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11 Min
BY DR. MARTHA BOECKENFELD FOR ADELLO MAGAZINE
Now that we are at the rise of the metaverse, the metaverse will become more real than ever before. While understanding that the metaverse is not in its final state or just a new technology, it is rather an evolution of a set of possibilities for how we will live our lives and shape our future. Up to now, it is a vision of the future of the Internet:
A massively scaled, persistent, interactive and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual and real worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create. (inspired by Matthew Ball).
Although the metaverse is currently only as far as the internet was at the end of the 1990s, in the coming years, thanks to the convergence of technologies, the metaverse will arrive at an exponential speed.
For ARK Investment Management LLC, the innovation driving the disruption is a $210 trillion market capitalization opportunity by 2030. Within that lies $40 trillion of blockchain enterprise value and $10 trillion of digital value. Matthew Ball, a VC and expert on the metaverse, estimates the metaverse’s value generation to be as high as $10–30 trillion in the next decade and a half.
Gartner expects the metaverse (or the vision of it) to be fully realized by the end of this decade. They expect that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, social, and entertainment. The metaverse has enormous potential to expand further or divert screen time given digital consumption — Americans average 10+ hours/day on media, including 3+ hours on TV, and drive more bandwidth consumption. Internet traffic is already 80% video and has been growing at a 30% CAGR.
“There were humans long before there was history. Animals, much like modern humans, first appeared about 2.5 million years ago. But for countless generations, they did not stand out from the myriad other organisms that populated the planet. Fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively.“
— Yuval Noah Harrari
We will move beyond mobile devices as advanced technologies like augmented reality contact lenses from companies such as Moje and Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip become mainstream. The metaverse will usher us into a new era where fiction turns into reality, reminiscent of “Ready Player One” or “The Matrix.”
It has been 19 years since “Minority Report” was released, predicting technologies for 2054. Many of its sci-fi elements are now part of daily life: Tesla’s self-driving cars, Facebook’s targeted ads, smart homes with voice control, and facial recognition on smartphones. These advancements highlight the rapid growth of technology. While these innovations can improve our lives, we must carefully consider their creation and who benefits from them.
There is a big challenge that big tech companies or even investors are ruling the space rather than the creators. Critical voices like Jack Dorsey said that VCs really own Web3- big venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which alone has dedicated $7.5bn to invest in the space (and has made investments in several dozen crypto companies, including OpenSea and CryptoKitties/NBA Top Shot), which the latest news of a $600m investment in a gaming fund. McKinsey reports that $120bn was invested by VCs into the metaverse space in 2022, more than double what it was in all of 2021.
Beyond non-fungible tokens (NFTs), scarce experiences will become abundant until now. Games lead the way forward. In a game, you can dream of being anything else you might imagine in any environment you want to live in. Imagine what happens when you apply this to your social life. Virtual concerts like the ones with Ariane Grande and 14 Million viewers in Fortnite can generate an impression of presence around each individual. You will always be close to the performance and have VIP tickets.
You can travel to places we can normally not travel to, discover unknown land, and create new worlds together. Games will evolve to feature more events inspired by live entertainment, like music concerts in Fortnite and meet-ups in the Rec Room.
E-sports are growing, and online communities will become central to our social lives. For the Next Gen, games are less about gaming. They are more about socializing and community—basic human needs alongside food and water.
Meanwhile, traditional industries such as travel, education, and live performance will be reshaped around game-thinking and the virtual economy of abundance. Virtual lands like Decentraland and Sandbox (blockchain-based) are trying to introduce virtual digital scarcity, and others offer unlimited meta spaces as we have in games or virtual spaces in Spatial. Today, there are 3 billion gamers worldwide, generating $175B in annual revenue. This is 3.5x more than the music and movie box office combined ($47B), replacing Netflix and other social media in the mid-term.
“One of the benefits of our creator community is that they constantly surprise us and things we would have never expected. I like that we donʼt have to be the geniuses, but they will be the geniuses for us.”
— Daniel Sturman, CTO Roblox
We need to use those to create experiences for all of us that are not only a dream but become real to create a more sustainable and inclusive world. This, in particular, does not mean we create a virtual dreamland and forget about reality and challenges, leading to a dystopian world, as we have seen in ReadyPlayerOne. The metaverse will be a game-changer for our society.
The age of convergence extends human capabilities and connections and the spectrum between human beings worldwide. A global network of connected people and devices offers infinite possibilities for shared culture and creativity.
Meta Horizon, Microsoft Mesh, and Glue are already showing us how we can work together in new ways. Accenture is moving 150,000 people into the virtual world experience after testing this environment for the last 2 years. Beyond work, play, and socializing, new spaces in the metaverse will let us interact with clinicians, peers, and enterprises at a distance (“Internet of Place”). Healthcare organizations will shift part of their operations to the metaverse. They will keep their internal virtual environments, allowing employees to work from anywhere and collaborate in new ways. This data, validated and authenticated by employees and patients, will support the “Internet of Ownership.”
This might seem futuristic, but a number of companies and doctors are already actively using metaverse technology. Veyond Metaverse, e.g., is bringing together worldwide healthcare professionals for concurrent education, training, and planning, as well as collaborative medical operations. In 2021, neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins performed the hospital’s first-ever live patient surgery using an augmented-reality headset, thereby providing the surgeon with an interactive display of the patient’s internal anatomy. Dr. Timothy Witham, who performed the surgery and also directs the hospital’s Spinal Fusion Laboratory, compared it to having GPS.
Other advancements use digital twins to improve our health. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), health experts integrate virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) into healthcare. This October, the Thumbay Group will launch the world’s first metaverse hospital in the UAE. This innovation will further blur the boundaries of global healthcare access.
Scientists are also creating a “Digital Twin” of Earth using technologies like the NVIDIA Omniverse ParaView Connector. This allows them to analyze weather and climate data interactively in 3D. It also allows us to combine information from multiple sources and explore various scenarios to understand the planet better and address climate change and natural disasters.
Raising awareness, building knowledge, and designing literacy programs for all ages, genders, and cultures is crucial for preventing past mistakes with new technologies. Engaging with various communities helps people understand the opportunities and challenges these technologies present.
This year, the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Accenture and Microsoft, announced plans for a Global Collaboration Village. This initiative aims to create a virtual space for public-private cooperation. The village will provide immersive spaces where stakeholders can convene, create and take action on the world’s most pressing challenges.
As society works to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Safety become essential. These principles are vital for rebuilding the physical world, interacting with it, and designing the metaverse. A number of challenges remain to be solved, such as digital identity, privacy data, authentication, governance, and regulatory frameworks.
As we build beyond the universe with new experiences, technology is only the enabler. However, we must not lose sight of the most important asset: People.
One of the big issues employees in surveys have been most concerned about is privacy and security. With the Metaverse and Oculus Quest 3, which track eye movement and use haptic suits, we can collect more behavioral data than ever before. Employers are likely to record meetings, track time, and monitor real-time locations and screens, which align with employees’ concerns. Tech giants like Meta, already gathering extensive data, could also use it to influence behavior.
Scientific research shows that extended work in the Metaverse can increase anxiety, perceptions of higher workloads, and even cause physical issues. The issues of depression, “brain drain,” and reduced attention span, seen with excessive TV and screen use, may be exacerbated. As with previous early technology, general health issues and long-term effects of using wearables like the Oculus have been questioned. Spending a long time in virtual worlds has caused headaches and sickness for some people.
How do we know how my co-workers feel? Avatars are not (yet) reflecting the true feelings of a person. However, perfect self-casual conversations at the coffee machine, a major part of a non-verbal conversation that provides clues to our brains for our social interactions, are missing.
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”
— Dale Carnegie
It all starts with games. Children transition from Lego blocks to Minecraft. Technology plays a crucial role in shaping youth’s communication and social interactions in online multiplayer games. Physical distancing restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic increased this trend. Online multiplayer games like Minecraft and Roblox helped amplify healthy communication and social connections. They also mitigated the impact of social isolation. Nowadays, taking away a game from a child is taking away social interaction. It’s unclear how age-appropriate socio-technical design features, such as parental controls and communication moderation, are implemented for youth at different developmental stages. These features often misalign with how children develop communication and social skills. Rather than ignoring games, game design should reflect what we want to create as a responsible society.
Not getting lost in the virtual world also means more awareness and responsibility of all stakeholders (parents, schools, society) regarding how children’s education is being developed. In the first seven years, for example, children are copying their role models. Are we always glued to the phone or engaging with each other and keeping in contact with the real world?
“It takes a village to raise a child,” and we all need to be mindful of how we interact with each other and children and grow them into a community that shapes a better world together.
The current criminal law cannot easily adapt to the metaverse since new, unknown experiences and scenarios might arise. For example, can we consider it murder in the metaverse if someone destroys an avatar? The real person remains alive. However, we might view the avatar as a property that needs protection. Or perhaps it is more like verbal abuse, apart from the psychological effects this might have. Rather than having fixed rules, laws need to be flexible-everything we can imagine can become true. Another very important point, as in real life, is prevention. Meta reacted immediately when a woman reported harassment in the metaverse and introduced a protective shield.
We need all stakeholders in the metaverse, including lawmakers, developers, creators, and big tech, to collaborate. They must solve these issues with awareness and responsibility to ensure a safe space.
We must recognize the metaverse’s ongoing evolution. In decentralized worlds, responsibility cannot be pinned on a single entity like Meta or Microsoft. As the virtual world converges more with the real world, the virtual becomes increasingly real.