Metaverse is a helpful term. It encompasses a wide range of related, emergent technologies in a way that \u2013 in theory \u2013 can help someone visualize what the output of \u201cconnected 3D worlds accessed through specialized hardware that allow users to interact as avatars and participate in a global economies for fun and for play.\u201d In most instantiations of the metaverse in science fiction, the metaverse appears largely like our own world, copied into a digital form, except that there\u2019s more crime, a digital mafia, people can change their appearance at will, and a few other video game elements appear (if our metaverse(s) don\u2019t include Rocket League-esque play, I\u2019ll be very surprised).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These stories help illustrate the benefits and challenges of enmeshed technological layers to the world our brains sense and experience, but they\u2019re often grounded in the premise that the physical world has fallen; we are moving into a virtual world out of desperation to avoid a desolate, post-capitalistic reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Debating how to define \u201cmetaverse\u201d doesn\u2019t get us closer to solving the problems that it faces in a direct sense, but a useful phenomenon emerges when we do \u2013 we start to talk about the different technical ways that the metaverse(s) might operate and the jurisdictions of power within, which are critical to understanding how it will materially emerge in our society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many differing opinions and schools of thought on \u201cmetaverse\u201d today, but one common theme that emerges is the question of whether or not \u201cThe\u201d metaverse can exist at all. On one side, people compare \u201cthe metaverse\u201d to \u201cthe internet\u201d, viewing it as one singular entity that will connect, through protocols and standards, many independently governed and operated virtual worlds. On the other, people say that the metaverse itself is an inherently flawed concept, and that there will exist many \u201cmetaverses\u201d that operate alongside each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I used to fall squarely in the \u201cmulti-metaverse\u201d category myself, I\u2019ve recently started to more closely consider the social implications of each school of thought. I\u2019m not sure that my opinion has been fully swayed in one direction over the other; in fact, I hold an opinion even more loosely today than I have in the past. It\u2019s increasingly clear to me that we just don\u2019t know yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For myself, at the root of this debate, I\u2019ve found myself considering the differences in definitions, and it\u2019s occurred to me that, in some capacity, I believe both to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can we have both \u201ca\u201d metaverse and \u201cmultiple\u201d metaverses? Isn\u2019t that mathematically impossible? If it were explicitly possible to quantify something like the metaverse (or the internet), then yes \u2013 it would be. But when we talk about multiple or single entities, we are generally presuming that the entity itself can be concretely countable. Is the internet\u2026 countable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you count the internet by the connected protocols for serving content\u2026 maybe it\u2019s a singular entity. It is technically correct that there is only one conceptual system for serving and delivering content types from a remote machine to a local machine, that you access through a browser. Or is it? What about intranets, which use the same protocols on closed networks? What if we choose to count \u201cthe internets\u201d as the number of different ways that one can experience<\/em> the internet? I guarantee that my internet looks different than yours \u2013 increased capabilities for personalization of the browsing experience, monopolies pushing their ecosystems onto users, and the prevalence of individual ad targeting means that I\u2019m not<\/em> getting served the same content, accessing the same sites, or seeing what you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So while there may, in fact, be \u201cone internet\u201d in reality, there are also many different experiences and realities of \u201cthe internet\u201d for everyone \u2013 and we don\u2019t have a good term to really articulate the differences beyond \u201cyour internet\u201d and \u201cmy internet\u201d, so we just say \u201cthe internet\u201d as if we hold the same picture in our minds of what that word means. And such is the imprecision of the human language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while I know, mathematically, that may not make a lot of sense, it\u2019s not the first time that I\u2019ve come to a conclusion that \u2013 in order to hold in my head both of these conflicting views \u2013 I\u2019ve had to accept a truth that 1=2 (or, in this case, 1 = \u221e). Granted, the first time that I came up with the idea that 1=2, I was underwater in my combinatorics class, so I do still take this way of thinking with a grain of salt. I\u2019m aware that it\u2019s technically incorrect, but it\u2019s a fun idea to muse on. Maybe 1 = \u03a3\u221e, if we\u2019re to create a mathematical model of a metaverse. I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I think is so interesting, given that the very concept of the metaverse(s) is a drive to define multiple realities that we can experience selectively and simultaneously, is that we still so often do not consider the multiple realities that we can experience selectively in our physical world. We usually don\u2019t consider our choices within a fabric of realities. But in practice, where we live impacts our concept of reality. Who we interact with impacts our concept of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge of \u201cone metaverse\u201d or \u201cmultiple metaverses\u201d isn\u2019t inherently in how we count the connected virtual worlds, any more than we can accurately count the number of sites on the internet with concrete certainty. We can certainly put criteria in place to define evaluations of such a concept, but at the end of the day, it\u2019s a moot point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What matters is that we focus on the problems that need to be solved. It doesn\u2019t matter if there\u2019s one metaverse or many, if they aren\u2019t safe; if they do more harm than good to the people who use them. Ultimately, when users experience a virtual world, it will be their perception of what it connects them to and enables them to do that will define their version of the metaverse. The protocols that connect these worlds are already in place; we have connected virtual worlds already. Whether each of those is part of a metaverse, or is a metaverse in and of itself is not the question \u2013 the question is how we prevent the technology from becoming monopolized and governed tyrannically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we think about these problems for our virtual worlds, it is critical that we also turn our eye back to the worlds we exist in, physically. The ways that we are developing reality-altering digital worlds are the ways that the laws within our societies are created and defined, except that we get more control over things like \u201cobject permanence\u201d and the laws of physics in the metaverse. The implications that come from our governance models and policies in our online spaces are increasingly impacting the laws of our physical world \u2013 in some ways for the better, but in many others, for the worse. The metaverse(s) will not solve those problems without intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is what we choose to observe and accept as our reality that we experience as our reality. That \u2013 more than anything else these days \u2013 is what matters. If we spent the time as an industry talking about how to collaboratively solve the problems of the metaverse instead of what to call it, perhaps we\u2019d be in a much different place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Special thanks to Kavya Pearlman, Founder of the XR Safety Initiative, and Elgin-Skye McLaren, Sr. PM for Mozilla Hubs<\/em>, for their insight into the nuances of this discussion.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Metaverse is a helpful term. It encompasses a wide range of related, emergent technologies in a way that \u2013 in theory \u2013 can help someone visualize what the output of \u201cconnected 3D worlds accessed through specialized hardware that allow users to interact as avatars and participate in a global economies for fun and for play.\u201d In most instantiations of the metaverse in science fiction, the metaverse appears largely like our own world, copied into a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":0,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","category-spatial-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverickson.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}