Daily Metaverse #100: Wooo! 100!
Now let's take a look at where the world thinks the metaverse is headed.
“By 2040 the internet that you now access on a screen will be a place you can enter, visit and explore. Currently we are looking in through windows (literally), but we are soon going to be starting to climb through the windows and into the internet.” That’s Daniel D. Bryant, co-founder of Educators in VR, and I think it’s a great articulation of what the metaverse will be.
Today we’re going to do something different and just focus on one thing, instead of the usual news roundup. That’s because this is one of the most comprehensive pieces on the future of the metaverse yet - a report from Pew Research in which they surveyed 624 technology developers, as well as industry and policy leaders. It’s a very long read, but I really recommend giving it some time - there’s a lot of really great takes in it.
A couple highlights for me:
“The metaverse will evolve in two directions at once – the virtual metaverse (fully simulated worlds) and the augmented metaverse (layers of rich virtual content overlaid upon the real world with precise spatial registration).” -Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI.
I think this is spot on. The use cases for AR and VR are pretty meaningfully different, even though they’re lumped in together. There’s a large contingent of folks who were surveyed who see AR as being the more important use case for the future, and even though I tend to write about VR more here (largely because there’s more news about it), I tend to agree.
The thing about VR is that its immersiveness is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it enables you to have deep sensory experiences, but on the other it requires you to take yourself out of the real world, which is inconvenient at best.
AR doesn’t allow for the same depth, but it has the opposite effect in the real world - instead of taking you out of it, AR enhances it. So while VR has depth, AR has an incredible amount of breadth. Once the form factor is mature, it’ll allow for the sort of small improvements in day-to-day life that will make its constant presence valuable, like a much better version of your phone. VR may allow you to practice surgery, learn to drive a forklift or explore Mars, but AR can remind you of that guy’s name that you can’t quite remember.
“By 2040 (probably much sooner), it will not be possible for most people to distinguish between avatars representing humans and AIs.” -Stephen Downes, expert with the Digital Technologies Research Centre of the National Research Council of Canada
I’ve talked about this a bit in previous newsletters, and I think it doesn’t get addressed nearly enough. The big implication, in my view, is jobs - the reality is that once people are used to interacting in the metaverse and AI is sufficiently advanced, AI personas will be able to take over most jobs that don’t require physical human interaction.
Consider the personal trainer. Why do I need a person when sensors can detect my movements, heart rate and everything else needed to give me feedback on what I’m doing? This is also true of a whole host of other instructors - sports coaches, music teachers, language tutors and more.
Salespeople may well be out too. Last time I bought a car, I went to CarMax, where they’ve got hundreds of models. That meant the sales rep had to go look up details about the ones I was interested to answer my questions. An AI with instant access to a database of all the information about every car available would have been better. And since people are already buying cars online and getting them delivered, there’s nothing to stop someone from strapping on a VR headset, touring a virtual car lot and making their purchase in the metaverse.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there and let you peruse the report yourself. It makes for some really great reading… the stuff of sci-fi, except that it’s unlikely to be sci-fi for long.
Forecasting the Metaverse
The Metaverse in 2040: Give yourself some time for this one - it’s quite a read.