{"id":13676,"date":"2023-11-16T15:54:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T14:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sad-borg.82-223-8-23.plesk.page\/?p=13676"},"modified":"2024-09-10T23:15:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T22:15:16","slug":"metaverse-what-social-challenges-await-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xqthenews.com\/en\/metaverse-what-social-challenges-await-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaverse, what social challenges await us"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think that the “Metaverse<\/a>” is an invention of Mark Zuckerberg and his company “Meta”, you are wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in 1992 that Neal Stephenson coined the word “Metaverse<\/a>” in Snow Crask<\/em>, one of the most iconic novels of cyberpunk literature. Stephenson’s Metaverse<\/a> is a “road (that) looks like a great avenue marking the maximum circumference of a black sphere with a radius of just over ten thousand kilometres. In all, it is 65,536 kilometres, much longer than the maximum circumference of the Earth”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a virtual but real world: it is located “in a computer-generated universe” through which Hiro, the protagonist of Snow Crash, travels thanks to “the machine” that “draws it on his glasses” and “pumps it into his headphones”. This “imaginary place called the Metaverse<\/a>” is a universe built in the image and likeness of the physical world: in the Metaverse<\/a>, too, companies have to apply for permission to build roads and cities, there is bureaucracy<\/a> as a social structure and corruption as an aberration, private and public property, social classes, poverty and wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Stephenson’s metaverse<\/a>, poverty and wealth depend on access to more or less powerful technologies and software. Those who have money (i.e., technology and software) can colonise the ‘new world’, building cities made up of neighbourhoods, streets and houses inhabited by people: ‘The people’, Stephenson writes, ‘are software called avatars, i.e. ‘audio-visual bodies’ through which people can interact in the metaverse<\/a> with other avatars who are simulacra of other people. Even the term avatar is a product of Stephenson’s imagination: it is, in fact, a neologism of his own. As in reality, the avatars will be a representation of the social classes to which the “physical” people belong: those with more money will be able to afford high-resolution avatars, while the simulacra of the less well-off will be black-and-white and low-resolution. You could say, then, that the digital divide is also theorised in Crash Snow<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost thirty years after the publication of what is considered a milestone in cyberpunk literature, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, launches his Metaverse<\/a> project. It is 28 October 2021, and in a letter he presents his idea of an “embodied internet”: an internet made flesh, living “in” and “through” the bodies of its users: “The next platform will be even more immersive, an embodied internet where you are in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse<\/a>, and it will influence every product we create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that moment on, the Metaverse<\/a> triumphantly enters the lives and imaginations of us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our everyday Metaverse<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In fact, even before Zuckerberg launched his new “Meta” brand, children and adults were already interacting with the Metaverse<\/a> without calling it that and without being aware of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Role-playing games, so-called MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games<\/em>), Second Life<\/em>, Active World<\/em>s can all be considered protometaverses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protometaverse of Fortnite <\/em>is inhabited by more than 350 million registered users, 35% of whom are women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Hiro in Snow Crash<\/em>, Fortnite<\/em> players use skins<\/em> after buying them: there are skins<\/em> for all economic possibilities, but those with more money can inhabit the Fortnite<\/em> world with much more fun and much more chances to live a long time, just like in the physical world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, to take just one example, we also inhabit the metaverse<\/a> every time we order a takeaway pizza through a delivery app, or every time we buy a book online, or when we pay our taxes online. All of these transactions require the use of something called blockchain,<\/em> a technology that represents a true metaverse<\/a> where online transactions are safe from hacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the Metaverse<\/a> is inhabited by NFTs (a non-fungible token or non-fungible voucher), unique and original works of art that could be called works of art, and we ourselves become “inhabitants” of the Metaverse<\/a> every time we access peer-to-peer functionalities (P2P that allow the direct exchange of information, in any format, between interconnected computers) when we request, for example, loan application and granting services, insurance services, logistics and, of course, online gaming and gambling. The Metaverse<\/a> is a persistent, synchronous hypermedia ecosystem<\/a>, inhabited by networked media bodies, facilitated by connected devices (Virtual Reality<\/a> and Augmented Reality<\/a>), but today it is so hidden that we often do not even realise that we reside in it all day long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a fair Metaverse<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In Snow Crash<\/em>, the Metaverse<\/a> is inhabited by rich and poor, easily identifiable by the way they dress, i.e., by their avatars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already today, in our “everyday Metaverse<\/a>”, technology can be a factor of intersectional discrimination: you must own it to access the services of the Metaverse<\/a>, and you must know how to use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n