The Inevitability of the Metaverse?

The idea of the metaverse, a 3-D virtual habitat inside which we, or more precisely our digital avatars will operate, is a not new one. It has been spoken of first as science fiction, then experienced partially through the device of gaming, most particularly in games like?Second Life, but now with its espousal by one of the company’s that dominates our digital landscape, it feels like the default template of our future.

Regardless of whether the vision as articulated by Mark Zuckerberg comes true or not, what is difficult to argue is that the world is moving in that general direction. It seems to be part of the gradual but inexorable arc of history. The intent of technological exploration has moved in a trajectory that has discernible shape and the metaverse is a destination that has in some senses been foretold.

The idea of technology arose possibly as a result of the asymmetry between the might of the physical world and relative inadequacy of the human body. For much of history the focus of technology is to somehow try and redress the imbalance between the vastness and power of our physical circumstances and the puniness of our inept bodies, the only machinery at our disposal to try and find ways of surviving in a volatile and uncertain world. Technology has been the mind’s way of helping the body- it is an overflow from our apparently limitless minds to our limited bodies. The body is a problem that the mind has spent centuries trying to solve through a variety of escalating interventions.

Technology began with the idea of tools- ways in which we could add thin layers of capability to our physical selves. Tools served specific purposes, they wriggled their way into the gaps that existed between desire and ability, intention and action. They extended and amplified our limbs, harnessed natural forces, and simplified the task of navigating the world around us.?

Along with tools came instruments to provide for storage and circulation of the products of the mind- language and its first cousin, writing. Language made the mind articulate and writing helped us store its output so that the products of the mind became additive over time. Generations added its own exertions- thoughts aggregated into knowledge. Education is our way of ensuring that every successive generation gets to build on the body of knowledge accumulated in the past.?

Technology’s exertions continued to focus on making up for the limitations of the body and fought against the constraints imposed on us by forces of nature. Machines mechanized labour and helped usher the advent of mass production. Medical technologies systematically increased the span of human life by beating back disease. Communication and mobility technologies changed our experience of distance and time and made the world more accessible. Electricity erased the distinction between night and day and powered our everyday lives with an accessible and affordable form of energy.?

It is only in the last century that the focus of technology has moved from the body to the mind, from thinking in terms of the physical world and turning its attention to a world created in the likeness of the mind. The abacus and the slide rule might have been early devices that focused on amplifying the abilities of the mind but otherwise technology concerned itself largely with the physical world. The advent of the computer placed mind at the heart of the technological discourse. Vastly enhanced computational skills and the ability to process knowledge at a scale and with a speed that bore no relationship with what was possible in the past made it possible to create a whole new architecture of ambition for technology.

The internet is, at its simplest, a network of minds. Digital technology might still help us overcome the physical limitations of our bodies, but its larger pursuit is in multiplying the capabilities of our minds. From a time, when as individuals, we had to adapt to the circumstances around us by tentatively extracting more degrees of freedom for ourselves, today the equation has reversed. The world is being rearranged around the individual. Desires animate technology more than constraints.

The future of technology is likely to focus on a more direct exploitation of the power of our minds. If the internet connects minds across continents, wearables implant the mind or its capability (intelligence) in the body. The cyborg imagination is that of the mind sliding out of the confined space allocated to it and infecting the rest of our bodies.?

AI represents a stage when the mind is detached altogether from the body. Now mental intelligence of a vastly amplified kind sits outside the body and functions independently of it. Machine intelligence will not only vastly surpass its human counterpart but will potentially lie beyond human comprehension. We will use our minds to transcend the mind, to perhaps render it vestigial just as we have made our bodies largely redundant.?

In some senses, we are already in the metaverse. Digital is a new universe with its own physics. An absence of geography or topography, the decimation of distance, the power of simultaneity- these are some of the new codes of this world. Already we find ourselves immersed in this creation of ours and refer to the physical world as if it were the exception- ‘offline’- the absence of digital connectivity being a bug and not a feature. This new world alternative has its own social codes, its own distinctive vocabulary, its own currency and its own ways of creating value.

The power of the mind to create a world in its own likeness, armed with its own capabilities is as in all things related to technology both dazzling and terrifying. As we sink into the untethered world of our minds, the possibilities are endless but what do we hang on to? What will be our touch with- what’s the word I am looking for -reality??

(This is a version of an article that has appeared previously in the Times of India)