metaverses will perhaps encourage play the way lots of discussion boards enable or encourage collaborative humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) Sociality:<\/em> There are more invitations to connect when your avatar almost literally runs into another. Or if that avatar is a creature with a pink frog head who\u2019s carving ellipses in a waterfall. The synchronous and visual nature of metaverses may encourage more social connections, perhaps with more cross-session persistence. I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll also invent new ways to attack and degrade one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4) Mods:<\/em> Game makers have learned that mods \u2013 customer-created maps, potions, rules, etc. \u2013 not only help them retain their users longer, they deepen the users\u2019 attachment to the game. Metaverses with mods? Yes please!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis all might well change our ideas about the role of the real. Full-on metaverses will succeed by putting us into a world with other people in which we encounter, discuss and create things that matter. We can say that none of that is \u2018real\u2019 (something the philosopher David Chalmers disputes in his recent book \u2018Reality+<\/a>\u2019), but as we spend more and more time going through metaverses on the Internet, it will become ever more clear that what matters to us transcends both the real and the media we\u2019re engaged in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMetaverses are going to make it clearer than ever that what\u2019s most important to us is not what\u2019s real and thus independent of us, but what matters to us together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melissa Sassi<\/strong>, global head of IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator, wrote in great detail about a number of use cases for extended reality: \u201cThere are still significant hurdles to overcome with metaverse applications in real-life scenarios; however, I do expect the technology to continue to evolve and become more refined leading up to 2040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see the rise of the digital twin and personalized ways of bringing AI and ML to life via our digital twins: a new definition of \u2018in real life.\u2019 We will continue to rely on technology to help us become more productive, more efficient and able to virtually be in far corners of the world without physically being there. As the digital world continues to intertwine with the physical world, these lines will continue to blur for all of us to the point at which I am not even sure we can say \u2018in real life\u2019 anymore. Real life will have become our digital life and vice-versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #1: Health care –<\/em> Significant efforts today are put toward treating symptoms as opposed to achieving prevention, and we all recognize the challenges with sharing patient records across doctors and health care networks. Having a digital twin in health care could be incredibly powerful when it comes to predictive modeling and sharing data across health care providers and entities, where the patient is put more in the driver\u2019s seat in regard to preventative care and bringing your own record to medical doctors and other health care representatives responsible for care. One example I have seen inspiring this work is BioTwin<\/a>, an early stage health tech startup that\u2019s created a virtual replica geared toward detecting and preventing health care ailments before they occur. This is a budding space to watch when it comes to health care innovation, disruption and putting more information in the hands of the people to drive good health care and well-being, which is one of the UN\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #2: Education – <\/em>Having digital twins gives rise to better opportunities for those learning to become health care professionals or medical doctors for practicing in virtual environments. Tiny mistakes and major adverse effects that occur during surgery or other types of medical treatment can be decreased by providing learners with virtually simulated environments and twins to practice with no risk to human life. AR, MR and VR plus the personalization of AI and ML will give other boosts in people\u2019s education journey, for instance in practicing professional development or soft skills, including public speaking, problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork and collaboration, and many other skills of the future. Many ed-tech platforms today focus on certification factors and talking heads; imagine a scenario where people can interact as digital twins in different scenarios to practice real-life skills. According to the World Economic Forum, we are in a workforce crisis, with 87% of companies worldwide expecting skills gaps, as noted by Boston Consulting Group. Employers today say supervisory staff and front-line workers lack future-ready skills. Having a digital twin provides significant opportunities for learning practically and being immersed in the learning journey. Advances can also give rise to the digital-twin educator in K-12, higher education and other settings where teaching can happen in different ways from the past, especially in scenarios where we are learning in digital formats. COVID-19 has taught the education sector that relying on in-person instruction is not always possible, which has given rise to significant increases in e-learning investment within the venture capital community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #3: Digital and entrepreneurial thinking – <\/em>The same conceptualization can be applied to learning digital skills or entrepreneurial thinking. According to the World Economic Forum, the lack of digital skills among their people cost 14 G20 countries $11.5 trillion in GDP growth. It also reported that by 2030 U.S. talent shortages and a skills gap could cost its economy $8.5 trillion. Learning and development leaders see skilling, upskilling and reskilling as strategic priorities, further demonstrating the need for new business models, technology applications, content and curriculum and practical ways of demonstrating that workers have gained these skills that can be applied in the workplace. Bringing the metaverse into this realm could have significant impacts. The World Economic Forum\u2019s \u2018Reskilling Revolution\u2019 program aims to provide 1 billion people with better education, skills and jobs by 2030. There is no reason this cannot happen via augmented reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #4: Entertainment and gaming – <\/em>Gaming will continue to evolve as a space with more interactivity and more engagement with the digital world. The metaverse also has applications for concerts where digital-only concerts are also a consideration. With hundreds of millions of users, Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, and other game developers have significant opportunities for intertwining gaming and entertainment with the metaverse. Epic produced a live virtual show in its Fortnight game starring EDM producer Marshmello. More than 10 million people \u2018attended\u2019 the concert. It followed later with a virtual concert starring Travis Scott that drew an audience of 12.3 million people. As of 2021 Fortnite was played by 40% of children between the ages of 10 and 17, according to National Research Group. But the rise of virtual entertainment is not just for children and youth. During the pandemic, the annual adult gathering known as Burning Man went virtual as well. I would say the vote is still out on whether the feeling, sentiment, experience and memories of real-life entertainment can be replicated via metaverse applications. I am not convinced that the metaverse replaces how one feels being on the Playa in Blackrock City, Nevada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #5: Social life – <\/em>While we already are experiencing and enjoying digital opportunities to \u2018see\u2019 others in far corners of the earth through video conferencing and virtual events today, I am 100% certain that these virtual events, even if done in AR\/VR\/MR, do not replicate the \u2018in-real-life\u2019 experience. I recently had an opportunity to go back onto the in-person conference scene after the long stretch of COVID-19-induced isolation, and no virtual event in the last two years could replicate that feeling of talking with real people, in real life, and enjoying what the physical world has to offer. Who knows? Perhaps future innovations in the metaverse space will change my mind, but for now, keep my \u2018in real life\u2019 social interaction at the top of the list of things I am after vs. metaverse interactions. I would say the vote is still out on whether the feeling, sentiment, experience and memories of real-life entertainment can be replicated via metaverse applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Case #6: Culture, the arts and travel – <\/em>Extended-reality applications will create significant opportunities for making cultural experiences and the arts available to all. These experiences can be set in any chronology. Via digital replicas you can witness and participate in how life was lived in years past in any setting or experience those settings\u2019 contemporary cultures. It\u2019s a great way of learning about the world, although there is no doubt that the \u2018in-real-life\u2019 feeling of really standing there at the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, Times Square, the Pyramids of Giza, the French Riviera, Angkor Wat or any other faraway land cannot be duplicated. I would rather lie on the beach in the Caribbean with a drink in my hand, visit Museo del Prado in Madrid Spain, sail on a Catamaran in Costa Rica or see the Great Wall of China with my own eyes and experience the \u2018in-real-life\u2019 impact of people, language, food and everything that has to offer. Innovations are unlikely to completely replace the depth of our traditional means of connecting with culture, the arts and travel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel S. Schiff<\/strong>, a Ph.D. candidate who studies the governance and social and ethical implications of AI at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, said, \u201cThe existence of a metaverse renews questions about misinformation, protection of privacy, targeted advertising, disparate treatment of subgroups, coercion, harassment, bullying, labor and sexual exploitation, and more. VR theoretically makes many of these and other social and ethical issues raised by the internet and social media even more stark given the enhanced experience associated with immersive audiovisual content. Harassment and bullying could become more traumatizing, while protecting privacy would be even more essential given increased access to data about an individual\u2019s digital location, emotional state, or behavior. The early experiences of sexual harassment in virtual spaces indeed point to a dire need for proactive governance and regulation, especially to protect vulnerable groups and children. Further issues surround psychological well-being. Indeed, just as digital technologies and social media have altered people\u2019s cognitive patterns, attention spans, systems of reward, and mental health, so too can VR\/AR alter and even exploit these phenomena, likely to a greater degree. Careful research and governance will be needed stay ahead of these and other associated harms, especially if they are indeed more stark in phenomenologically enhanced VR settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VR theoretically makes many of these and other social and ethical issues raised by the internet and social media even more stark given the enhanced experience associated with immersive audiovisual content. Harassment and bullying could become more traumatizing…<\/p>Daniel S. Schiff, a Ph.D. candidate who studies the governance and social and ethical implications of AI at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cA further set of questions surrounds notions of identity and interpersonal relations and behavior. In particular, will individuals be likely to substitute alternative digital personas for their real-world personalities, and will such behavior allow for creative expression and development or instead psychological dissonance, harmful artificiality, and social and self-alienation? That is, will increasingly immersive environments allow for more genuine expression of the self and deepening of relationships, or simply for more immersive forms of self and social displacement, deception and so on? Of particular concern is that acts of sexual or physical violence or criminal activity may find a home in the metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA further issue in VR\/AR ethics associated with modern philosophy surrounds the Nozickian \u2018experience machine,<\/a>\u2019 most prominently portrayed in popular culture through the film \u2018The Matrix.\u2019 The cautionary tale here is that individuals who embrace the metaverse may dissociate from society and real-world relationships and obligations, for example, by deprioritizing school work, marriage, job-hunting and child-raising. These kinds of disengagement have been explored in the context of the adoption of television and the internet, with some real indications of social harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNeedless to say, to the extent that these risks are realized rather than overblown, they can spell major societal challenges in the form of insufficient educational achievement, fractured labor markets, lack of stable family or community life, structural demographic problems, crime, loneliness, poor health, political instability and additional social and psychological pathologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUltimately, a metaverse presents the opportunity to revolutionize expression and creativity, create new venues for social connection and exploration, enhance commerce and entertainment, and even increase access to underserved populations. Whether adoption is slow or fast, the possibilities are expansive if the risks are carefully managed. To manifest the best version of the metaverse, then, technologists, policymakers, researchers and the public will need to work actively to envision possibilities and minimize harms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert M. Mason<\/strong>, professor emeritus at the University of Washington whose research focuses on the culture and ethics of knowledge management, commented, \u201cBy 2040 the metaverse will<\/em> be a much more refined and truly fully-immersive, well-functioning aspect of daily life for a half billion or more people globally. The global population in 2040 is estimated to be over 9 billion, so this statement posits that about 5.5% of the global population would be affected by a more refined and well-functioning metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout parsing all the nuances or quibbling about definitions, I expect the relevant technologies will continue to improve, with image resolution and improved sensory stimuli enabling increasingly immersive virtual encounters. For those living in 2040, the metaverse can provide an expanding range of physical\/social encounters and intense experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaving lived through a few iterations of technologies that have great potential to enhance our access to knowledge and provide a wider scope of virtual experiences, I have become less enamored with the technologies themselves and more intrigued with questions of 1) how these technologies are assembled into systems and services that provide experiential opportunities for users and 2) who the users are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat experiences will be available to users and what will motivate producers to provide these experiences? These three categories will help shape the future metaverse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we review what producers provided with earlier versions of the \u2018virtual\u2019 or Internet-connected world, we arguably could begin with France\u2019s Minitel. Developed and operated by the French administration for telecommunications to increase citizens\u2019 use of the phone service and to lower the cost of printing telephone directories, Minitel provided popular and successful. Although based on a rudimentary text-only terminal (provided free to phone subscribers), Minitel provided a glimpse into the Internet-powered future of connectivity and online services and offers some insight into the tension between regulation and open access for developers (a forerunner of net neutrality).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith all the beneficial and cost-effective services that Minitel provided, the French government seemed almost embarrassed to report on the high volume and high revenue provided by games and chat rooms, particularly the messageries roses<\/em><\/a> (adult chat rooms). Despite concerns about minors\u2019 access to these sex sites, France PTT decided not to prohibit them, leaving access control to parents. Men were more likely to be users of these sites than women, prompting many of the sites to hire men to impersonate women to maintain high call\/chat volume. Consequently, these chat rooms expanded, even to the point of overloading and crashing the Minitel system<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cObservers of today\u2019s Internet and other online services disagree on estimates of the financial impact of gaming and entertainment (including pornography and \u2018pink\u2019 interactive services), but all agree that the volume is high and revenues substantially more than $100 billion. Virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) games in 2019 comprised less than 10% of this total<\/a> but were growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAssuming a Western (U.S.) capitalistic (or even oligarchic) economic environment for the continued evolutionary development of the metaverse, I anticipate that the profit motive, perhaps lightly controlled by government regulation, will shape, if not dictate, the types of services available and the accessibility of these services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs I write these notes today, almost 60% of the global population are active Internet users<\/a>. However, Internet activity is not equally distributed; the World Bank estimates that Internet use ranges from over 90% in most economically advanced countries to less than 10% in countries with emerging economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf history and current services are guides to how services will evolve in the metaverse, I would expect that gaming and entertainment (including pornography and \u2018pink\u2019 services) to be early adopters of the technological capabilities associated with the metaverse. Innovative developers are likely to drawn to the wide range of economic and manipulative opportunities in the metaverse, including scams and swindles. The past success of sex-based websites and Internet services would attract developers for metaverse platforms that offer similar services. I expect such services to be a significant, though not necessarily the dominant, driver of developer innovation and user adoption in the emerging metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe opportunity for metaverse engagement is likely to continue to be uneven. Absent any government-based services designed to engage all households, the technology accessibility gap will continue to grow and increase the social inequality of metaverse engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn summary, I anticipate that the metaverse, supported and enabled with increasingly richer visualizations and experiences, will provide only a modest (if any) increase in the range of human behaviors, yet it can and will leverage the impact of the values embedded in the engagement opportunities in the evolved environment. The metaverse will empower developers to create services that appeal to both the higher and lower aspects of human nature through gaming, entertainment and social engagement. These engagement opportunities will be available unevenly, with citizens in the more affluent societies having greater access to a wider range of such services.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maja Vujovic<\/strong>, owner\/director of Compass Communications in Belgrade, Serbia, wrote, \u201cIf we take just the two most-discussed activities we\u2019ve experienced en masse<\/em> during the pandemic of COVID-19 \u2013 remote education and remote work \u2013 and imagine them within the metaverse, we can readily see that the drawbacks of those unhappy experiences would get resolved in this new and improved setting. Instead of staring at the Muppet-theater-like gallery of passive faces, who cannot do any work while they talk one at a time, individual workers and students could be at their workstations at home, quietly do their work and only occasionally talk to their colleagues\u2019 and their bosses\u2019 avatars on their screens. They could have almost exactly the same experience as they would have on location at a workplace, or in a school setting \u2013 for real. And that could easily include the small talk at the water cooler or accidental encounters in the canteen \u2013 occasionally priceless opportunities for exchanging ideas and information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThroughout that teleported experience in a seemingly joint office or classroom, they could comfortably and effectively be doing whatever activity that brought them together in the first place, without the infamous virtual meeting fatigue. This would go beyond making just our 2D experiences more immersive. This would be a very effective and productive upgrade of a 3D experience that occupies the most hours of our days. The same logic and the same technology could also be used for attending any number of group activities, such as exhibitions, entertainment shows, public debates, trade shows and conferences, trials, etc. This would add a lot of depth to the expression \u2018hybrid work.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is no doubt this would become the beloved option for anyone who would be given a choice to fully participate in an essential collective activity without the discomfort of commuting, polluting, shaving or applying makeup, packing kids\u2019 lunches, etc. But the downsides would be considerable, too. There would be a drop in the foot traffic in urban areas, which would bring a reduction in commerce, casual shopping, impromptu meals and coffee breaks, cab rides, public transportation demand and most likely even tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCritically, this could considerably increase our loneliness. It could work fine for already established families, which would be able to structure their time better. But it would reduce the opportunities for people to meet, get to know each other, become romantically involved and start families. It would likely help us get in touch and develop relationships with people from other parts of the world with whom we have something in common or with whom we think alike. But this would be at the expense of the everyday contacts with our immediate neighbours, people in our communities, our colleagues, etc. This would lead to more polarization, not less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is very likely that we will use the potential of these technologies to delegate ourselves into situations we would rather avoid, such as a job interview at a distant location, a parent-teacher meeting that conflicts with our work hours and so on. Dating applications will have a field day with this technology, as will teaching, sales and any other sector where presentation is key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe change in our daily lives will not be a grand one. We will use these tools the way we use a thesaurus in a word-processing program or a spreadsheet to track our expenses. They will be tools only and we will not be any smarter or kinder than without them. They will save us time and offer more convenience, an additional layer of entertainment, more variety in our day-to-day existence. But we will not mistake them for a distinct layer of reality, nor will we get confused about our identity. If really superb avatars get developed and we get to customize them ourselves (a whole economy would develop around that alone) we will at the most treat those avatars the way we treat pets \u2013 as very close beings that we love dearly, but that we can keep in their place most of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe blockchain and smart contracts will likely have a role of a new paradigm, new phase in technology. On a large scale, we will substitute most of what we use today \u2013 social media, interest groups, databases of all sorts (expenses, gift lists, playlists, etc.) as well as any seminal interactions, and we will port them all into the blockchain. We will use blockchain to tackle the biggest problem that the metaverse will exacerbate and turn into our main priority: the question of trust. Blockchain-backed provenance will become the only solid source of truth that we will have to combat misinformation, fake news, identity theft and other transgressions of that kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBehind this grand gamut of new possibilities at the tips of our fingers will be tight teams of overworked production people. Tech-savvy creatives will hurriedly be perfecting the shimmers, the twinkles and the smoothness of our virtual clothing, hair and skin. They will perennially run against tight deadlines and put up with exigent bosses, in their insufficiently paid jobs. So not much will change in our social contract, alas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael M.J. Fischer<\/strong>, professor of anthropology and science and technology studies at MIT and lecturer in the department of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, \u201cAs defined here, the metaverse is computer-generated, networked-extended, reality spaces (XR, including VR, AR, MR). All these are already extant, so it is not much of a stretch that these (and perhaps also holograms) will continue to be refined, extended and made interactive by 2040. In addition, it is likely that progress will continue to be made in many fields, such as haptic feedback-enabled prostheses (i.e., biomechanical, neuro-electronic interfaced, cyborg) along the lines of those being developed in Hugh Herr\u2019s lab at MIT<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These will become rich spaces for artistic speculative and material-environment play:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmong the advantages or new affordances might be more-flexible attitudes in regard to the worlds we live in and make for ourselves, and an expanded ability to live with and switch among various cognitive, affective and aesthetic modalities. No doubt these will also stimulate new forms of math and physics and deeper understandings of biological processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe worries are that these can easily become aids to intensified surveillance societies, concentrated corporate structures and anti-user control (also known as \u2018anti-democratic\u2019 in conventional parlance), including anti-privacy and anti-tolerance of diversity, tinkering and eccentricities. The technological developments being rolled out in China in Xingjiang to control and \u2018reeducate\u2019 the Uyghurs are the most obvious disturbing red warning lights, especially since much of that technology is Silicon Valley-developed, parts of which are being introduced also in our neoliberal societies under management-speak, techno-optimistic sales tactics [driven by] the needs for capital to develop technologies and sales at the cost of abandoning societal values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMore attention needs to be given to: 1) social implications of complex systems to social responsibility and social justice concerns; 2) multiple social arrangements that are not normalized into coercive, algorithmic reductiveness driven by efficiency models; and 3) increasingly problematic mental health issues being reported globally as due to a rise in individuals\u2019 feeling isolated and alienated \u2013 including increases in suicides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese social issues cannot be accommodated under the rubric of \u2018ethics\u2019 which is a) based on outmoded individualist models of usually rational behaviorism (social responsibility is a better alternative descriptive except that it has been coopted by greenwashing-style corporate social responsibility scams), and b) is all too often bureaucratized into to-do checklists that are easily evaded. Particularly, more attention needs to be given to the freeing, creativity-stimulating and psychodynamically interactive features of play, memory, traumatic experiences and the cultural resources of very different languages, cultural experiences and ways of attending to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nigel M. Cameron<\/strong>, president emeritus of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies in Washington, D.C., wrote, \u201cIt\u2019s a truism that tech changes tend to be slower than expected but also more fundamental in their impacts. I suspect this case will bear that out. 2040 seems a long way off, though 2004 seems as if it was just yesterday. Much has happened since then, though Second Life proved to be a cul-de-sac, MOOCs [massive open online courses<\/a>] remained outside the mainstream of education despite the COVID-19 fillip to all things distant, and the allegedly liberating power of technologies and their corporate purveyors are currently held in much more suspicion than they were in 2004 \u2013 by governments and people alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m anticipating a steady migration online of all manner of economic activity, though the nonce word \u2018metaverse\u2019 suggesting a basic recasting does not appeal to me. My book on robots and jobs<\/a> from five years back already looks pretty dated (we really were on the cusp of self-driving cars, before we weren\u2019t). While the direction of travel of AI development is one-way, that may not be the case for take-up of its possibilities, partly as COVID-19 has potently reminded us of much that is uniquely special about the non-metaverse, partly as cybersecurity issues remain wide open and as advances in cyber-physical systems raise levels of risk to potentially existential heights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keynes\u2019 vision<\/a> of widespread \u2018technological unemployment\u2019 is a non-trivial possibility; it was Bill Gates who opined some years back that governments would be pleading with companies to employ people, not machines. Certainly, tax subsystems will adjust \u2013 both to preserve employment and of course to capture value added \u2013 and it may be social movements will grant ever-more-enhanced value to human interaction and notions of human service. When I spoke at the Champalimaud Foundation\u2019s 10th anniversary conference on The World in 100 Years<\/a>, I said I hoped when the Foundation celebrates its 110th anniversary our descendants will still wish to fly to Lisbon and party in-person in the Jeronimos Monastery. It may be that the next 18 years will pretty much decide the direction we\u2019ll be taking long after, as we discover whether we can gain real benefit from the metaverse while keeping our focus on a human<\/em> future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy sense is that education is where the greatest and most valuable shifts may come, even though online teaching is still often little more than a 19th-century correspondence course. The complete failure of COVID-19 to drive creative and widescale immersive MOOC-type educational provision at all ages has been rather remarkable, though certainly at secondary and college levels were it to succeed it would likely cut the number of teachers needed by a factor of, say, 100 (and expose every child to the very best of them).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jonathan Kolber<\/strong>, author of \u201cA Celebration Society<\/a>,\u201d wrote, \u201cWhat most people don\u2019t understand about virtual reality is that a fully immersive VR experience, with zero latency (subjectively), will be functionally equivalent to physical reality for most purposes. While we are far from that experience as of yet, all of the enabling technologies are either entering commercialization or emerging from laboratories. To whatever extent these technologies prove insufficient or limited by comparison to \u2018real\u2019 physical reality, the commercial pressures to refine them in the direction of full immersion will be immense and will grow as use cases for VR grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne profound implication of this anticipated development by 2040 is that the demand for all manner of physical objects will drastically diminish. The reason is that, in almost all cases, what people want is the experiences that are enabled by an object rather than the object itself. While unique artworks have cachet, even that can be digitized, as evidenced by NFTs. By way of example, once people can experience idealized living environments which can be customized and modified almost instantly from vast \u2018libraries\u2019 of digital components with AI curation, there will be much less pressure for the oft-cited \u2018location, location, location\u2019 that seemingly drives real estate prices ever higher. It will likewise become much easier to \u2018own\u2019 a set of immersive digital representations of cars than the physical cars, which require expensive maintenance, storage space and are subject to breakdowns and are not easily modifiable. People who spend large parts of every day immersed in virtual worlds may only require basic necessities from the \u2018real\u2019 physical environment: modest housing, adequate if bland nutrition and preventive health care. Since the health care can also be provided via the VR environment, in most cases via automated monitoring of vitals and occasional human consultation, there will be little need for most people to physically travel anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People who spend large parts of every day immersed in virtual worlds may only require basic necessities from the \u2018real\u2019 physical environment. … The reduction in requirements for manufactured physical objects will utterly transform and eventually render obsolete the economy.<\/p>Jonathan Kolber, author of \u201cA Celebration Society<\/a>“<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe reduction in requirements for manufactured physical objects will utterly transform and eventually render obsolete the economy. I therefore expect life on Earth post-2040 to become largely a playground and place of voluntary mutual service, with the best examples of such service lavishly celebrated. In this world, the human inhabitants will have our basic needs met by robots and the AIs that control those robots, with few humans having to \u2018work\u2019 as currently understood. (The reasoning behind this statement is extensive, and a primary topic of my book.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNevertheless, I do expect a trickle of people to begin migrating to the first O\u2019Neill-style space world<\/a> in the late 21st century, due to the unique physical experiences possible there which, to my knowledge, cannot be replicated in VR \u2013 and the paradisiacal environments they can create. Once the first has been built \u2013 and either the space elevator<\/a> or SSTO spaceplanes<\/a> for transport \u2013 I expect an exponential increase in spaceworlds, with both habitation and tourism bringing vast numbers of people to them in the 22nd century and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs with any transformative technology, fully-immersive VR will have both angelic and demonic uses. The demonic uses could include intrusive surveillance and control at a level that even George Orwell could not imagine, and I expect totalitarian states to embrace this power. Likewise, hackers may be able to take control of a user\u2019s experiences, even to the extent of convincing the user that their VR experience IS reality<\/em>, tricking them into emptying financial accounts, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese problems lack easy answers but, if we can shift the conversation in the direction of systems of sustainable technological abundance, based upon forthcoming effectively unlimited supplies of energy, raw materials and organizing intelligence (i.e., software), these threats and pressures will significantly abate, and the \u2018angelic\u2019 possibilities are far more likely to flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russ White<\/strong>, infrastructure architect and internet pioneer, commented, \u201cWhether the metaverse will play a major role in the lives of a large portion of the world\u2019s population by 2040 largely hinges on social and cultural realities rather than technical ones (although there is a technical component). There are two positive aspects of the \u2018metaverse.\u2019 First, it promises, like Web3, a return to the individual-creator origins of the Internet. Second, it promises disruption, which means the current large players may well be dethroned and replaced with a more decentralized group of smaller players. For the dream of the metaverse to come to life, however, we must all live in the same \u2018world.\u2019 The metaverse, like social media, requires a network effect. People want to talk to people; for that to happen, we must be on the same platform. Platforms are expensive and complex and rely on the infrastructure of the Internet to reach everyone. The money and technical expertise required to build the platform(s) on which the metaverse must run are in the hands of a small group of people \u2013 the same people who have built and control the current neurodigital media landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe most likely result, then, is that the metaverse turns out to be an even deeper immersion into \u2018social media,\u2019 which means a further centralization of our culture, and the increasing power of the technological elite. These trends, however, may have run their course. There may be a backlash against the technological elite forming. We may be currently living through the high tide of an authoritarian moment. It might be that the current globalist regime can hang onto power, but it doesn\u2019t look promising right now. Since the metaverse is a project of this technological elite, so it\u2019s hard to judge its future. It might be that the global economy has reached a sort of tipping point, and we cannot restore the ideas of widespread ownership and decentralized control. The difficulty of building and maintaining these technologies is also a factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is an illusion of control by the \u2018smartest and brightest\u2019 in our current culture. From the COVID-19 pandemic to building the platforms that run our daily lives, people have largely turned control over to experts \u2013 people with specialized training and experience. The failure of these experts, however, to keep their promises in a purely technical way is becoming obvious to large segments of the population. In the technology world, specifically, security and privacy are becoming huge issues. The personal information of hundreds of millions of people is exposed every year. DDoS [distributed denial of service attacks<\/a>] are on the rise. Cars are being bricked because of mistakes in a radio broadcast. Large providers are experiencing multiday outages. Each time there is a large-scale outage, each time people\u2019s privacy is violated, each time a prediction about the future (on which policy is based) fails, the confidence in \u2018the elite\u2019 slips a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWill trust erode to the point that large masses of people reject the metaverse outright? It seems like the more likely situation is the metaverse catches on with some classes of people, but not with the large mass of humanity. The metaverse will have an impact \u2013 much like the gamer\u2019s world does today \u2013 on some significant portion of the population. But it won\u2019t be used by \u2018everyone\u2019 in 2040. Its influence will be limited \u2013 closer to the parallel universe of Twitter and Facebook than \u2018the real world en masse.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glenn Edens,<\/strong> Internet Hall of Fame member and professor of practice at the School of Global Management at Arizona State University, wrote, \u201cThe metaverse in prototype form has existed for a while now, first as 3D spaces mapped onto 2D spaces (Second Life, Minecraft, Roblox, myriad blockbuster games, etc.) and now moving to simulations of immersive spaces using 3D projection. Although, at present these 3D spaces are implemented very crudely using head-and-body-position tracking, localized displays (head-mounted stereoscopic such as Oculus, HTC, etc.) or glasses (Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, etc.), or room-based projections (Avalon Holographic, Looking Glass, etc.) \u2013 it\u2019s all very crude. These implementations all limit the metaverse to specialized viewing spaces and highly constructed experiences, not entirely unlike a home theater system or even a good hi-fidelity stereo system where you have to \u2018sit in the right place\u2019 to get the full effect. (Of course, wireless headphones and spatial audio are a solution in the audio-only realm.) Looking at the historically slow progress of this field, we should ask four questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy bet is by 2040 we\u2019ll be stationary (you\u2019ll have to \u2018sit in the right place\u2019), it will be a separate space one intentionally visits, it will be task-related, and it will still be a simulation of true social interaction, only slightly better than Zoom is today, for example. You will \u2018go in\u2019 for work or play or health care or socializing and you will \u2018come out\u2019 when you are done or need a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe first challenge to implementing the 2040 vision is to create a set of viewing tools that are comfortable and natural to wear, that allow freedom of movement and enhance activities rather than require a dedication to the activities (i.e., if one is passionate about their VR gaming, they are willing to put up with the discomfort and clunkiness of a head-mounted display). This is proving to be a technical challenge, so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe next challenge to implement the 2040 vision is tackling standards, architecture and governance (the three pillars of any platform). Just how will these unfold? The Internet is compelling since no one company owns it \u2013 TCP\/IP, UDP, DNS, etc. \u2013 are standards, along with standard physical equipment created to implement those standards (routers, switches, multiplexors, etc.), that allow billions of devices to interconnect and appear to work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf, when and how will we get to a set of standards, architecture and governance to create a single metaverse is key, or will we have thousands of individual metaverses, or should it be metaversi :-)? Of course, today we all understand the Internet is a geographically fragmented global network with significant local control, however it still appears largely as a global agora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTechnically, the viewing hardware that will drive the experience is the problem. Let\u2019s be honest, for the average person the user interfaces we have today are horrific. I am certain we will have the software platforms, authoring tools, algorithms, computation resources, storage and communications bandwidth necessary to create viable metaverse experiences. I\u2019d predict that many (if not most) visitors to the metaverse will see the 3D world mapped to a 2D device (Second Life got a lot right, it was just way too early).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur current metaverse situation reminds of the early years, long ago, when bulletin boards (remember Fido?), Tymshare, The Well, Prodigy, CompuServe and America Online were individual, unique and competing visions of an online world ultimately subsumed by an improved set of standards, architecture and governance that is now called \u2018the Internet.\u2019 The safe bet is that individual economically-driven enterprises offering competing capabilities, experiences and visions of the future will continue to be the structure of the metaverse in 2040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe economic and technology forces favor task-driven multiple metaverses, enabled by continuing improvement in software, communications, computing and viewing equipment. These multi-metaverses will be run by many commercial enterprises, non-profits, educational institutions, research labs, government institutions and, hopefully, grass roots activists and citizens. You will decide what you want to do, where you will sit (or stand) and which metaverse to visit. The metaverse will be additive to our present-day online and computing experiences rather than replacing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, my best-guess answers to the primary questions are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cImmersive experiences and environments have benefits: They can be more engaging; they can increase comprehension and communications; they can more effectively share complex information and details; they can compress time and space, reducing the effort of travel; they can improve task efficiencies (such as maintenance of complex equipment); they might improve education and health care outcomes; and they might increase access and diffusion of knowledge and experience. All of these factors should have real economic and societal benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe big question in my mind is as follows: Are these metaverse investments and engineering to create virtual spaces and mirror worlds a New World, or are they just the next evolution of user-interface and user-experience design? If it turns out to be just the latter, a lot of investors might be disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maggie Jackson<\/strong>, award-winning journalist and author of \u201cDistracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention<\/a>,\u201d said, \u201cIn thinking about the role that the metaverse might play in the future of humanity, we must separate the question of \u2018what can we create?\u2019 from the question of how our creations, now and in future, will influence humanity. We must ask, in other words, \u2018What do we want from the metaverse?\u2019 This is a caution that tech critics from Langdon Winner to Wendall Berry have wisely offered for decades. The choices we make today in terms of what kind of virtual\/digital worlds we create and inhabit are critical. The very survival of humanity is at stake. My concerns are multifold. Despite falling far short of any kind of truly realistic simulation of life itself, the digital world already is taken for \u2018real.\u2019 Whether we are dealing with a caregiver robot or allowing ourselves to be transported by VR, humans are very willing to treat almost any digital experience as real. Any further improvements in the realism of the metaverse will make this more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to keep in mind that however \u2018real\u2019 we deem the metaverse to be, it will not constitute the totality of our reality. At least for a long while, the physical, biological, nondigital reality remains and should be cherished. It would be a huge mistake to seek to subsume \u2018non-virtual experience\u2019 within \u2018meta-experience.\u2019 Nondigital realities are slower, more messy, more demanding, and so offer us exactly the kind of experiences and skills that are needed for deliberation, creativity, contemplation. If we invest ourselves too fully in a metaverse that seems to answer all our needs at the push of a button, that rewards instant gratification, that allows an easy escape from the difficulty of non-virtual life, we are narrowing ourselves in the moment and over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt a time of great flux and increasingly complex systems-wide crises, we need more than ever to invest in the side of ourselves that can work with uncertainty, not fear it; that can push past the first, often-mistaken impression of a person or a problem; that can admit that we don\u2019t fully know and can\u2019t fully control the world, especially at a click. This is why, as we move forward in creating any metaverse, it is crucial that companies, citizens, inventors and users alike demand transparency in this realm on multiple levels. Both children and adults must know what is digital and what is not when entering the metaverse; this sounds like an obvious point, but it will be more crucial in coming years. One of the most heartening measures being seriously considered in ethical AI circles is this kind of transparency for caregiver and other assistive robots. We need signposts, guardrails and rulebooks for distinguishing the metaverse from the biological universe, and we need them quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Barry Chudakov<\/strong>, founder and principal at Sertain Research, wrote, \u201cCalling the metaverse \u2018the future of the internet\u2019 or \u2018the next internet battleground\u2019 is to miss (or dismiss) the logic of mirror worlds, recently promoted as the metaverse. Thinking that the metaverse will be another internet is like thinking the internet would be another kind of television. It\u2019s understandable that we might use a current reference to frame the future, but that frame is misleading. The metaverse is a worldwide mirror \u2013 a mirror world \u2013 which you will walk into with some version of yourself; a made-up world that purportedly is a replica of the real world. That mirror may be accurate or distorting, deliberately manipulated or scrupulously precise. And by 2040, looking into \u2013 and entering \u2013 that mirror will significantly change us and our perceptions. Writer Jia Tolentino called social media a trick mirror<\/em>; imagine how much trickier a metaverse mirror will be where, in Kevin Kelly\u2019s words<\/a>, \u2018everything will have a paired twin \u2026 all things and places will be machine-readable, subject to the power of algorithms.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The metaverse is a worldwide mirror \u2013 a mirror world \u2013 which you will walk into with some version of yourself; a made-up world that purportedly is a replica of the real world. That mirror may be accurate or distorting, deliberately manipulated or scrupulously precise.<\/p>Barry Chudakov, founder and principal at Sertain Research<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cDavid Gelernter, writing in his 1991 book, \u2018Mirror Worlds\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018People build microcosms to find topsight<\/em>. … The simplest way to get it \u2026 is to recreate a big scene in little. Then I can soar above it\u2014tower over it; literally see <\/em>the big picture\u2026. Microcosms are satisfying because they give you the sense of comprehending the whole thing<\/em> or understanding how the parts fit together and what it all means.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday, investors and tech pundits are excited about the financial returns of this new technology incarnation. But the metaverse \u2013 whether as currently envisioned by Facebook\/Meta, or as an evolution of mirror worlds \u2013 will be more than a branding bonanza, a new-world land grab. As Gelernter wrote years ago, the deeper, much more important value of the metaverse microcosm is how it helps us to understand \u2013 and hopefully improve \u2013 the world we live in; understand some aspect, or many aspects, of the pieces and parts the mirror world shows us; how they fit together and what that means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, the first thing we need to consider is what a metaverse truly is; then the breadth and depth of the change a metaverse brings to us, our consciousness, our physical world. Indeed, advanced, immersive, 3D, online worlds have the potential to benefit all aspects of society, from education, health care and government to gaming, entertainment and the arts \u2013 positively affecting all social and civic life. If \u2013 and this if<\/em> could not loom larger \u2013 if we examine, grapple with, come to understand and then regularly monitor the logic of the metaverse and our adapting to (entraining with) that logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the history of art, the advent of mirrors fundamentally changed painting, as David Hockney and others have described. Why? Because this seemingly benign technological advance led painters to more exactly replicate<\/em> the world the mirror enabled them to see. In other words, looking in the mirror changed how they saw; and that changed how they thought. Replicating the world, presenting and re-presenting the world, seems to be as fundamental a human enterprise as building cities or making art. The metaverse represents an ultimate expression of that will to replicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReplication changes how we see, and so what we tell ourselves about the world. For millennia humans told stories of how the world was: how it began (Genesis), how it would end (Revelation). And in our private lives, many of us did the best we could with what (little) we knew. Then came the Enlightenment, the rise of science and technology. What emerged, albeit slowly, was objective reality. Prior to the Enlightenment, objective reality was an undiscovered land. We take this for granted, at least in free societies, because we can access so many objective resources, from libraries and schools to government resources like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] or the Census Bureau. We stopped making up the world when we started measuring it. <\/em>Via replication, the metaverse \u2013 mirror worlds \u2013 has the potential to be the finest measuring tool humans have ever created because it will be designed to exactly reproduce reality in multiple dimensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReplication is a complete change of perspective. So, first, among a series of new demands such a remarkable technology as the metaverse makes upon our consciousness we must examine and come to understand the logic of the metaverse<\/em>. The logic of the metaverse is the logic of the mirror, multiplied by the logic of immersion. Since mirror logic entails exaction \u2013 the desire to exactly reproduce what the mirror shows \u2013 and this exaction is fundamental to seeing the world more accurately, we will see that the product of exaction is facticity, the state of what is really going on. If you see exactly, you are seeing what is<\/em> \u2013 and this leads you to see differently, engendering topsight and greater insight. This is a whole new story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs a digital representation of any- and everything in the world, the metaverse will be a camera-ready venue<\/em>; everything in the physical world will be captured by innumerable cameras \u2013 \u2018pinpoint electric eyes that can be placed anywhere and everywhere\u2019 \u2013 to re-create reality. Our consensus physical reality will be translated into the mirror world. As everything and everyone will be on camera 24\/7\/365, we all become the Kardashians. Our workplace, our homes, public and private spaces will be reflected back to us in the mirror, creating reflection as broadcast. We will all become as transparent as windows. We will wonder: Have I become a person of interest<\/em> to some tracking entity, since anyone, anywhere can see me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSuch concerns will be countered by new mores and privacy boundaries that will naturally emerge. As the metaverse bulldozes boundaries and mirror-reflection becomes our first-line self-awareness, even the new selfie, the presentation of self \u2013 and almost anything else \u2013 in everyday life will be a presentation to cameras. For a car-manufacturing company or a shipper of goods and services with numerous warehouse and delivery protocols, the mirror world is a game-changing advance of remarkable dimensions. Mirroring enables and enhances many things, such as supply chain management, production efficiency, assembly line accuracy, etc. While at the human level ubiquitous cameras and mirrors create a host of moral, identity and privacy quandaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur identities and behaviors and thoughts and actions will adhere \u2013 as they always do when we use a new tool \u2013 to the logic of the metaverse. How will our identity evolve in the metaverse? Today, following the example of Second Life, a digital representation of ourselves in the metaverse is likely to be an avatar, a cartoon-like replica of ourselves. This self-representation or persona will not remain a cartoon. Selfies will morph in the metaverse to represent us more accurately, more beautifully or handsomely; they will change to become more congruent with our affiliations or view of the world. Do we understand how that self-presentation of our identities in the metaverse will alter our overall presentation of self, given the immersive logic of coming mirror worlds? Do we even understand that we need to know that logic in order not to be used by it as we use the metaverse? Again, Kevin Kelly writing in Wired<\/a> describing mirror worlds: \u2018The great paradox is that the only way to understand how AR [or the metaverse] works is to build AR [or the metaverse] and test ourselves in it. It\u2019s weirdly recursive: The technology itself is the microscope needed to inspect the effects of the technology.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn a personal level the metaverse not only entails watching, surveillance and the thorny ground of self-presentation and self-obsession; it also embraces self-evaluation, the desire to fit in, to conform, to succeed, to be seen and heard. Considering exaction, there is a curious, recursive logic at play when humans use mirrors: the will to exactly represent, reproduce, capture and re-create changes us; when we use mirrors, our use is not passive. In painting, artists like Vermeer changed how we saw the world using a mirror to capture each detail on canvas. Camera and video capture images that not only spur memory, they become memory<\/em>; they are the documentation of our lives, our encounters, our loves, our crimes. This is the logic we take with us as we build and enter the metaverse. When we see ourselves in the mirror \u2013 in that mirror world \u2013 we take our ambitions, insecurities, self-image and (often-breathless) prejudices with us into the mirror. How will we know what this means if the technology itself is the microscope needed to see the effects of the technology?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe will rewrite laws and create new laws for infractions and crimes committed in the metaverse; we will debate and set new boundaries as the mirror follows us into our lives, our homes, our bedrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course, this presumes that the metaverse documentarians and builders are as scrupulous and accurate as Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Godwin, Walter Isaacson or Jon Meacham. And what will the soundtrack of the metaverse be? Will we hear the voices of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Hannah Arendt or Rebecca West? Because the very nature of immersive environments that purport to mirror reality means that the mirror must accurately reflect the reality it purportedly represents. <\/em>We are currently having trouble sorting information from disinformation, news from propaganda, and we are only a step or two beyond newspapers and magazines. Remember, technologists built Facebook to make it stickier, Instagram to reward scrolling doom. What will happen when technologists build monetizing metaverse environments to make them more inviting, more believable \u2013 and then the power structure of the metaverse changes and some entity wants its users to believe untruths and distortions? Who will police this environment? What rules or laws will those digital overseers enforce? What integrities can we assume are guaranteed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy branding and promoting the metaverse, Zuckerberg and Meta are hoping to promote the monetizing of the metaverse. Meta wants companies and people, gamers and social media types, to fund development for the metaverse and to use the metaverse as a new venue for business, akin to opening up a splashy new shop in a mall (except malls are now so turn-of-the-century). Monetizing may be a laudable goal. After all, without an economic engine and ongoing support the metaverse would simply be another idea that technologists devised that never got off the ground. But the timing of the metaverse is spookily ironic. As we have despoiled the physical environment of our planet, vanished species and whole biospheres like the Amazon rain forest, polluted our air and oceans, melted our polar ice caps and poisoned our food systems, we build a metaverse which is not only a mirror of the real world, but another world altogether. Is the metaverse an attempt to redo the real world, create an alt world now that we have wrecked the one we inherited? Or can we use it to reinvent the world, see it more clearly, fix what has gone awry and build towards a freer, more equitable, balanced and holistic future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFurther, when monetizing and market makers get involved, the goals and parameters of experience change. The metaverse will present a look-in-the-mirror challenge to our base assumptions of presence and value. As Kim Stanley Robinson wrote<\/a>, \u2018We can\u2019t think in anything but economic terms, our ethics must be quantified and rated for the effects that our actions have on GDP. This is said to be the only thing people can agree on.\u2019The metaverse will present its logic and value on its own terms. For example, consider how Decentraland, a metaverse venue, ignores the logic of everyday experience in the real world to promote its footprint \u2013 not in typical real-world terms, but via NFTs, a newer blockchain valuation with little or no market-value track record. Tokens.com co-founder and CEO Andrew Kiguel described Decentraland on a TV news broadcast as a different kind of NFT, or nonfungible token. NFTs represent a new way of creating and building value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMonetizing the metaverse will prioritize where money can be made. This is an obvious conclusion from looking at global industries, like pharmaceuticals and insurance. There is always a balance between serving customers and returning dividends and profits to shareholders. Initially the metaverse will prioritize land (the digital equivalent of a URL in our current website-based environment); entertainment, where existing brands and personalities and expand their reach and profits by finding new users to entertain; and the horde of followers who will see these trends and want to take their brand into the metaverse to present goods and services in a most modern way. That is given. Today, while anyone can buy virtual land on the Decentraland platform, metaversers have to use a form of digital currency called MANNA, which can be purchased only with bitcoin or ethereum cryptocurrency. Then, like going to a physical real estate office, they can go to the site to see what\u2019s for sale. Parcels have been purchased already, but many are available secondhand. The price fluctuates just like real estate in the physical world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn other words, will the metaverse merely become another gold rush that attracts wealthy investors who want to make more money than they already have? Or is there a way to encourage investment while also creating clarity and focus around a fact-based assessment of the real world while looking to resolve large and pressing global issues that face humankind? After all, in a mirror of the world, like a telescope, we should be able to see and do something positive about things and issues we typically miss or ignore with the naked eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe shift of many online activities into the metaverse, more fully immersive digital spaces and digital life will initially take place as a virtual meeting, for example a telehealth consult today. But it won\u2019t stay there. Once we move more of our meetings and activities to the metaverse, this change will be like base conversion, or changing base in mathematics; like moving from designing the world according to biblical dictates to designing the world in ones and zeroes. This is effectively a new order, a new way of ordering things, environments, presence, identity \u2013 a reordering of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFully immersive digital spaces will supplant social media. We need to consider and game-plan for the difference between immersion and online access. This is a different logic, a different way of showing up. If we show up as ourselves, given behaviors we can see today on TikTok and Instagram and Snap, we will not be content to leave ourselves as we are; we will immerse as an enhanced version of ourselves. Our eyebrows may be darker, our muscles and breasts bigger, our skin tone altered to achieve some social goal of inclusion or exclusivity. So, immersion is not like so-called real life, it is more like the teenagers who watch Tourette syndrome victims on TikTok or YouTube and copy or become more like that behavior<\/a>. We will adapt to metaverse realities by assuming them as our own, which has attendant benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cConsider also that you will spend an hour, or a series of hours, in an environment that is neither where you live nor where you work; it will be the new meta space where you live or work. You will adapt easily to work there because metaverse software will have been tested with people like you and there will be a consensus of amenities to make you comfortable in the digital plane of the workaverse<\/em>. Yet we are, after all, bodies as the first substrate of our reality. Our sense of the ends of our bodies, our proprioception, will alter significantly as we transition from physical reality to metaverse logic and reality. Thus, the most profound thing I imagine that this shift of online activities into more fully immersive digital spaces will do is confound this proprioception. Where does our physical form end and the world begin? And which body do I want to show up in, anyway? This is not a small consideration. Our bodies and our relationship to our bodies will become more fluid, less rigid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we \u2018jack into\u2019 the metaverse to become present there as ourselves, without the encumbrance or enhancements of our physical form, not only our presentation of self in everyday life will change \u2013 our sense of self will expand. We will feel we have multiple selves, and psychiatrists and counselors will be called in to help people cope with multiple-self syndrome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWherever we are here<\/em> will become a transport vehicle to there<\/em>. We have seen this movie before, as gamers donned their headsets and stayed locked at their stations until they needed nourishment, had bathroom breaks, or even died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe metaverse, or mirror worlds, will fundamentally change human society by producing alternatives to commonplace reality. There will likely be multiple alts, multiple realities; we may well number them like dimensions in equations: reality<\/a>1<\/sup><\/a>, reality2<\/sup>[DK1]<\/a> , etc. Human life has become more multidimensional with various technologies, starting with photography and television. Once the internet arrived, we had another there<\/em> besides working in an office or a field to which we might go or retreat. But it was still two-dimensional, a screen, a picture of something in the real world. The metaverse, once it is fully developed, for many will effectively have the beats and depth of a real world; for some \u2013 especially those with a gripe or discontent with conventional reality \u2013 this may be the realer<\/em> world, or at least a reasonable alternative to houses, streets, stores, and buildings where you live and work. Humans have not had, or lived with, alts for long; we do not have traditions and protocols based on alts. We have not collectively, and barely individually, decided how to behave in alternate realities. Coming to that understanding, and then diving into it, will change human society as few things have before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFirst, our sense of place will undergo a profound transformation. In her book \u2018The Power of Place<\/a>,\u2019 Winifred Gallagher describes how our surroundings shape our thoughts, emotions and actions. Place was once the village, the farm, the town square, the forest or ocean. We took place for granted because it was all we knew; all we could know. The home, the local bar or tavern, the school, the office \u2013 these were three-dimensional places, not placeholders; they were our concrete understanding of being somewhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur devices and screens have already changed our sense of place, of being here and there. Here used to be where I am, and there where you are. Now here and there are blended into digital environments, sites, apps, Zoom calls and Microsoft Teams gatherings. The metaverse will accelerate that perception on steroids. Whatever store you might like will have its metaverse locale, as most brands will. The act of going somewhere to try and buy, to see and shop, will be augmented, and to some degree replaced, by metaverse fun zones and shopping experiences. We will gain in terms of time and convenience; we will lose in terms of physical contact and unprogrammed encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSecond, our sense of space will move from linear \u2013 point A to point B, so many miles away \u2013 to perceptual, to being \u2018jacked in.\u2019 With the metaverse, like wilderness or exotic animal species, place vanishes. With our current devices, it already is being eroded by time. Instantaneous connectivity (Japanese engineers have demonstrated a data transmission rate of 319 Terabits per second (Tb\/s) through optical fibers) is a new dimension of time. High-speed connectivity catapults us out of place into the realm of infinite now-ness<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs of this writing there are 5.232 billion Internet users in the world; 171 billion emails are being sent today; 522 million tweets sent today; 8,227 tweets are sent in 1 second and will be sent today each and every second. Being connected on a variety of devices enables us to ignore \u2013 even abandon \u2013 place-ness <\/em>in favor of now-ness<\/em>. As we do, our awareness of place and our place in it changes. While gaming environments provide alternate locales (we play there in our graphics-fueled imaginations yet there <\/em>exists here<\/em>), now-ness <\/em>neuters place \u2013 vaulting us into the limbic realm of connectivity itself. As when gaming enthusiast Chen Rong-yu remained at his gaming console so long he expired, we come to disregard our physical place \u2013 even our physicality \u2013 to focus intently on being connected and on the experience that connectivity provides. Here <\/em>is the world circumscribed by the metaverse: what comes here, what fits here, what captures my attention here. There <\/em>(formerly, place) is now an afterthought, a leftover, the remainder of hours when here has exhausted us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThird, with place altered, our sense of time will be compressed and distorted. This new time dimension will blithely appropriate artifacts from (any) place to furnish almost any featureless locale with the appearance of place<\/em>. In other words, via the metaverse we will experience connectedness \u2013 not place \u2013 and that connectedness will exist only in time; place becomes thereby an artifact of connectedness. Speed hurtles us into time. This is not conventional time measured in o\u2019clocks. It is the time of perpetual here-ness<\/em>, endless now-ness<\/em>. Time in that measure becomes <\/em>place \u2013 re-places place with a ticking nowscape <\/em>of messages, updates, sounds and swipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFourth, our presentation of self will undergo profound alternations. As Erving Goffman<\/a> describes in \u2018The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,\u2019 we cobble together a performance for the people we encounter and interact with daily. In the metaverse, there will be new cues, new traps and feints. We might be less worried about whether our hair is done right and more concerned with whether we bought the right metaverse outfit for the conference or occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAkin to Tristan Harris\u2019 amplifiganda<\/em> (the newer version of propaganda that amplifies something to make people believe it), the metaverse will amplify our need to be immersed, to be an insider: in a situation, an environment, a conflict, a celebrity\u2019s house or a metaverse destination. Without this sense of immersion, we will feel we are not present, we don\u2019t fully understand or participate \u2013 just as today the internet and video take us inside people\u2019s lives, actions and bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe metaverse will change the daily lives of the connected particularly via our sense of location. Even today, since there <\/em>is now anywhere, there <\/em>is gone, except as a GPS coordinate. There <\/em>is now here<\/em>. Pix of some there on Twitter or Facebook are not there<\/em>. You are never there <\/em>anymore; you are only here<\/em>. Even when you travel there, you morph it into here with one hipster post of how cool there is \u2013 but no one is there with you. We all join you here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLiving here <\/em>changes where we live, and the metaverse will only enhance that change. You see it today as people walk face-in-phone through life. They are not in the grocery store or on the avenue. They are un-placed. They are (soon we all will be?) re-placed. Time, as instant connectivity or metaverse immersion, eats our awareness of place. For most of human history, there was no alternative to place, just as there was no way to instantly connect with millions of others on a digitally networked platform. To be out of place was anathema; our places, both as roles and as physical locations, were fixed, defined by geography, norms and cultural institutions. This highlights how far our present state has removed us from our history: now-ness is blissfully ahistorical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe daily lives of the metaversians will become less connected to physical reality. Office buildings, the site of work, will no longer be the sole, or even the principal, place where work gets done. Nor will retail stores and malls be the principal place where goods are shopped, sold and bought. Of course, this happened already with COVID stay-at-home experiences, but the metaverse will accelerate that evolution. Connection used to mean how our social networks and experiences, personal and interpersonal, were tethered; with the advent of the metaverse, connection will simultaneously mean connected to the metaverse land, destinations, and experiences; and at the same time, it will denote diminished intimate, physical connectedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeing connected will mean being immersed. Like the cyborgs in the movie \u2018Minority Report,\u2019 we will all be underwater, submerged in the metaverse substrate. This disconnection from physical reality will be at the heart of a contradiction that, hopefully, we will use to our advantage. As climate change accelerates, the metaverse can focus specifically on areas that need immediate attention or where strategies of containment or enhancement need tweaking. But there is little doubt of the irony: As our outside climate deteriorates, our interior digital world \u2013 the metaverse \u2013 will be expanding and attracting more capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cImmersion brings another distortion. Namely assessing the realness of a situation, a person, a feeling. There is little doubt that with advances in technology, the replication of five-sensory reality will enable being in the metaverse to be a construct as real as the so-called real world. Metaversarians will then wonder: Which do I find more real? Where I am in my physical life, or where I am in the metaverse? This will fill psychiatrists\u2019 and other caregivers\u2019 offices with confused and confounded patients, as metaverse syndrome<\/em> becomes another kind of PTSD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA further distortion will be deliberate. Any mirror world can be manipulated to become distorted. The mirror world, the metaverse, can be intentionally manipulated to show disinformation, misinformation, or outright lies as a means of gaining control, cash, or raw power. As Peter Pomerantsev says in his book, \u2018This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality<\/a>,\u2019 when information is a weapon every opinion is an act of war. For this reason, and for reasons attendant to this one, the metaverse will require a bill of integrities to ensure that what is presented as real is accurate, unbiased, undistorted, not impinged upon by forces that would seek to use the metaverse for nefarious means.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe future environment for most is likely to be \u2018a kind of everyday mixed-reality system that allows for both physical and digital worlds to overlap\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We\u2019re rushing headlong into it without all the safety measures that we need\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Despite concerns, \u2018the metaverse will eventually draw us together\u2019 as other media have done throughout history<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The biggest impact will tie to the question: What does it mean to be human?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A vision of what a great metaverse \u2013 or great metaverses \u2013 could be<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Watch for the rise of \u2018digital twins\u2019 and the variety of ways they will be helpful<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The worst online problems could intensify; then add interpersonal dissociation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Services will grow and digital gaps will widen, too<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018This could increase our loneliness and lead to more polarization\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A whole new range of social challenges will arise<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Education is where the greatest and most valuable shifts may come\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018The demand for all manner of physical objects will drastically diminish\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018An even deeper immersion into \u201csocial media,\u201d which means a further centralization of our culture, and the increasing power of the technological elite\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The metaverses will be stationary, separate, task-related and simulated<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We need signposts, guardrails and rulebooks for distinguishing the metaverse from the biological universe\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A mirror world that will change our perception of place, space, time, presentation of ourselves and connection to reality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n