Metaverse, life, and the internet’s future: a quick (movie) guide

Metaverse – the buzzword – has animated the world. Like many of you, I’ve been very excited to read and learn about it. Going by the fact that Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta, we can make two reasonable assumptions – first that he is trying to shift the general focus away from the ongoing criticism of the way FB has managed personal data of its users, and second that metaverse should be something cool which Metaberg Zuckerverse wants FB to become and crawl out of the depths of boredom and dullness that has come to symbolize FB to the younger generation. Both the assumptions in fact would be true.

But first, what is metaverse. The word meta has a Greek origin and means “beyond”. Verse comes from Latin versus and means “to turn, bend”. Metaverse is not something that Facebook is creating – it will be like saying Google created the internet. The word first appeared in the science fiction novel?Snow Crash?written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. This book follows the adventures of Hiro Protagonist, a pizza “deliverator” — an elite hacker — as he unravels the mystery of some vicious malware that can infect users of the metaverse, inflicting brain damage in real life (yes, that can be a reality soon).

Except for eating, sleeping and bio breaks, you can stay there and do anything, be anything, go anywhere. As was explained in the movie Ready Player One (to which I will come back shortly), the metaverse is a place where you can slide down the pyramids, climb Mt. Everest with Batman, ski on 20 meters waves in Hawaii, be any age, be tall(er), (more) handsome, be sexy, turn into a giant, become a dwarf, meet anyone, make friends with anyone, marry anyone (or not), without knowing any of these people in the real world. It’s an endless space with endless possibilities, limited only by your imagination. The line between real and imaginary can blur as events in the metaverse can be as real as events in your actual life. Your virtual avatar can feel more real and alive than the real you.

A good way to understand metaverse is by watching imaginative movies created on this theme. I have curated a list of my favourites, and I invite you to add yours in the comments section.

Ready Player One

Generally regarded as the movie which best explains the metaverse, Ready Player One is based on Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel by the same name. It’s a classic Spielberg movie and a treasure trove for pop culture aficionados. It is set in a virtual reality called Oasis where people visit to escape the pain, poverty, loneliness, and dullness of the real world. It ticks most of the boxes in terms of what you can do, who you can be and don’t want to be, who you can befriend and who you must avoid, and actions that take place in the virtual world having a real-world consequence in terms of life, liberty, and assets.

Minority Report

Another Spielberg movie set in the future where a special police unit can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes, and an officer from that unit is himself accused of a future murder of a person whom he hasn’t yet met. The movie uses gesture-based AR interfaces which have inspired numerous other movies and inventions for a keyboard-less environment with multiple layers of information and data streams. The movie is about a couple of decades old and set 50 years into the future when it was made. But the film’s themes are relevant even today.

Avatar

One of the most popular movies ever made in any genre, James Cameron’s Avatar is a full-immersion visual spectacle. Set in 2154, the movie is about sending a paraplegic marine to the moon Pandora on a unique mission to obtain a mineral for humans on a dying Earth. The transporting of humans is not physical but moving human consciousness into the mind and body of another species, Na’vi who inhabit Pandora, and possess higher mental and intellectual capabilities. It explores and rather flaunts the astounding AR and VR technologies.

Iron Man

One of the masterpieces coming out of the Marvel stable, at the core of the movie is an AR and VR technology created by the billionaire industrialist, Tony Stark. It starts with him creating a weaponised suit in captivity in an Afghan cave, and later creating JARVIS (Just A Rather/Really Very Intelligent System), his all-in-one natural language human interface, and named after his family butler Edwin Jarvis. The oneness of the suit and the intelligent JARVIS is what provides unparalleled power to Tony Stark, to help him fight against crime and terrorism.

The Matrix

More than a couple of decades old, The Matrix, now a cult classic, was the ultimate in cyberescapism, envisioning and creating a duality of life that we have come to know of so well in recent times. Created by the Wachowskis, Neo, the protagonist of the movie finds to his utter shock that the life he thinks he knows so well is an elaborate deception created by 21st-century computer programs. Humans have been subverted to battery-powered energy sources confined to pods and are controlled by a neural interactive cyber-intelligence. The movie explores some deep philosophical questions like the?allegory of the cave?and the?experience machine, as well as the prospect of AGI running away with our future.

Her

Her, created and directed by Spike Jonze, shows the surreal and unconventional romance between and human and a machine. After separating from his wife, a lonely writer develops an unlikely connection with an operating system, which is designed to meet his every need. The voice organizes his life, doesn’t complain about her multi-tasking assistant role, acts as a comforter, helpmate, turn-on, and saviour, which makes her an ideal companion. Her demonstrates very convincingly the plausibility of a satisfying relationship between man and machine in a brave new world, not necessarily of an isolated and depressed man as depicted in the movie, but of anyone for whom the virtual world is a place where you can complete your unfulfilled emotional and physical needs.

Lucy

Created and directed by Luc Besson, Lucy is the story of a woman undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis after ingesting an experimental recreational drug in enormous quantities, which gradually increases her cerebral capacity to 100%. We are aware of and responsible for uploading our lives to the cloud, controlled by large and well-capitalized corporations, who feed them to ever-improving algorithms to get closer to the Singularity when machines become more intelligent than humans. The central theme of the movie is the achievement of a super-human level of intelligence and consciousness and uploading the same to computers, thereby raising the prospect of our ability to store our knowledge (posthumously) into the metaverse.

Unlike Ready Player One’s Oasis, the metaverse will not be controlled by a single entity. Multiple companies have made their intentions clear to invest heavily in this space and are even calling this the future of the internet. Undoubtedly, it will be an exciting space where you can enter with your VR/AR headsets or glasses, where interconnected, virtual communities can meet, work, shop, and play, go to virtual concerts, take an online trip, view an art gallery, and buy digital land and clothing. It will bring the internet to life. You can join your colleagues in Zoom meetings in the doppelganger universe, in the same room as them, interacting and whiteboarding. That sure is an exciting future to look forward to.?

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