The Coming Multiverses

What is the Metaverse? How will it change our lives? Listening to today's chatter on social media, you would think the Metaverse will be one gigantic "Ready Player One" gaming dystopia created by tech giants and Hollywood. Of course, there will be fake news and bad actors like Web 2.0, but there will be fresh, new utopian worlds too, especially on Open XR and WebXR websites. Frankly, as an urban/ environmental planner and serial entrepreneur, I'm disappointed by the lack of vision and imagination. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms enable you to create anything you can imagine, but most demos and forecasts repeat the same old tropes from video games, Hollywood blockbusters, music concerts, and dystopian novels.

To overcome this backward-looking myopia, I've written ten novels imagining how VR can be used to create totally new, compelling experiences. see www.dreamscapeglobal.com

Virtual homeless shelters: In my first novel, "Virtually San Francisco," a homeless man persuades VR gamers at a hackathon to create a homeless shelter, which they trick out with juice bars, meditation huts, permaculture and street fashion stylists. I was inspired by a homeless man wearing a VR headset who was watching streaming programs. Why? He said boredom is one of the biggest problems at night, plus he wanted to a homeless shelter where he could feel proud, but the homeless man is a metaphor for all of us at home during repeated Covid-19 lockdowns.

Education as Time Travel: To finance the homeless shelter, VR gamers in my novel "Uniquely San Francisco" create the annual Chinatown New Years parade as a massive virtual shopping mall in the ancient Tang Dynasty capital, complete with warriors, princesses, dragons and dancers dressed in period fashions for purchase. In "Fashionably San Francisco," a rival overwhelms the mayor by creating virtual capitals of all 13 Chinese dynasties as a way to win votes from the influential Chinese community. San Francisco responds by involving gamers in its sister city, Shanghai.

Historic preservation: Since my grandfather arrived in San Francisco in 1893, I love the City's history. In "Soulfully San Francisco," an African-Japanese veteran builds a Virtual Fillmore district in the 1940s and 1950s when it was the "Harlem of the West", attracting top jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Dizzie Gillespie. He writes a musical with African and Japanese American singers and dancers retelling our stories from the distant past. The ambitious VR gamers create their own Virtual Wakandas with fusion rock operas.

Virtual Musicals: I love musicals so in "Beatfully San Francisco," which is a retelling of Puccini's "La Boheme," a dying social marketer creates a virtual climate opera in North Beach based on Dante's "Il Paradiso" as her farewell to her artist friends and the City. Since Covid-19, Broadway and theater troupes are now talking about creating their plays in the Metaverse to avoid shutting down again this winter.

Virtual Tourism: VR/AR are becoming popular in museums during Covid-19 lockdowns so in "Zenfully San Francisco," Japantown creates solar sculptures, both real and virtual, of Obon festival dancers as a way to attract to attract visitors to the Peace Plaza mall, especially at night with illuminated sculptures dancing to traditional Japanese music. They expand it to all Japanese cities and towns as a way to promote virtual tourism. Recently, Japan created a website with over 50 virtual cities, which will be used for planning, design, disaster preparedness, tourism and education.

3D Medicine: In 2018, HTC provided funding for my former startup to create a VR model of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine about circadian rhythms, which we presented at the 2018 Nobel ceremony. When a former UC San Diego oncologist navigated through our virtual blood vessels, she said: "VR is the next-generational microscope that will revolutionize medical research, training, education, surgery, therapy and recovery." Incorporating data, it's possible for physicians to monitor diseases, such as cancer, and even walk or navigate through the virtual cancer cells with the patient to discuss treatment and view progress. So in my novel, "Virally San Francisco," I describe how VR can visualize Covid-19 mutations for medical research and K-12 STEAM education. To see the Nobel demo: https://blog.vive.com/us/2018/12/06/discover-first-vr-experience-nobel-prize-physiology-medicine-launch-circadian-rhythm-viveport/

Climate Simulations: VR and AR are regularly used in aerospace and vehicle design and modeling, virtual surgery, and traffic planning, but only recently have I seen climate simulators using NASA, NOAA and local data, as my VirtualGaia.com startup is doing. In 2018, my previous startup, One Reality AB, simulated 180 mph hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, sea rise and other disasters. We were running a VR training seminar in Guam before it and Japan were struck by a 5.0 typhoon, which we could have visualized and simulated in VR. A few months later, I was trying to sell our VR solution to Pacific, Gas & Electric (PG&E) and, after the 2017 wildfires, suggested a VR wildfire simulator, but they said: "We don't like talking about fires. Perhaps later..." In 2018, the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise and sent PG&E into a $30 billion bankruptcy. A VR simulation could have prepared PG&E and its customers for rapid evacuations.

Space Travel: In 2015, NASA Ames allowed me to drive a rover anywhere on its Virtual Mars using a VR headset for total, realistic immersion, which I thought would be ideal for STEAM education. In my tenth and last novel, "Cosmically San Francisco," the mayor challenges K-12 students under the guidance of NASA mentors to build virtual space stations, asteroid mining camps, moon bases and Mars cities.

Eco-Cities: To address space critics, I explore how students can build future eco-cities based on the 100% recycling principles from space station, moon, Mars and Navaho settlements in "Cosmically San Francisco." NASA uses deserts to prepare astronauts for living on Mars so integrating Virtual Mars and Virtual Navaho communities makes sense for knowledge sharing.

Multicultural Multiverses: Finally, the biggest opportunity of all will be Multiverses -- multicultural, multiracial, transgender, and global virtual worlds featuring all peoples -- a Multiverse "UN of Cultures", beginning with VR human evolution out of Africa into the diapora linking all of us. For cities, virtual street festivals and concerts are coming since we cannot travel as much during Covid-19. Hopefully, the Multiverses can bring us closer together so we can meet soon for real.

Thus, with VR/AR, AI, NFTs, blockchain and other exponential technologies, we will soon be able to create and monetize anything we can imagine. What will we imagine? What will we create? What will we leave to the world?

Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal, Dreamscape Global, San Francisco