Platforms for People #4
Briefs on Social VR in the Metaverse
Social VR Platforms . . . . . . People . . . . . . Companies . . . . . . Society
Not The Metaverse
October 24, 2021
Sometime soon, SNL will cold open, Live From the Metaverse! It’s Saturday Night!
The first skit could even be Mark’s Metaverse Moment, an idea he’d like to share with the rest of us because he can. We’d see him pouring millions into projects to show it’s not all about him!
A more serious guest would be Matthew Ball, whose views go wide and deep. If Neil Stephenson got the Metaverse rolling in Snow Crash, Matthew Ball has now added a strategic taxonomy of Metaverse components, each one richly described.
He wants to distinguish this transition to spatial media with its own name. Mark Zuckerberg has described the Metaverse as being “inside the Internet.” Matthew Ball emphasizes what is different from the Web in a new constellation of factors of which the whole Internet is just one player.
I like that way of thinking. What I don’t like is seeing humans primarily as consumers, with a limited transactional interface in a network of corporate hardware and software. I prefer human needs as the driving force behind everything else.
That’s why this publication is Platforms for People and it is Not The Metaverse. It’s about what passes for Social in VR at this time and how it needs to develop as the leading force in the Metaverse. Or the next stage in the Metaverse.
Anyone can take a shot at What The Metaverse Is, now that it’s starting to matter just a little. Here’s mine:
The Metaverse is the layer of human communication built on top of the Universe as we feel it was presented to us.
The Lascaux cave paintings are an early expression of the Metaverse and there are earlier ones. McLuhan’s Global Village was a prescient Metaverse metaphor, but Teilhard de Chardin beat him by several decades with his concept of the Noosphere.
The Biosphere, Life, has transformed the inorganic Geosphere it is built on. The Noosphere, Mind, is transforming both.
US Military Needs Social VR Too!
October 22, 2021
Rumii is one of the Social VR platforms being used by at least some parts of the US Military/Intelligence network. Military applications lead the way in most areas of new technology and there is no reason VR would be an exception.
Rumii started with an education and training focus and at some point pivoted to a broader and more basic idea: VR as an immersive medium for distributed/distance communications, period. So the company made a platform that clients with resources could turn into whatever they wanted or needed.
- By definition the platform is Immersive
- Rumii’s clients need Security, so the platform and all of its functions are fully encrypted
- Unlike platforms the rest of use, Rumii’s offers Interoperability, which is essential for some clients. Proprietary applications can be made to work in the virtual environment.
- In order to customize the platform, clients like the US Air Force and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) need it to be Extensible.
Not a bad set of specs for the Social VR platform I’d like to settle down in.
Of course I wish I could be working on that platform. Of course I’m apprehensive about what the military and intelligence agencies are doing in Social VR. I read about Cognitive Warfare and I know that hearts and minds are targets, always have been.
Meanwhile the military is one of the most favorably regarded institutions in the U.S. It consistently polls around 70% or better on Gallup surveys. Its role may be key in resolving national election disputes in the near future.
Why not reach out, be more transparent in VR? The military has all the cards. Why not drop their reflexive opacity and share some of what they’re learning with the rest of us?
GUEST COLUMN: Quick Spooky World
October 22, 2021
One of the nice things about VR is that if you plan an event, and then the venue isn’t available at the last minute, you can build a new one. You don’t even have to notify the guests of the last-minute change.
AltSpaceVR made a major miscalculation this week, rolling out an update that broke most of the existing worlds just in time for Halloween. One AltSpace group has been recruiting actors and setting up worlds for months for an enormous multi-world Halloween scarefest. All of those words are now nonfunctional.
An EvolVR gathering to share ghost stories was originally scheduled for a world with stone seating and a roaring bonfire. Thanks to the flawed update, it had to be relocated to one of the few surviving worlds — a world with a delicate pink sunset and a soaring temple in the shape of a lotus blossom.
In the “real” world, this would have meant losing the fire and the spooky vibe. Not in VR! In VR, EvolVR’s founder simply went in shortly before the event, lit a bonfire and surrounded it with a Stonehenge-sized ring of enormous boulders, interspersed with giant skulls on stakes. Perfectly spooky!
As a final touch, he turned on the flying function, allowing us all to float and hover like a bunch of ghosts while we listened to both classic tales of horror and personal encounters with the unknown.
One might argue that in the real world, no one is going to run a software update that renders multiple venues unusable, and this is a valid point. Nonetheless, venue issues do occur. Not all events currently translate easily to VR, of course but most professional and educational events do.
If participants are travelling from any distance, the cost of a VR headset is considerably less than the cost of travel, and the benefit of being able to switch venues at will, without the need to notify participants, is certainly worth considering.
— Rattles
[Read about the Spooky Stories here]
/Platforms for People #4 — previous issue, Platforms for People #3
If you enjoyed this issue, please Follow us as we expand our coverage of the human and social side of VR and all spatial media.
The Social VR Platforms, Companies, People, and Society tabs at the top of the article are linked to our growing base of very brief, right-to-the-point pieces about social aspects of the Metaverse.
Platforms for People is currently produced by Tom Nickel. I welcome contributions and expect that a publishing collective will emerge.
