What The Metaverse Could Become, the Risks Ahead, and How to Overcome Them
The Metaverse is not a thing. Yet. Today’s metaverse-precursors such as digital twins, holograms, avatars, exploratory digital apps, and immersive computer games pale in comparison to what is to come. Even scifi’s collected set of ideas fails to capture the opportunity ahead of us. It will be awesome, scary, and world-changing. But it will take time.?
Yet, on October 28 of 2021, as Facebook’s holding company became known as Meta and announced its metaverse strategy, the word “metaverse” suddenly was on everyone’s mind. That came as a surprise to me, who has known, researched, and lived with the opportunities and prospects of the term metaverse for decades. I guess that’s social media for you. Here’s my summary of where we stand, based on my analysis of conversations with ten entrepreneurs and thinkers on Futurized and Augmented podcasts over the past two years with my own take.
Read the full article on Yegii.org (see What The Metaverse Could Become, the Risks Ahead, and How to Overcome Them ). What follows is an excerpt which includes the podcast episode references.
What happens now is not set in stone. It could go in many different ways. Risks are immense. A Metaverse with capital M may not happen at all. Somebody may also decide to shut it down, although given how slow policy is to react to technology, that would likely be too late. We better hope and plan for it to work out. After all, perhaps we will need a metaverse when we start intergalactic, intergenerational space travel (see The Future of Consciousness , Futurized podcast , episode 79)?
What does it mean to use artificial intelligence to create one-of-a-kind artworks generated entirely by computer algorithms? Does it complement or change art? Does the fact that computers are entering the art sphere mean the metaverse is coming to us rather the we needing to enter it? (See The Future of Art and Tech , Futurized podcast, episode 107).
Augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there’s a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation and tweaking it in dialogue with users (see my interview with MIT Media Lab Professor?Pattie Maes ,?Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation , Episode 24,?Augmented podcast ). As for what this means for business, I’m co-author (with?Natan Linder ) of a forthcoming book trying to deal with that (see?Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations ). That book is forthcoming from Wiley on Sept 7, ’22.
Technologically, metaverse development would seem to depend on what happens to a host of currently poorly connected strands of infrastructure and applications. The speed with which the aging internet platform deteriorates is important. If the internet is still attractive decades from now, many would say, the metaverse cannot succeed, although Bolter & Grusin’s (1998) good old “remediation thesis” would indicate they could co-exist for a long while (see Remediation: Understanding New Media ). Extended reality (XR) immersive and wireless devices would be needed to complete the human-computer interface for the metaverse. Much more pervasive use of the decentralizing blockchain protocol n(or some other payment structure that is not fully dependent on banking institutions) would also seem to be a key ingredient of any financial infrastructure on the metaverse. Edge computing, facilitated by 5G, is another key ingredient because without at least that level of bandwidth, virtual life won’t be highly engaging. 5G isn't just another generation wireless networks, it is a game changer for trust, reliability, and industrial performance at the edge, that last mile which fixed broadband has struggled with. What remains to be seen is how widespread the rollout will be and, of course, how innovative industry will be in making use of the new network (see How 5G Enables Manufacturing , Augmented podcast, episode 69).?
At this early stage, multiple concepts have been launched as attempts to coin the core property of the Metaverse. Ori Inbar 's term is “spatial computing”. He is the co-founder of Ogmento, the location-based, augmented reality games and apps fusing real and virtual worlds, Augmented World Expo (AWE), the leading AR/VR conference, and Super Ventures , its investment arm. Inbar points to 2020 as the year 1 billion users were engaged, quoting Michael Boland's market insight firm ARtillery Intelligence , which “chronicles the evolution of augmented reality and virtual reality.” (see The Future of AR , Futurized podcast, episode 54).??
As I discussed with visionary founder David Smith of Croquet (see How 5G+AR might revolutionize communication , Futurized podcast, episode 36), Augmented reality builds on insights that were present among the precursors of the internet, such as Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay. Whether and how AR can evolve into a communication platform that is in some ways more real than co-presence, is an open question. Would it at least be able to support simultaneous digital collaboration in a way we have never seen before? How long might this take? What will the form factor be? Will computers as we know them become outdated within the next decade? AR has the potential to shift digital communication into a radically novel, transformative collaboration environment where simulation, multi-sensory stimulation and symbiosis between humans and computers can unlock innovative potential and provide the backbone of a platform that can help humanity confront its greatest challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, and other threats to our way of life, and ultimately to our existence.?
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Today, extended reality is used in the space industry and in the automotive industry. The Finnish startup Varjo’s Urho Konttori has the International Space Station (ISS) and many automotives as clients already working with human-eye resolution mixed reality (MR) devices (see Futurized podcast, episode #66, Industrial-grade Mixed Reality ). Imagine learning to dock at the ISS using MR–that’s one crack flight simulator.?
No-code for IoT in the Cloud has come a long way, as I discuss with guest Rob Rastovich, CTO of ThingLogix. There is strong the impact of connected devices and the subscription based economy on industries as distant from the initial IT waves as agriculture (see No-code for IoT in the Cloud , Augmented podcast, episode 44).?
The metaverse will also be relevant to the organization of tomorrow, the increasing blending of online and offline worlds, reality and virtual reality, into a hybrid reality. In the metaverse, “we might find sovereign identities where people and bots work, play, learn and consume, operating in an increasingly virtually empowered world”. That’s what Mark van Rijmenam , PhD, Futurist, Founder of Datafloq and Mavin thinks (see The Metaverse Reality , Futurized podcast, episode 110).?
I recently interviewed Chris Weaver , Distinguished Professor of Computational Media at Wesleyan University, Director of Smithsonian Videogame Pioneers Initiative and Research Scientist at MIT microphotonics center on my Futurized podcast (see The Future of Computational Media , Futurized podcast, episode 29). The video game holding company Chris founded, ZeniMax Media (owner of major franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, RAGE, Wolfenstein, Prey, Dishonored, The Evil Within, and QUAKE), was acquired by Microsoft last year, reportedly for $7.5 billion. “The complexity of computational media is still poorly understood in society”, says Chris. However, when it is, and it will be, great change can happen. Video games, for example, provide the potential for much more fundamental experiences than most of us think about. The lessons from the tech development, sensory exploration and the metacognition that ensues, are already influencing several generations of software engineers.?
There are no easy fixes for the societal risks of an emerging Metaverse. However, one suggestion would be to keep building and safeguarding democratic governance both nationally and (aspirationally), globally. That is not going so well right now, but it could be a temporary thing?
If you have a research-based view on the Metaverse, and want to come on the Futurized podcast to talk about it, let me know. To check out other episodes of Futurized, just go to Futurized.org or any podcast player of choice.?
Trailblazing Human and Entity Identity & Learning Visionary - Created a new legal identity architecture for humans/ AI systems/bots and leveraged this to create a new learning architecture
2 年Hi Trond, All of your previous guests are discussing valid topics about the metaverse, except something's missing from all of this...legal identity of both humans and AI systems/bots. Depending on risk, both humans and AI systems require legal identities. Note I didn't just say "Digital legal identities". Why? If you skim some of the articles below you'll see me using two examples: * Jane Doe walking down a street in a smart city both in the AI/VR/AR and physical world simultaneously surrounded by a plethora of entities and devices which are what I call in my head one whopper sized identity, behavioral and biometric collection, identification and predictive behavior analysis * Jane's son John Doe, who has learning challenges. When he was a toddler, Jane bought him a learning assistant bot, "AssistBot". He takes it to school with him. In school he takes a AI/AR/VR class taught by Sally GoodTeacher, who might be located on the other side of the planet. She's assisted by two virtual teaching assistant bots - PattyBot and BobBot. John takes a virtual "AssistBot" with him into the environment. His fellow students might be from his physical class or anywhere else on the planet. To make all the above magic work, requires a complete rethink of human legal identity, both physical and digital, from cradle to grave. It also requires a completely new legal identity architecture for AI systems and bots, both physical and digital. Further, it MUST require a rethink of privacy laws and regs, planet wide allowing us, if we choose, to live privately in a very non-private world. This is the stuff almost no one on the planet is talking about, as they're enraptured with the possibilities of what AI/AR/VR can be. It's all about risk, privacy, consent, contracts et al. Down in the legal operational weeds, this is where we must put a LOT OF THOUGHT INTO. Finally, I've written extensively that criminals will take to these environments like ducks to water. Why? The crappy legal identity framework offers them up a playground to masquerade as other people, bots or AI systems etc. They'll leverage this curve to constantly create new attack vectors against us (https://hvl.net/pdf/PatScannellHockeyStickShapedCurve.pdf). I'll post in the next comment, many reference links I've written about all the above. Guy ??