*I will use […] to refer to a post I might create in the future.
After listing some basic facts about metaverse in the last post, I realize that meditating on the relationship between virtuality and reality in the past, present and future is what I actually interested in. Why do human needs a virtual world? What does living, working, and playing in virtual worlds or virtual-physical-hybrid world means? How this new way of dwelling and interacting between people will influence human society and human relationships between each other and with nature? How do achieve it and what are the biggest difficulties on this path? Those are the questions that I want to address for the long term and I will raise them up in this post and continue requiring different aspects of them in later posts.
Why do we need a virtual world?
It is necessary to disenchant the concept of the “metaverse” by realizing its history, conceptual essence, and technological foundation. Inspired by an Islamic epistemology professor who built up the conceptual link between “metaverse” and “metaphysics” last week, I realize that this urge of human beings to transcendent their own corporeal existence both mentally and physically through imagination and technology has been already existing in different human civilizations from the very beginning. However, I can not come up with an immediate interpretation of why. An easy guess from a psychological perspective could be to get rid of the limitation of our mortal body, desire for perfection, and fear of death. In East Asian culture, the realm of gods and ghosts is not only an afterlife happy-land or suffer-land but also a complex “social” system between their beings and interacting with the human world continuously. Those gods and ghosts with different characters and names work and play in heaven or inferno were the products of human imagination, which sounds like an ancient scene of metaverse with the technological limitation to achieve(in Daoism myth, gods in heaven are not the creator of world but maintaining the human world, which sounds like they are playing a ). Humane potentiality of imagination and intellect has already built up the foundation for transcending physical existence and might also generate the desire and urge to do so. To think about dreams, which is the initial and natural virtual world for each human being to experience. Further philosophical thinking and arguing on this question argument need more time and reading for me on the philosophy of technology, I will leave it open for discussion for now and move to what we already achieved based on our imagination of how a virtual world will be.
Condition for Virtual dwelling
The achievement of virtual multiple worlds nowadays relies on several foundations:
- Hardware and software foundation for virtual worlds(web 2.0): computers(also including smartphones and smart glasses as a minor computer) and the Internet, as well as programming techniques as the most basic element for a connected, online way of dwelling. Since the development of computers and the internet have already developed for a long-time to a quiet mutual stage, studying it is almost like doing [media archeology].
- Economical Foundation concerning data safety for the virtual world: most of the metaverse products today are built up on the basis of [blockchain and cryptocurrency]. It also reflects how much nowadays society in total is informational and capitalized—- the basis for imaging and creating a virtual and free new world is transactional information guarantee and currency system. The concept of cryptocurrency is in self sounds decentralized and equal, but its application of it really needs to be analyzed case by case. Also, the booming of this concept is also the choice of capital and investigation, who will gain the real benefits is still questionable to me. It is also interesting to think about when [cryptography] plays the central role in the social-economic system, and how the social trust system will be changed.
- A door to travel between virtual and reality: the proto-metaverses before the creation of consumer-ready [VR/AR] equipment usually use computer screens as the interface to enter a virtual world and use the keyboard to achieve the interaction between avatars and users. However, virtual reality largely shorten this distance between the interface and our own body through an immersive 3D visuality and direct interaction by hand controller, which results in a feeling of more “real”. And this distance will be continued shortened and shortened until the equipment becomes part of the body so that human beings all become [cybergs] and can dwell in multiple virtual worlds “freely”.
- Social-Political foundation and people’s mindset: Also, People need to be ready for virtual worlds. New ways of communication and cooperation merge like what happened now related to the concept of [web 3.0 and Daos]. Without a doubt, each time new technologies come out and form social changes there will be a painful period. What kind of mindset mental and factual education is needed for the majority to get themselves dwelling in the new hybrid reality? From the perspective of developers who walk in front of most people, it is an exciting revolution and experiment, but from the perspective of the public, most of the deeper information is not transparent by deliberate. Will it be decentralized and just as those advertisements addressed? What kind of social and political systems will be used in the metaverse?
An Ideal Virtual World is Still Material
Personally, I don’t believe human beings will behave differently, compared to in the physical world, after wearing the mask of avatars. The dreams described by those Geek Idealists might come true but might not look like what they hope. Can a system driven by currency get people free from center and class? The higher digital class of two mainly popular NFT avatars that not everyone can get has already proven its inefficiency. Also, there are always people who can not adapt themselves to this new reality and will they become edges and finally was given up on the development. There is also going to be discrimination, mental violence, and other issues in the virtual world just like in the physical world.
In Handbook of Metaverse, the authors predict that “by 2032, each and every one of us will have the opportunity to easily build our own Metaverse homes and fill them with personal and professional tools”. However, the material foundation for virtuality is still there. The function of cryptocurrency largely relies on mining computers which consume massive electrical energy from sites of Zomia. It ends with huge waste and over-consumption of nature. The consequence of the achievement of virtuality in terms of its influence on the physical world including human society and nature is also what I want to discuss maybe in class.
Another top in terms of virtual dwelling is the role of play in it since most of the metaverse products today propose the concept of “play to earn” in the first place. Why “play” plays such a central role in a digital world and how this concept of play differentiates from the past also fascinate me. But due to the length of this post, I will leave it for the next post.
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