A virtual reality headset on your head, controllers in your hands, and you go away to join friends at the bar. without leaving home. Perhaps in a few years, this gesture will become commonplace in the metaverse: a virtual world in which we can work, go out, find relatives… The project sounds crazy but it is being studied in the offices of the largest digital companies in the world. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced the formation of a team of 10,000 employees to deal with the construction of such a universe. Made on Facebook.
Fanny Barris, an anthropologist, takes it very seriously. A research associate at the University of Lausanne, observed an acceleration in “Digitizing Lifestyles” With the Covid-19 crisis and confinement. In other words, “real” existences – willingly or forcibly – are moving towards digital more quickly.
Imagine the emergence of new epidemics. Can the alternative equation replace reality, and become our daily life?
It does not seem possible. In anthropology, we work with very extreme scenarios, not to say that the future will be white or black, but because depending on the development of the situation, we will go towards one more than the other.
Currently, we have two prevalent scenarios. The first is technological collapse. The second is where the individual, who is forced to stay at home, will have to push their use of technology even further. During the first confinement, digital technology allowed the continuity of social interactions, for life in society. If successive constraints are put in place in the coming years, the default will provide an opportunity for the continuity of our life in society, for our daily life, when a part of it becomes impossible in material life.
It is also important to consider that other forms of crisis, social or environmental, can democratize the virtual world. On the other hand, this will lead to other problems. If a social crisis arises in material life, how can we ensure peaceful interactions – or not – in the metaverse? Similarly, in the event of a major climate problem, will digital pollution or server management associated with running the metaverse always be compatible with the new situation?
Live your life in the skin of an avatar, without moving from home… In your relationship with yourself and others, that should make some changes, right?
So much. It won’t necessarily change the way they interact, but it will lead individuals to ask themselves questions at the beginning of social interaction. Depending on the level of closeness to the person, they will have to decide: do I meet them in physical life or in the metaverse? It is likely that new ways of winning friends and relatives will appear.
For an individual, the metaverse will create an extension of self in default. The whole question would be to find harmony between our different identities. Some, for example, may find themselves caught between a reality they don’t like and a virtual world they prefer.
For Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse will make its users experience a real sense of it “Presence” On the other hand, more than social networks. Isn’t this ambition exaggerated?
I really do not agree. In studies, we see that leaving the virtual assistant or the TV on is enough to create a so-called “co-presence”. The individual does not have the impression of being alone and accepts the fact of being confined or far from his relatives better. The VR headset will not bring more ‘co-presence’. On the other hand, with immersive reality, we will have a greater impact on people’s lives, on the way they adhere to different universes, and different ways of life.
Exactly, does this virtual world risk being the scene of drifts?
One of the questions I would like to ask is: What are we going to do with these metaverses? Will it be a form of transhumanism, which will increase our capabilities? Will it lead to thinking of a new way of living, perhaps more compatible with environmental constraints? Or will it be a duplication of reality?
My concern is that they are preempted by brands or companies. In fact, the problem with the metaverse is that it immerses us in a visible universe that prevents us from getting away. For companies, depending on what they make of it, it will be easier to get us to stick to models of society and political models … Who tells us that the universe will be built according to moral reasoning? And not business partnerships? What is interesting is that history repeats itself after the creation of the Internet. Before, we had the idea that it would be a space of freedom, where we could create new ways of interacting. Now it has become a place where material and commercial life is reproduced. We don’t invent anything.
