Blog: awalkingdelight
Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Metaverse” And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
By: Matthew Ball
Narrated by: Luis Moreno
Matthew Ball (Canadian Author, CEO of Epyllion an investment and consulting firm.)
As many tech people know, the word Metaverse originated in the 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash”. The idea of “The Metaverse” has influenced big tech businesses like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and smaller start-ups with the idea of linking the virtual and physical worlds into an extended, and some argue, a new world of reality. The reality is considered new because it is a view of converging perceptions of reality by combining the digital world with the natural world of things.
Ball explains gaming is the digital world’s laboratory for virtual reality.
Gamers create virtual universes with big tech adding real world experience to create a new, and different understanding of reality. The power and potential of this new understanding bends the future in ways that may be good or bad for society. The potential for good is illustrated by virtual training for everything from teaching pilots with flight simulators to a general contractor’s and land planner’s design for environmentally friendly cities. The bad is illustrated by the expanded potential for misleading and damaging society by distorting basic truths about human equality, fraternity, religion, and politics. Pundits and bad actors can use lies and partial truths to recruit and foment violence that influences the public to act against societal interests.
LAS VEGAS, NV.
The potential of the Metaverse is partially realized when one experiences an event at the Las Vegas Sphere. The creator’s presentation of earth’s environment is an immersive (near 3-dimensional) experience that immerses an audience in a virtual world that reminds one of real-world travel. One envisions the potential for the Metaverse to give one a personal experience of life and world travel while sitting in the comfort of a theater chair. The Sphere’s experience overwhelms the senses. It demonstrates the educational power of a Metaverse experience.
The bad that can be generated by the Metaverse is the aberrant destructive potential for training and development of terrorists around the world.
The idea of the Metaverse can be used for training and solicitation of terrorists who can disrupt and harm society. On the other hand, the metaverse can be a persuasive, and positive influence for environmental recruitment and action, as inferred by the Las Vegas’ Sphere experience.
Ball notes the future of the Metaverse is as unknown as the future was for the internet when the Department of Defense first created ARPANET that allowed multiple computers to communicate on a single network.
The World Wide Web became a phenomenon that revolutionized the way society communicates, works, and lives. Ball notes the same can be said of the invention of the iPhone that magnified use of the internet. The power of the iPhone changed society in both good and bad ways. On the one hand, it put a world of information at our fingertips. On the other, it provided a vehicle to disrupt society through recruitment of bad, as well as good, societal influencers.
VIEWING THE METAVERSE
The future of the Metaverse is unwritten. Ball’s book about the Metaverse is somewhat enlightening but not comforting.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 