Metaverse - some perspectives

Ever since Mark Zuckerberg signaled his shift of strategy to move into the Metaverse, to the point of renaming the company ‘Meta’, discussions on the topic have become a lot more animated, mainstream, and urgent. Arguably more the domain of science fiction for a long while, ever since Neal Stephenson first coined the phrase ‘Metaverse’ in his book the ‘Snow Crash’, the concept made its way into the gaming world a little while back when consoles grew more powerful. Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) advances, made real by faster machines and more complex algorithmic engines have been advancing the field for a while now. So, what is the Metaverse, how real is it, how much is it going to impact our lives and what do we need to do to not let it lead us to dystopian future that many people are predicting?

The Metaverse can best be described as an alternate online and digital world that current technology allows us to simulate and experience. The ideal way to experience this would be with VR headsets that cut out all visual stimulus outside of the digital world making it ‘real’ and immersive. There are additional things we can add to the mix that let us experience the digital world as we do our own, through all the five senses as well as providing feedback and mobility. The VR engines are growing in sophistication to make this digital world look real, or atleast more real than it looked in the past. Multiple organizations are trying to take the lead to create these digital worlds and it is expected that at maturity, there will be multiple digital worlds that may be curated and owned by different organizations or entities. These could be the evolving digital nations that may not have the same boundaries as the current ones and may bring together people basis their affiliations rather than physical borders.

Blockchain technology together with the capabilities it enables in decentralizing ownership, both of the internet as well as digital assets, is expected to be the strong foundation that will bring up the edifice of the Metaverse. Advances in artificial intelligence are expected to play a significant part in the process as well, as much in building the digital world and its components as in adding digital players and agents to the mix. It is anticipated that as the world turns to its surplus phase, and automation allows for lesser human effort in maintaining this state, the Metaverse will give us the much-needed stimulus to keep us occupied. In essence, the Metaverse will be able to provide us the ability to socialize, find entertainment, education and even work without leaving our homes with just our VR kits, at maturity.

The concept of a digital twin is an important component of the Metaverse. We can think of a digital twin as a model of a real-world element in the digital domain. This creation of a replica of parts of the physical world is expected to allow us familiarity and could be important in making the Metaverse experience more real. This could extend to our own digital twin as our representative in the digital verse. Similarly, the NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) are expected to play a role in the Metaverse in ensuring that we can own digital assets that cannot be replicated, something that may otherwise be easier in a digital world. Of course crypto currencies add favorably to the mix by lubricating the commercial machinery that will hold all this together.

The big question with every new idea that comes up is how real it is and how much of it is hype. In the case of the Metaverse the consensus is that we are definitely a few years from the technology maturity and the consumer adoption to make it real. However, it could be argued that a lot of tech waves including the internet and AI, had reality outstrip the original vision propounded and exceeded adoption expectations. Typically, the quantum of investments drives the speed of progress, and if initial indications by Zuckerberg and allied players in the space is any indication, the Metaverse will benefit from this funding of the dream. It is however very clear that we are right at the top of the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ at this point and a lot will happen over the next few years to allow for mainstream adoption.

If I were to indulge in some crystal gazing, I would venture that as a good part of the world heads to a position of a surplus economy (some big ifs there!), the Metaverse will get a boost of mainstream adoption. In the meantime, we will hopefully see a lot of investment in the human system interface (UI) to make the VR units a lot easier to use. The early approach was to build computationally intensive models that would render the world on personal devices, but we are definitely moving to centralizing this activity into massive central servers and streaming the content through the better bandwidth that 5G / Wifi 6 (and beyond) provide.

As with any new tech we will find and solve for the bottlenecks along the way – access devices and bandwidth are seen as the initial chokepoints to solve for. Paradoxically, the biggest deterrent for any new tech is the extent of the hype, and as things go, fueled by the crypto craze, this tech is perhaps seeing a new peak unprecedented in earlier tech waves. I believe that eventual move to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ will hit new depths, delaying progression to the ‘slope of enlightenment’ and eventually the ‘plateau of productivity’. It must be pointed out that a lot of tech waves have also died out in the process. In my view, we will eventually get to the Metaverse even if we take some time to get there – I would bet on the 5–7 year horizon.

There is a lot to be done in the coming years to get this tech wave right. Interoperability for instance, will be a core area to address as various initiatives forge ahead with proprietary tech in the digital land grab coming up. Similar to the internet, the separation of the base infrastructure that is (almost) publicly owned vs commercial models that will need to ride on top of it, will need to evolve. I will leave the technology debate to better minds and talk about a few challenges social and otherwise that I believe we will need to address along the way. If there is any learning we should take from earlier tech waves, it is that we are better off having a public discourse on the societal implications and the ethical underpinnings ahead of the actual impact. While arguably, we might not see all the likely scenarios upfront, some of the big questions are already visible to us at this point and warrant a discussion. I believe that one basic question is on who holds accountability in decentralized systems. While it has been pointed out that the internet and subsequent developments like the social media have left disproportionate power in the hands of individuals, organizations or countries, the inverse proposition of not having anyone make rules doesn’t seem like the right option. We have the opportunity to correct some ancient wrongs in the way the rules for the Metaverse are made and the enlightened way forward seems to be to let the ecosystem evolve its rules, subject to some global guardrails (eg. illegal purposes, health safeguards on usage etc.).

The other elephant in the room is the extent to which social media has divided the world; something that the Metaverse is likely to amplify, in the choices people make to draw themselves into echo chambers based on their affiliations and beliefs. The necessity to emphasize objective information led public debate on issues ?and the focus on consumer education / enlightenment is critical to make sure we don’t just use the new tech to splinter our world further. The continuing debate and efforts in lawmaking on fairness and transparency in areas like AI will also have a major bearing for this tech trend. The last major area for us to think about is going to be the caveat that science fiction authors have long pointed out, of the likely blurring of the real and virtual worlds as we spend more time in the ‘verse. Ensuring that people don’t lose sight of the real world processes will be critical in the new world. We have let social media and phones make our attention spans shorter as a natural consequence of adoption of the tech. The Metaverse will perhaps bring in greater indifference to the real world – something that we are better off addressing as a race at the start of the journey.

In all this promises to be an interesting ride and the next phase of evolution of our society. We will do well to learn what we can from the past and ensure that a bulk of the adopters are equipped intellectually and with the right information to actively participate in the process and in the evolution of the Metaverse. The Metaverse promises to be an interesting experiment to bring a lot of what has come together in the last few decades to bring a big change in us as a race – as much as the internet did. Change is neither good nor bad – its just inevitable and an opportunity to direct attention on solving for the best outcome possible. I am hopeful that this time we will put our energies into getting it done right rather than letting the flow of events take us where they do.