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The metaverse is already here: thinkers seek answers to the dilemmas of the new virtual reality

2022-11-22T11:32:29.559Z


From the concentration of power to the advantages for aviation or surgery, four recent essays try to explain the potential and the risks of the technology destined to invade the life of the entire world. An analyst estimates a decade for the start of his arrival


A user participates in a fashion week on the internet.Getty Images

Perhaps the writer Neal Stephenson had prophetic gifts.

Or, perhaps, simply an overflowing imagination.

The truth is that he was the first, back in 1992, to speak of "metaverse."

In his novel

Snow Crash

(Gigamesh), it was a street of more than 65,000 kilometers.

On both sides, all kinds of establishments arose, which the user could visit through a digital

alter ego

, an avatar.

The book describes a dystopian, immersive and widely accessible world, full of opportunities and risks.

Already then it sold millions of copies.

But, 30 years later, he has achieved much more: the metaverse is on everyone's lips.

More information

Metaverse, year 1: a risky and million-dollar bet to retain young people who deny social networks

They say it's the future.

Or even the present.

The next evolution of the internet, but immersive.

Although the visions differ, the bet is up: this year 120,000 million dollars (about 116,000 million euros, more than double that in 2021) have already been dedicated to raising the technological infrastructure of the metaverse, according to the McKinsey consultancy.

Any self-respecting corporate giant already has plans and funds in this regard.

Meanwhile, fears grow at the same devilish pace as investments.

Faced with a territory without borders, books once again act as a compass.

Four essays have coincided for weeks in bookstores to try to clarify what awaits us.

The first explorers of the metaverse.

And, despite different views, they share a certainty: it is getting closer by leaps and bounds.

“In a decade we will be able to affirm that it will have arrived.

But not that it is finished”, says the analyst Matthew Ball, author of

The metaverse and how it will revolutionize everything

(Deusto).

“Let's say we're in year 1 of 10 to deliver the amplified user experience you envision.

But the advantage is that we have been developing immersive experiences for 20 years.

And until now the infrastructure was not appropriate, ”says Óscar Peña, who signs

Metaversos.

The great immersive revolution

(Anaya).

Both have spent years studying the coming revolution, as has Cathy Hackl, who publishes

Navigating the Metaverse

(Wiley, English only).

And, by dint of reading and asking, Ball has coined his definition of the metaverse: “A massive, interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be synchronously and persistently experienced by an effectively unlimited number of users with a sense of of individual presence and continuity of data such as identity, history, objects, rights, communications and payments”.

Simplifying a lot, everyone creates an avatar and accesses a digital place with infinite possibilities: socializing, playing, doing business, creating, watching a movie, working...

Titles like

Fortnite, Roblox

or

Minecraft,

with their millions of users left to play, but also simply to see or create other worlds

online

, offer a minimal taste of what it will be.

Just as The Fabricant proposes the first digital fashion and haute couture house, and Inmvu offers a site where seven million Internet users can meet and get to know each other through their

alter egos.

Two office colleagues share an experience through virtual reality glasses and a tablet.

Luis Alvarez (Getty Images)

Although the metaverse is capable of transcending even the virtual world.

“The big mistake is to talk only about an immersive experience.

And the augmented reality?

And the mixed?

One of the fundamental pillars is decentralization”, says Peña, head of innovation for the Spanish subsidiary of Wunderman Thompson.

The expert, in his book, collects examples that are intertwined with physical life: the Wayray company is already installing augmented reality glasses in some cars, which offer the driver constantly connected information, just as is experienced with glasses capable of guiding and personalizing (with offers or reminders, for example) the purchase in a supermarket.

And in his own company, the president already appears virtually on a stage where he is not, or technicians solve problems from afar by sharing a team's real-time vision and drawing hints and tips on the screen, which others can see immediately.

I mean, some progress is already here.

Much?

Little bit?

It depends on the visions.

For Professor Sangkyun Kim, who publishes

The Metaverse.

A trip to digital land

(Anaya),

The constant updating of our profiles on social networks and the identity story that we create

online

already lay the foundations, in some way, for the metaverse.

Although, as often happened in the history of humanity, the mind moves faster than the arm.

And practical difficulties still limit what the gurus conceive.

“The greatest distance between what we need and what we have is probably the power of computers.

In addition, the capacity of the network must also be expanded.

And both virtual and augmented reality are still not affordable and performative enough for the average citizen”, lists Ball.

The main problem, he points out, is that the constant, real-time display of a 3D world multiplies the demands on the devices.

And no user would accept a metaverse where technical problems slow him down compared to others.

Peña adds the importance of reducing the size of the equipment: "It would be necessary for all the technological calculations not to be developed in a processor placed in the glasses themselves, but in the nearest server through connectivity."

Screenshot of the space in the metaverse being developed by DXC.

DXC (DXC)

At the same time, however, both note an extraordinary advance in the tools.

And its increasing and faster diffusion among the population.

Without going as far as Elon Musk, whose company Neuralink designs a neural implant with which people will control computers or mobile devices, Ball sees likely a three-way access to the metaverse: a primary device (mobile or glasses), a second of potential support (PC, console...) and a third party that serves to amplify the experience (a watch, a tracking camera).

Although improvements are also needed here: 58% of users of virtual reality glasses experienced some dizziness, according to a Goldman Sachs study cited by Ball's book.

Culture.

Worked.

Fashion.

Seduction.

Transportation.

Surgery.

The implications affect virtually every industry you can think of.

There are already soldiers who are training through the metaverse, airports are taking advantage of it to organize their traffic, and the Seoul City Council is preparing the digital version of its city, to interact more quickly and efficiently with its citizens.

Although, for Ball, the most stimulating change may come in education: “In the US its cost has grown by 14% since 1993. That of health, by 6%.

That of cars, 3%.

And, meanwhile, technology, the internet, have not contributed to improving education.

We do not teach more students per teacher, nor faster, nor with fewer resources.

And it's still very uneven.

I don't think the metaverse at once solves everything,

Although, for every possibility that the metaverse raises, a doubt arises, or a dark side.

Strengthening the network, for example, implies increasing the cables under the oceans.

And promoting greater connectivity is at odds with the digital truce that many support today.

Although perhaps the greatest concern is explained by the very starting point of the phenomenon: the Internet arose from government and university experiments;

here the handle is from the beginning in the hands of colossal companies that have shown a ruthless thirst for profit and without many scruples, as Ball recalls.

The layoffs of thousands of employees that Meta, Twitter or Amazon are planning in recent weeks serve as another warning.

“One of the reasons why the internet was so revolutionary is that it was born as a public good.

To guarantee the metaverse, we have to be as aggressive from now on in shaping it as the big companies are in creating it”, affirms the analyst.

And his book reinforces the alarm: “It is being promoted and built by private companies for the explicit purpose of trading, collecting data, advertising and selling products […].

And it is also emerging at a time when the biggest platforms […] have already established a huge influence on our lives.”

It's hard to believe that the tech giants aren't looking to maintain, or reinforce, their dominant position in the metaverse.

Or that they do not continue to exploit the content created by users or artists to increase their own benefits.

Or that the unprecedented tide of personal information they receive does not feed their hunger for more and more.

“We have spent years making it easier for big tech companies to use data like walled gardens, where we don't know what to do with it,” warns Peña.

Although she also clarifies that the decentralization of the metaverse will complicate the impulses of those who want to engulf it.

And that there are proposals that reinforce ownership by the user, who decides at all times what to give up, when and how much.

Precisely around belonging another key game is played.

On the one hand, in the absence of laws and jurisprudence, uncertainty remains about to what extent the buyer owns the digital object that he acquired.

“Would you invest in a vehicle that a dealer could reclaim from you at any time?

No one would buy virtual goods for $10,000 that could be taken away from them,” Ball writes.

And, on the other hand, the limits of that purchase are also diluted: currently, for example, a hat purchased for an avatar in one video game cannot be used in another.

Most works do not even allow users of different consoles to cross paths.

Faced with this, Ball and Peña stress that the metaverse will require agreements between companies, new business models and, above all, interoperability: that is, everyone can go and use what they have wherever they want, just like in real life. .

And both highlight examples such as Unity or Unreal, development platforms that have opened up their codes to make it easy for anyone to use them to create digital worlds.

An image from the WayRay company website that shows the operation of its augmented reality glasses for cars.

But the metaverse also opens up disturbing possibilities for a series of already very serious issues on the web: harassment, revenge pornography, manipulation... “The moderation of behavioral content is much more complicated than that of texts.

As our life passes more to the network, digital problems grow, ”says Ball.

And Peña shares a personal memory: in an immersive experience that she worked on, there were avatars that immediately focused on harassing others, until the organizers were forced to "guarantee a space of protection."

Tomorrow's dilemmas that begin to be resolved today.

But meanwhile, the metaverse seems to be getting a little closer every day.

“The presence of people in the virtual world grows;

the time they spend there and its importance, too, as well as the money invested.

Every 15 minutes, more users access

Roblox

than

Second Life

hosted in a month at its peak,” shares Ball.

And when he adds technological progress and its diffusion, he returns to the same conclusion: evolution seems inevitable.

Whoever has gray hair may hallucinate.

But Ball believes that there are already generations that aren't even surprised: “[Video games]

Fortnite, Minecraft

and

Roblox

are three of the top five destinations for weekly pay for teens in the US. Some people already don't understand the game to some extent. metaverse as an idea, because it doesn't see the difference from its usual world.

Fascinating.

Or scary.

Opinions, luckily, are like the possibilities of the metaverse: endless.

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Source: elparis

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