The Metaverse
Introduction
The tech world is buzzing following Facebook’s recent announcement of its rebranding as Meta. The change has occurred as a reflection of the company’s new reported focus on developing the metaverse. Meta has described this technology as:
“The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together – and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world.”
But what exactly is the metaverse and what would it look like? Read below to learn more about this aspect of our technological future, as well as the associated security concerns.
Metaverse in the Past: A Trip Back to the 1990s
While people may associate the metaverse concept with tech giants such as Meta, the term was first coined by author Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel, Snow Crash. The story follows the adventures of Hiro, who delivers pizzas during the day and acts as a virtual reality (VR) superhero at night. Hiro lives in an imaginary global universe called The Metaverse, a fully digital world that exists outside of the physical world.
Stephenson’s ideas surrounding The Metaverse were later emulated in Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel, Ready Player One. Cline’s book describes a virtual utopia known as the OASIS, in which protagonist Wade Watts races to solve the puzzles hidden within this digital world.
In fiction, the metaverse is often depicted at as a virtualized utopia offers improved culture, values, and norms from that of the physical world. The portrayal of the metaverse in fiction and popular culture often favors the virtual world to the physical one, rendering the metaverse as a safe escape from the catastrophes associated with physical reality.
Metaverse in the Present: The “Real World”
In the current non-fiction world, the current portrayal of the metaverse is a virtual environment in which users can be completely immersed and have different types of experiences. The metaverse combines all forms of immersive technology (XR), including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Think of it as an enhanced XR technology, but magnified by 1,000. Generally, the tech world envisions the metaverse as a 3D digital social center, where users can interact as avatars, use apps, and create content. This virtual universe can be used for many purposes, including business meetings and collaborations, game and app development, and social parties and activities.
The main difference between the metaverse and current XR technology is that the metaverse can support a multitude of tools and platforms, whereas XR generally relies on the use of a single device. However, the measures for accessing the metaverse can vary between tech companies. For instance, Facebook’s Horizon Home, which will serve as a VR home experience where users can relax, hang out with friends, and even enter and exit apps together, will be be accessed using Oculus Quest headsets. On the other hand, Microsoft’s Mesh, which will strive to create a more personalized virtual experience on Microsoft Teams for the remote workforce, is intended to be accessible from many different devices.
Metaverse in the Future: Projected Security Concerns
The metaverse is still in the developmental stages, and therefore, the associated cybersecurity risks cannot yet be confirmed. However, the metaverse is likely to manifest the same security risks as current XR technology, though on a much larger scale. Here are some potential cyber and real world implications of the metaverse:
Escalation of black market transactions: The metaverse will likely facilitate cybercrime and online black markets in unprecedented ways. Not only does the metaverse open the door for increased scams and hacking, but the use of digital currencies and blockchain technology increases criminal anonymity. For example, the recent launch of Sotheby's Metaverse exposed risks of criminal activity in the virtualized environment. Sotheby’s Metaverse allows users to participate in virtual auctions for high-end art, which are sold as digital non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be purchased and traded in the metaverse. However, cybercriminals have also created fake NFTs, which has resulted in buyers being scammed out of thousands of dollars.
Data privacy/safety concerns: This is perhaps an obvious risk, but an extremely important one. Because the metaverse seeks to combine numerous applications, XR technologies, and social platforms, there is enormous potential for violations of user privacy and malicious data exfiltration. In addition to risks pertaining to user data, there are also crucial considerations for violations of company data – particularly if the metaverse is intended to be used for business purposes as well as social ones. Finally, as more data is used to create and enhance the metaverse experience, there becomes more potential for hackers to enter the digital world and exploit user actions.
Mental health risks: In recent years, research has shown that XR technologies can have increasingly harmful impacts on real-life attitudes and behavior. In the context of gaming and entertainment, content that invokes fear and anxiety in users can lead to psychological reactions such as PTSD. According to Jeremy Bailenson, a Stanford University professor who studies the psychology of immersive technologies, VR can cause greater changes in social behavior compared to the use of other devices. Given that the metaverse is intended to be even more immersive, it could potentially amplify all of these negative social and health effects on users.
While the future of the metaverse is uncertain, exciting and challenging times lie ahead. Because the metaverse is still an evolving idea, it is pertinent that developers of this virtual universe take steps to anticipate ethics and privacy concerns as they create the technology. Furthermore, because the metaverse is designed to be malleable, it is equally as important that regulators and policymakers become more involved in how to enforce certain standards in the metaverse. The tech world is uniquely positioned to take the lessons learned from the age of social media and ensure that the creation of the metaverse can better address certain technical, ethical, and security risks before the technology becomes widely used.
Interested in learning more about VR/AR technology? Check out our previous post, Augmented and Virtual Reality: Innovative or Destructive?, all about the pros and cons of these technologies!