VR and the Metaverse

 by James Heppell

Image by Hyacinthe Luynes

Since its release just over a year ago, the Oculus Quest 2 has held a permanent spot on my wish list and I’ve been interested in trying out VR for a lot longer than that. VR, if you've forgotten, stands for virtual reality, the current idea being you wear a headset that immerses you in another world, whether that’s diving in the Great Barrier Reef or flying an X-Wing. As you move your head the world around you moves and you use hand-held controllers to interact with it. The Quest 2 is generally regarded as the best VR headset you can get at the moment, at least without paying a lot more and hooking your headset up to a powerful PC. Yet despite normally being an early adopter of new technology, I’ve been holding off on getting one. Some of that is the price, £300 for something that is really just an expensive toy is steep, and there’s always been things I’ve wanted more. But as well as that I’m worried. Worried about what this technology might look like one day. And with Facebook, now Meta,’s recent announcement of the ‘Metaverse’, I think it’s time to properly explore these fears.

Already our world has changed beyond recognition due to technology. It’s not uncommon for me to spend more time talking to people online than in-person on any one day. I already get most my news through social media and use my phone/laptop to organise everything. And I’ll be the first to admit that there are many many benefits to this. Communication has improved immeasurably, experiences that simply weren’t possible are now easy. I’ve met people and communities online, had conversations and formed friendships that simply wouldn’t have happened without the internet. But with such easy access to all this information the lines between what’s real and what’s not have blurred somewhat. Is that headline I saw true? Does the guy in this video have any idea what they’re on about? What did my friend really mean by that message (or lack of one)? Is this person’s life really as perfect and better than mine as their Instagram would suggest? The more time one spends on social media, the more likely they are to feel isolated. Misinformation has gone through the roof yet people are more confident of their beliefs. And what worries me is how the Metaverse stands to accelerate these trends a hundredfold. But taking a step back, what exactly is the Metaverse?

A fairly dystopian outlook on the future can be found in the franchise Ready Player One. Set in 2045, the people in it spend almost all their time in a virtual world called the ‘Oasis’, hooked up to a full-body tracking/feedback VR solution. The world they spend their time in is a nice place, people can do what they like, be who they like, and there aren’t life-threatening crises like climate change or nuclear war. Even the more day-to-day issues of living are ‘fixed’. But the real world, well they’ve given up on it. Ruined by climate change and extreme poverty, there’s not much left worth living in. The Metaverse is a proposal by Facebook to create a virtual world like the Oasis. If you didn’t hear, Facebook is betting so much on this VR-led future that they’ve renamed themselves to Meta. Owning Facebook the app, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Oculus, they’re in a very strong position to lead this future.

What’s even more frightening though, is the fact that many of the ideas of Ready Player 1 are really quite outdated. A suit that provides haptic feedback to your body to simulate feelings and sensations is scary, yes, but do you know what’s more so? Brain implants. Not the sci-fi evil mind-controlling type, but the kind proposed by companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Already some degree of thought can be read from brains - chimps have been taught to play computer games with their thoughts, where implants in their brains read electromagnetic signals and understand the intentions behind them. Like with VR we’re just at the advent of this technology and the future is immensely exciting, but also terrifying. And on top of all that is the role AI has to play in this. One day in the not too distant future it seems likely that AIs will take almost all our jobs. As soon as one AI reaches the competency of humans at a task, a billion computers can suddenly also do that task as well as a human in a near-infinitely quicker time. And once more general-purpose AIs like GPT-3 really start taking off, it’ll be goodbye to humans in the general workforce.

So pair unneeded humans with brain interfacing devices that can mimic the real and virtual worlds that are far more enticing, fun and easy than the real one and you’ve got a future where the Metaverse is the norm and the ‘real world’ is just a place for living, and for those who can’t afford to leave it.