Metaverse

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= In the narrow sense, which may be considered wrong or at least insufficient, the Metaverse refers to Virtual Worlds that are primarily social rather than game oriented ( for example: Second Life). In the expanded meaning: "interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments". [1]


Definition

Matthew Ball:

"“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

Most commonly, the Metaverse is mis-described as virtual reality. In truth, virtual reality is merely a way to experience the Metaverse. To say VR is the Metaverse is like saying the mobile internet is an app. Note, too, that hundreds of millions are already participating in virtual worlds on a daily basis (and spending tens of billions of hours a month inside them) without VR/AR/MR/XR devices. As a corollary to the above, VR headsets aren’t the Metaverse any more than smartphones are the mobile internet.

Sometimes the Metaverse is described as a user-generated virtual world or virtual world platform. This is like saying the internet is Facebook or Geocities. Facebook is a UGC-focused social network on the internet, while Geocities made it easy to create webpages that lived on the internet. UGC experiences are just one of many experiences on the internet.

Furthermore, the Metaverse doesn’t mean a video game. Video games are purpose-specific (even when the purpose is broad, like ‘fun’), unintegrated (i.e. Call of Duty is isolated from fellow portfolio title Overwatch), temporary (i.e. each game world ‘resets’ after a match) and capped in participants (e.g. 1MM concurrent Fortnite users are in over 100,000 separated simulations. Yes, we will play games in the Metaverse, and those games may have user caps and resets, but those are games in the Metaverse, not the Metaverse itself. Overall, The Metaverse will significantly broaden the number of virtual experiences used in everyday life (i.e. well beyond video games, which have existed for decades) and in turn, expand the number of people who participate in them.

Lastly, the Metaverse isn’t tools like Unreal or Unity or WebXR or WebGPU. This is like saying the internet is TCP/IP, HTTP, or web browser. These are protocols upon which the internet depends, and the software used to render it.

The Metaverse, like the internet, mobile internet, and process of electrification, is a network of interconnected experiences and applications, devices and products, tools and infrastructure. This is why we don’t even say that horizontally and vertically integrated giants such as Facebook, Google or Apple are an internet. Instead, they are destinations and ecosystems on or in the internet, or which provide access to and services for the internet. And of course, nearly all of the internet would exist without them.


(https://www.matthewball.vc/all/forwardtothemetaverseprimer)


Description

Matthew Ball:

"We should not expect a single, all-illuminating definition of the ‘Metaverse’. Especially not at a time in which the Metaverse has only just begun to emerge. Technologically driven transformation is too organic and unpredictable of a process. Furthermore, it’s this very messiness that enables and results in such large-scale disruption.

My goal therefore is to explain what makes the Metaverse so significant – i.e. deserving of the comparisons I offered above – and offer ways to understand how it might work and develop.

The Metaverse is best understood as ‘a quasi-successor state to the mobile internet’. This is because the Metaverse will not fundamentally replace the internet, but instead build upon and iteratively transform it. The best analogy here is the mobile internet, a ‘quasi-successor state’ to the internet established from the 1960s through the 1990s. Even though the mobile internet did not change the underlying architecture of the internet – and in fact, the vast majority of internet traffic today, including data sent to mobile devices, is still transmitted through and managed by fixed infrastructure – we still recognize it as iteratively different. This is because the mobile internet has led to changes in how we access the internet, where, when and why, as well as the devices we use, the companies we patron, the products and services we buy, the technologies we use, our culture, our business model, and our politics.

The Metaverse will be similarly transformative as it too advances and alters the role of computers and the internet in our lives.

The fixed-line internet of the 1990s and early 2000s inspired many of us to purchase our own personal computer. However, this device was largely isolated to our office, living room or bedroom. As a result, we had only occasional access to and usage of computing resources and an internet connection. The mobile internet led most humans globally to purchase their own personal computer and internet service, which meant almost everyone had continuous access to both compute and connectivity.

Metaverse iterates further by placing everyone inside an ‘embodied’, or ‘virtual’ or ‘3D’ version of the internet and on a nearly unending basis. In other words, we will constantly be ‘within’ the internet, rather than have access to it, and within the billions of interconnected computers around us, rather than occasionally reach for them, and alongside all other users and real-time.

The progression listed above is a helpful way to understand what the Metaverse changes."

(https://www.matthewball.vc/all/forwardtothemetaverseprimer)


Typology

In the broad sense:

- Virtual worlds, for gaming (World of Warcraft) or not (Second Life)

- Mirror Worlds or [[Paraverse]s (such as Google Earth or Google Map)

- Augmented Reality (add to physical world, enriches real objects)

- Lifelogging,our life events augmented with information


Status

2023

By Igor Calzada:

(in the context of an article on E-Diasporas)

"Metaverse is an emerging technology that refers to a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtual reality, augmented reality, and other immersive technologies (Ball, 2022).


In terms of positive contributions:

1. Inclusive virtual communities: The Metaverse can foster inclusive virtual communities where e-diaspora members can interact with each other regardless of their geographic location or physical abilities, fostering a sense of belonging and potentially establishing a digital citizenship regime called “citizenship by connection” (Calzada, 2023c; Sullivan and Burger, 2017).

2. Cross-cultural exchange: The Metaverse facilitates cross-cultural exchange among e-diaspora communities, allowing members to share their cultural heritage, traditions, and experiences in a virtual environment (Calzada & Arranz, 2022).

3. Access to services and resources: The Metaverse can provide e-diaspora communities with access to services and resources that may not be available in their physical location, such as healthcare, education, and entertainment (Ning et al., 2021).

4. Economic opportunities: The Metaverse creates economic opportunities for e-diaspora communities through virtual entrepreneurship, digital content creation, and the sale of virtual goods and services (Ratto & Boler, 2014).


On the other hand, potential negative contributions of the Metaverse include:

1. Digital and data divide: The Metaverse may widen the digital and data divide between e-diaspora communities that have access to advanced technological infrastructure and those that do not, leading to unequal opportunities and outcomes (Calzada & Cobo, 2015).

2. Virtual addiction: The Metaverse may contribute to addictive behaviors and dependencies that could negatively impact the mental health and well-being of e-diaspora members (Lanier, 2023).

3. Loss of physical connection/physical alienation/Context collapse: The Metaverse may result in a loss of physical connection and personal relationships among e-diaspora members, limiting the richness and complexity of human interaction (Newport, 2019).

4. Security and privacy concerns: The Metaverse may raise security and privacy concerns related to the storage and use of personal data, as well as the potential for exploitation and manipulation by malicious actors (Riordan, 2019)."

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328723001623)


2021

By Kyle Chayka:

"Roblox, a children’s video game launched in 2006, has lately evolved into an immersive world in which players can design and sell their own creations, from avatar costumes to their own interactive experiences. Rather than a single game, Roblox became a platform for games. Fortnite, released in 2017, evolved from an online multiplayer free-for-all shoot-’em-up into a more diffuse space in which players can collaboratively build structures or attend concerts and other live in-game events. (Ariana Grande just announced an upcoming virtual show there.) Players of Fortnite buy customized avatar “skins” and motions or gestures that the avatars can perform—perhaps that’s where Zuckerberg got his reference to dancing. If any company is primed to profit from the metaverse it’s the maker of Fortnite, Epic Games, which owns a game marketplace and also sells Unreal Engine, the three-dimensional design software that is used in every corner of the gaming industry and in streaming blockbusters such as the “Star Wars” TV series “The Mandalorian.” In April, the company announced a billion-dollar funding round to support its “vision for the metaverse.”

(https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/facebook-wants-us-to-live-in-the-metaverse)

History

By Kyle Chayka:

"Like the term “cyberspace,” a coinage of the fiction writer William Gibson, the term “metaverse” has literary origins. In Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” from 1992, the protagonist, Hiro, a sometime programmer and pizza-delivery driver in a dystopian Los Angeles, immerses himself in the metaverse, “a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones.” It’s an established part of the book’s fictional world, a familiar aspect of the characters’ lives, which move fluidly between physical and virtual realms. On a black ground, below a black sky, like eternal night in Las Vegas, Stephenson’s metaverse is made up of “the Street,” a sprawling avenue where the buildings and signs represent “different pieces of software that have been engineered by major corporations.” The corporations all pay an entity called the Global Multimedia Protocol Group for their slice of digital real estate. Users also pay for access; those who can only afford cheaper public terminals appear in the metaverse in grainy black-and-white."

(https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/facebook-wants-us-to-live-in-the-metaverse)


Discussion

Predictions for the future impact of the Metaverse, by Mark Wallace at http://www.3pointd.com/20070401/3pointd-turns-1-on-the-metaverse-ahead/ :

Summary:

"• Much of broadcast media will evolve to incorporate virtual worlds and geospatial technologies

• The display of information will take on three dimensions where useful, and we’ll find ways to make 3D models and worlds useful in more and more areas

• The physical world will stream digital information directly to mobile devices

• Lifelogging, geospatial technologies and the heightened expressive power of virtual worlds will make possible deeper communication between people"

(http://www.3pointd.com/20070401/3pointd-turns-1-on-the-metaverse-ahead/)


Details:

"Much of broadcast media will evolve to incorporate virtual worlds and geospatial technologies We’re already seeing this, of course, in virtual worlds like MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach. Just as it’s nearly impossible to have a viable media property today without a parallel Web property, there will eventually be a large class of media properties for which it will be de rigeur to have a VW property attached. This extends to marketing as well as entertainment media, and to geospatial and augmented reality technologies as well as virtual worlds. As more and more people gain easy access to these technologies, more and more brands and media companies will use them to engage audiences. A flat Web page will no longer be enough in a world in which you can offer your audience the chance to participate in their favorite show, or to view and interact with a 3D model of the product they’re considering purchasing.

The display of information will take on three dimensions where useful, and we’ll find ways to make 3D models and worlds useful in more and more areas Edward Tufte produced one of the most compelling illustrations of how powerful the visual display of quantitive information can be. Adding a third dimension to the display of many datasets will be more powerful still (as well as a fourth: time, in the form of animations). Phear the 3D PowerPoint presentation! (3PowerPointD?) But it won’t stop there. We’ll also see interactable virtual 3D models of physical objects, of people, of buildings, of cities, etc., models we’ll be able to inhabit it avatar form. And from within this virtual cosmos — from the virtual objects, the virtual worlds, the mirror worlds, and from the worlds that are all at once — we’ll be able to extract a range of valuable information I can’t even begin to describe here, about how those things and places work, about how we interact with them, about how we interact with each other, etc., etc.

The physical world will stream digital information directly to mobile devices Augmented reality. You’ll have access while you’re on the move to a whole range of information that’s only beginning to become apparent. We can already Google for maps, menus, bus schedules, shoe sales and movie times from our mobile phones, but this is a little different. This is a movie trailer that’s beamed to you directly from the movie theater you’re standing in front of. This is the restaurant that tells you whether any of your friends are inside when you walk by. This is the on-ramp itself telling you how congested the freeway is in time for you to decide on an alternate route. This is the gas pump that automatically charges you for filling up your car (with enviro-friendly fuel, natch). This is the kind of ubiquitous computing that knows how much light you need when you’re working on a document on your laptop versus playing a video game on your console. This is an area I’m not feeling very inspired about predictioning in at the moment, but let your imagination run wild.

Lifelogging, geospatial technologies and the heightened expressive power of virtual worlds will make possible deeper communication between people You didn’t realize MySpace was a Kurzweilian technology, did you? MySpace is generally referred to as a social networking site, but I think of it as more of an identity-creation site; it’s a place where people have begun uploading their personalities to computers. This is the lifelogging piece: We’re now able to quantify and store more and more information about ourselves, and the under-18 generation is more and more interested in doing so. We may not always be interested in publishing this information broadly, but we’ll definitely start to take advantage of new ways to store it locally and to use it to extract new information about ourselves, and to tailor our interactions with the rest of the world. We’ll take advantage of geospatial and mobile technologies (as well as the augmented reality mentioned above) to better connect, much as Dodgeball and some uses of Twitter are beginning to let us. And “presence” — the ability to simulate being in the same place, whether in a 3D world or on a 2D page via an app like me.dium (which lets you “follow” friends from Web page to Web page and chat with them) — will enhance the ways we communicate online, giving us new modes of expression that aren’t generally available to us unless we’re in the same physical place."

(http://www.3pointd.com/20070401/3pointd-turns-1-on-the-metaverse-ahead/)


More Information

Intro article by Susan Kish

See our entries:

  1. Open Source Metaverse and Open Source Virtual Worlds
  2. Metaverse Roadmap
  3. Metaverse Economies