Metaverse: searching for the deep meaning of this technological change
The metaverse is in fashion. Articles and reports in the media and interviews with experts demonstrated this. Specialized media offer expert information on the subject and large consultancies (McKinsey, BCG, EY) also produce reports on the subject.
On the other hand, many companies are positioning themselves in the metaverse to serve their customers. No one wants to miss out on the business opportunities that this new technology, new activity, or new economic and business dynamic seems to bring with it.
The creation of the Meta group
The recent interest in the matter metaverse may have been kicked off by Mark Zuckerberg, founder and owner of Facebook, on October 28, 2021, when he announced the transformation of his company into a metaverse company and the change of name to the of Goal. He also said then that the metaverse was “the natural evolution of the internet.”
And therein lies the crux of the matter: the internet must evolve. Otherwise, we will gradually abandon it due to the difficulty in understanding each other, its cumbersomeness and its fall into the meaningless monetization of everything.
At the moment, however, there is ground ahead and the business world does not want to lose any chance. From a theoretical point of view, the virtual world seems particularly suitable for gaming, entertainment, training, remote work, commerce, the financial world, cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The most characteristic may be the immersion of the individual in the new virtual worlds, through avatars and the reproduction of a new universe inside the machines.
The statistics of the average time spent by individuals on television or on the computer are well known. Currently, calculations are made (always with spectacular results) about the number of people who will access the metaverse, the number of hours they will live in it and how much money this market will move.
The funny thing is that, today, there are not too many truly useful applications in the virtual world. There are more potentials (and greater people’s imagination) than achievements in the metaverse. By the way, in terms of names, experts like the name extended reality (XR) better than the metaverse, which is still a popular name derived from science fiction.
The metaverse today
In the early 1990s, some of us were pioneers in what was then called virtual reality (VR), which was soon joined by augmented reality (AR). However, despite how spectacular it was, and perhaps because of the glasses, because it was an individual experience or because of the underdeveloped applications that existed at that time, it turned out to be an unfeasible technology.
The same thing happened shortly after with Second Life. We were very interested, we created our avatars and even bought land in the virtual cities that had already been built on the platform. But selling projects was something else. Some were carried out (museum or educational), with the contribution of prominent specialists in the field, including Alejandro Sacristán and the Italian Giulio Prisco. The experience was very frustrating. It was not possible to develop serious applications.
Virtually all that was done was games or curiosities with very little use.
A metaverse may still have its ups and downs ahead. As happened with artificial intelligence that, since the summer of 1956, when the term was introduced, has gone through more winters than springs.
Platforms and other advances
I have been following this new stage for some time and have participated in various conferences such as GhaterVerse, held from California for the whole world in February 2022. In Spain, the Comillas Pontifical University organized the meeting “The philosophical implications of the metaverse”.
There they talked about the current situation of the metaverse, about some already operational platforms (Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnium Space, Roblox and Voxels) and vicissitudes, about applications such as the division of large cities and the sale of plots, about the new glasses, of the immersion, and of the process of interconnecting all the platforms.
The advances are important in terms of the quality of everything that exists (images and presentations), of the capacity of the glasses, of contents, of artistic experiences and, I would say, also of psychedelic experiences.
However, the conclusion that one draws is that what has been achieved, in terms of practical achievements, is not much more than what Second Life has already contributed, a platform that has been languishing on the web for years.
That’s the way it is: the metaverse is something you need glasses to access; an artificially created virtual world, which involves immersion through avatars and which requires time and involvement. It is not easy to use and spread in normal commercial terms. There are many groups wanting to do things in this sector, but they don’t succeed. This is not to say that, over time, applications and uses that generate economic activity will not appear.
The importance of the virtual
Despite everything, I believe that there is something of great importance in the virtual world to which we are having access. This is what I want to refer to now. Those who follow my blog know my interest in the intellectual world, ideas, concepts, spirit and consciousness. Despite the fact that it is elusive, I believe that this world is as real as the physical one and that the true essence of man resides in it. We are spiritual beings, even though in daily life and in our actions it seems that it is matter and the material that dominates us.
This inner world is different from the virtual one that we create on computers, which we access with special glasses and into which one can immerse oneself through avatars, but it is very similar. We could call it something like the virtual world of the human mind.
That the world of ideas, imagination and creativity can be transmitted to a machine through a set of images or an avatar as is the case today, and thus enter a new world and interact in it, is something new and important. . I think it is one more step in the great creations of man in terms of communication.
Simplifying a bit, it is clear that the hominids from which we come are naturally created, inside their minds, perception and consciousness. I have always believed that the mind of man evolved until it was capable, not of giving meaning to its environment, but of grasping the meaning existing in that external world.
From the scream of hominids to the virtual world
Emotions, feelings, danger and death itself were phenomena experienced by our ancestors that led them to critical reactions. The scream may have been one of the first. The imprecise ideas that arose in the mind of a hominid in the face of something that happened in his environment, turned into a scream. It is the first form of communication.
Over time, the cry became language. Later, emotions and feelings were transformed into artistic representations, later into writing, and then into photographic images. With the help of machines, the process continued over time and we are all aware of the importance of the written press, radio, cinema, television, the Internet and its social networks, YouTube and many other means of communication.
In all of them there is a transfer of ideas from within man to expressions communicable to other men. Technologies and machines are essential. The abstract ideas of the minds of men have been transformed, for example, into great poems that endure on paper and in the electronic memory of machines. Always existing, who knows, a reductionism of the original idea to its embodiment in a physical support.
The metaverse as the new printing press
We have always missed the existence in the spiritual world of something similar to science, something that allows analysis and demonstration, and we ourselves have talked about spirit science, a process that would make it easier for us to agree on ideas and move forward. without necessarily naturalizing said world. That is, without making it scientific. Maybe the metaverse is the way. It is a step in the direct transmission of man’s ideas, emotions and feelings.
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