The technology promised by Zuckerberg raises questions that go beyond virtualised interactions
By Leandro Lacerda
Reproduction: Google Images
You are tired of the routine and a little sad. Being far from home and from your friends, you realise you need to socialise and celebrate to lift your spirits. You plan an event with your friends. Then you ask what the coordinates are for reaching the party. And one of your friends is direct: “I’ll send the link.” So you put on your virtual glasses, go to your studio room, which serves as your connectivity infrastructure, and “dive” into virtual reality. You prepare your avatar, choosing the best clothes and accessories, and enter your tribe’s room. The party lasts four hours in a spacious, decorated setting, with plenty of music, dancing, games and special effects that would be expensive and far harder to reproduce in the real world.
With the arrival of the metaverse, the need to be close to those we love, even in times of isolation, will be met by the possibility of interacting “tête-à-tête” with people and objects in first-person environments rich in stimuli, emulating, with great verisimilitude, places and events typical of our everyday life. It will no longer be a matter merely of interactions through a screen, but of having an experience of being together in another dimension.
Drawing on ultra-fast internet infrastructure (5G), on the extremely advanced optimisation of graphics hardware and software, on the implementation of machine learning, on advanced programming and on artificial intelligence, the technology that will make the metaverse possible will reach incredible levels of detail and immersion. But how will it really affect our lives? In this article we set out to try to answer that question, addressing all the effects of this new paradigm on an ultra-connected society.
Power and potential
It is still difficult to define what the metaverse is and to measure all its power and potential for now and for the future. At present, however, we can already imagine some obvious things: immersions provided by special glasses for office meetings, catch-ups with friends, shopping in replicas of supermarkets, or simply settling into your own room, decorated and designed to your heart’s content, to watch a film on Netflix through a floating window.
Popular films such as The Matrix, Tron and Ready Player One, and the novel Snow Crash, seem to be getting closer and closer to our reality, since they speak to the creation of a virtual 3D world inspired by physical reality through digital devices — an individual or shared space, made up basically of the sum of virtual reality, augmented reality and the internet, inhabited by the avatars of real people.
Specialists and companies claim that the applications of these platforms will be vast, with ultra-realistic replicas of places in the real world, allowing an infinite number of simultaneous users. Most probably, it will be the greatest revolution in computing platforms the world has ever seen, even greater than the mobile revolution and the web revolution.
How the metaverse works
At present, the platforms are based on an integration of relatively basic digital resources, such as motion sensors (the glasses being the main component, or the only one, running an operating system combined with headphones) and a remote control for the interface, and they still depend on fast internet for access to the platform.
However, the metaverse is only at its beginning, and many improvements are projected for the future, which will become clearer through mass use and adoption by users around the world — not only for solving problems in interactions between people, but also for updates in physical and virtual support in line with the evolution of devices, gadgets and the internet of things.
The job market
A new technological paradigm implies new jobs and new qualifications. Given the willingness of so many sectors to dive headfirst into this new universe, there are at least ten potential jobs that will emerge with the beginning, development and improvement of the metaverse:
- Metaverse research scientist;
- Metaverse planner;
- Metaverse ecosystem regulator;
- Metaverse safety manager;
- Metaverse hardware builder;
- Metaverse storyteller;
- Metaverse world builder;
- Metaverse ad-blocking specialist;
- Metaverse cybersecurity specialists;
- Metaverse avatar developer;
For this reason, upskilling professionals from fields close or adjacent to virtual reality, augmented reality, information technology, programming, graphic design, cybersecurity, digital architecture, content production, data science and so on is extremely important and will yield excellent jobs with excellent pay for qualified candidates.
The property market in the metaverse
Large companies, brands and investors are buying property in the metaverse, in view of the emergence of a possible “digital Manhattan”. MetaMetric Solutions projects that, in 2022, the sale of plots could reach US$ 1 billion. The leap in trading began after Facebook announced its name change to Meta Platforms, with the aim of focusing on developing its metaverse.
So far, the property market in the metaverse is concentrated in four large companies, known as the metaverse’s “Big Four”:
- Sandbox;
- Decentraland;
- Cryptovoxels;
- Somnium.
Sandbox dominates the market — according to Republic Realm — with 62% of the land available across the four platforms and three quarters of all sales. The organisation is developing 100 islands, complete with villages and the inclusion of customised goods such as boats and jet skis. A plot on the platform, measuring 96×96 metres, was costing US$ 12,700 in December 2021.
“Civil construction” in this world is easy to create and can be done by a single person, similar to the game Minecraft. It is worth remembering, though, that users who do not want to or cannot carry out these creations can simply enter and interact within others that are already set up.
The saga of digital vanguardism
Broadly speaking, brands are migrating to the metaverse for three reasons:
1. Digital marketing
Offering a distinctive experience to the customer makes companies stand out in their respective markets. So no company wants to be left out of the metaverse. It is the eternal pursuit of innovation to attract and captivate potential new niche and/or mass customers.
2. E-commerce
The virtual world will serve as one more channel for promotion and for extremely interactive and realistic selling. Such an environment will make it possible to visit and test replicas of physical assets, without much bureaucracy. Buying a property or a car, for example, will become far easier.
3. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)
NFTs are a special type of cryptographic token that represents something unique, an irreplaceable asset. Exclusive virtual goods belonging to companies are developed on the blockchain network, generated by a certificate of authenticity of ownership for whoever invested in this type of asset. Nike, for example, has already begun its plans to sell footwear for avatars.
In view of this, the metaverse will not serve only the profit of the companies — short- and medium-term projections are not very encouraging, given its still experimental character — that venture into this new universe; more importantly still, it will be a place to develop better commercial visibility and an authentic brand identity.
Abusive behaviour
Mark Zuckerberg’s Horizon Worlds was released for testing to thousands of volunteers in the United States and Canada, and the first case of sexual harassment has already occurred. A volunteer, who was the victim of the assault, reported that she was “groped” by a stranger and that other people had encouraged the act. The incident took place in Plaza, the platform’s main public environment.
The case was a major warning about the bad that these platforms can offer. But according to specialists, inappropriate and disrespectful behaviour will be prevented and combated effectively, and occurrences during the early days of the metaverse will only help in containing threats and incidents, serving as “antidotes” for developers.
Body and avatar
Internal research by Facebook revealed that 32% of adolescent girls who suffer from body image distortion feel worse after using Instagram, because of the greater engagement and visibility of profiles that follow the standards of life and beauty valued by a large mass of users and boosted by the network’s algorithm.
To underline this picture, a group of researchers at Stanford discovered the Proteus Effect, a thesis holding that the way our bodies are represented in cyberspace also invariably affects the way we act in our lives in the real world.
It is to be feared, therefore, that such a condition may worsen with the arrival of the metaverse, since interacting in a universe where you can look however you want, and not necessarily like yourself, may have an impact not only on how we are perceived by others but also on how we see ourselves, leading to a silent rejection by people of everything that does not follow those standards.
One way out to pursue, then, would be to encourage the development of a meta-society designed to value difference, so that it does not matter what your race, gender or any other physical or personal characteristics may be.
Life inside the screen
And with so much potential, will the metaverse cause more digital addiction among users? It is to be hoped that living in the metaverse for many hours, moderately or intensely, will not be common or an unstoppable trend, as we see today with the use of smartphones.
There are ergonomic questions (the relationship of humans with objects) and questions of comfort involved in the use of motion sensors, and in the biological barrier of our own eyesight. Spending so long immersed in a virtual world, inside a bright screen, does not seem very pleasant. Like any other activity or habit, it may become tedious over time.
The new world has already begun
We are faced with a network of virtual environments that will simulate a “second life” of ours, where we will be able to carry out many of the tasks of our everyday life. Amid the pros and cons, the metaverse is already here, whether or not we like this new world, and the coming chapters will radically change the way we socialise in every sense.
The greatest digital revolution humanity has ever seen is consolidating its foundations and will transform once and for all everything we already knew and did through the internet, and we have to start learning to deal with this new paradigm, already aware of its challenges and of where it may be able to help us, in every area of life.
You have read an article produced by Casa Hacker, a non-profit initiative dedicated to fighting social inequality through technology education.
Together, we can build better-informed communities on the path to development.