The Metaverse Podcast - Documenting the Early Metaverse, with Benjamin Bertram Goldman of InVision
Primer: Join Jamie Burke in this episode of The Metaverse Podcast as he interviews Benjamin Bertram Goldman. Benjamin is the Group Creative Director and Head of Films at InVision. In this podcast, he talks about the many issues related to the Metaverse and also the important but often neglected topic of ethics
Who is Benjamin Bertram Goldman?
Group Creative Director and Head of Films at InVision
Award-winning creative leader, filmmaker and entrepreneur
Co-founded media startup Blockfeed
Co-founded the activist group Superheroes Anonymous
Work has been featured in The NY Times, CNN, WIRED, MSNBC, HBO
Ethics in Game Design
The basic economics of games have changed a lot
It used to be just a simple revenue model - a box sold on a store shelf - so there is not much room to question ethics in the game design
There are these debates about violence in video games and that's about it
Currently, games have many revenue models, like microtransactions, downloadable content, subscription, brand partnership etc
This opens up the door for more complex and nuanced conversations around how games are generating revenue and what are the ethics of these revenue models
With the proliferation of virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life, there are many avenues to explore ethics and this is getting immense interest from academics and researchers
One of the most famous ethical explorations of the implications of the virtual world is published in The Village Voice in 1993, a year before the term "Metaverse" is coined in the book Snow Crash
The article, written by Julian Dibbell and published in The Village Voice in 1993, is titled "A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society". It follows how a player named Mr Bungle uses a program to make other people do sexual acts in a virtual community LambdaMOO. There were no graphics, only texts, and it lasts for several hours. The article raises questions about the boundaries between real life and virtual reality.
Virtual worlds can be used to design societies that reflect our current understanding of ethical values
Definition of the Metaverse
The simplest definition of the metaverse is a network of virtual worlds. Breaking down the definition:
'Networks' suggest that the virtual worlds are interoperable so that people can move between them seamlessly. The term is borrowed from the language of the internet
'Virtual world' is defined as a persistent shared environment that is under the influence of avatars
This definition leaves a lot of room for interpretation based on how things play out
Our relationship with the Metaverse
Human beings relation to Metaverse
Another aspect of the metaverse is how it relates to us as human beings, which is explored in novels like Snow Crash, Permutation City and Neuromancer
We still do not grasp how the metaverse will impact our understanding of alternate identities or virtual relationships
He is personally interested in exploring this aspect
Even though the novels are written in the 80s and 90s, they are still as relevant then as it is now, because science fiction still serves as a kind of vehicle for social commentary by important intellectuals and writers
A lot of the early depictions of the metaverse by science fiction has varying degrees of dystopian to utopian
Both extremes serve as warnings of what could go wrong with the metaverse and also guideposts of what could go right with it
Whichever the case, the metaverse in its final form will reflect some of the early imaginings of the metaverse, hence science fiction will still be a useful vehicle to explore these different ideas
"Science fiction is a lens to provide social commentary on the present. Certainly, I think if you look at the process of capturing control by a single Corporation, like OASIS with Ready Player One, sounds and looks quite similar to what we're experiencing with the duopoly with gaming engines or the monopoly of Facebook or Google."
- Jamie Burke
Ethics in the Metaverse
Ethics has not been part of the conversation, which can be a problem
It will be good to use the opportunities of the metaverse to reflect and learn from some of the mistakes we've made in our current internet landscape, with regard to ethics
Like gaming, the metaverse is highly immersive, so our emotional connection to our avatar is heightened which is a double-edged sword
The good is that we will end up having a rich and deep emotional connection with people that just cannot be achieved in social media
The bad is that having a negative experience will be more visceral and intense as well
"When you raid a dungeon in World of Warcraft, you don't say my character raided the dungeon. You say I did, right? It was me that did it. And there's a lot of great research that shows how strong that emotional connection can become, to your avatar, your virtual identity in the virtual world that you inhabit."
- Benjamin Bertram Goldman
Have to consider ethics seriously because we have to understand the implications of moving humanity in mass towards these virtual worlds and how they are going to impact society at large
Government and Regulation
Regulation in the metaverse
Jamie shared that he read about someone creating a fascist dictatorship in Roblox in a Wired article
Some of the people who joined are is in for the fun but others are a lot more serious, Nevertheless, these were just children in environments where they were conditioned to think about and accept the fascist ideology
This raises the question of whether we should have more regulation in platforms. In an open permissionless environment, does that mean that we have to accept the fact that both the best and the worst of reality will be reflected and potentially amplified in the virtual world?
He is not for censorship because one of the fundamental appeals of virtual worlds is that we can explore different socio-economic models. Conflicting socio-economic models in the virtual worlds will be competing with each other to see which is better
Unlike the physical world, people in the virtual world is not bounded. Theoretically, one can always exit and enter a new system with a different societal model
This means that people can have a firsthand experience of living in a new model of society. Even though it might be just a virtual world, it is better than a purely theoretical understanding of the model.
This is not possible in the real world as it will take decades of work to influence the government and implement a change with unexpected consequences
"Because we are going to have to compete with some of these more radical ideas for how our virtual society should be run. And the only way to effectively compete with them is to build a better alternative."
- Benjamin Bertram Goldman
With the metaverse, one can start up a virtual world with a socio-economic model build into its DNA and experiment with computer software with different iterations. Some of these are going to work, and the best ideas will emerge from the experiments
The biggest danger is actually when a few big players get in early to define their vision for the metaverse and we are all forced to essentially fit into that vision
Government and the metaverse
In the future, there will be a lot of cross-pollination between government regulators and creators of the virtual world
A virtual world economist named Edward Castronova had written extensively about this. His theory is that with the rise and popularity of virtual worlds, economic activity will shift over as well, in a way that is more fun and appealing than the real world
This will force the government to reconsider how it prioritises fun and how to imbue fun into a society that it governs
The metaverse will also bring people together and weaken national identities, because it uses the mechanics of reality, like time, space and identity, in such a way that we can understand more naturally than an abstracted platform like our social media platform
This weakening of national identities also overlaps with the decentralisation movement of the blockchain
"When you think about the current internet, you could argue that a platform like Twitter brings people together around the world. But it's not. It's not presenting that community through a natural human lens. It's very abstracted, right? We have a feed, we have profiles, we have retweets, we have comments. Those are all very new terms in the grand arc of human civilization."
- Benjamin Bertram Goldman
A lot of economic activity already happens in the virtual world but it is a closed environment subjected to the rules of the entities that made it, like Fortnight, Roblox or Minecraft
With decentralisation, these worlds will no longer be isolated and will mix with reality more heavily. The government will then have to respond and acknowledge whatever is happening in the virtual world
The government has the incentive to do so because of tax
When the economic activities in the metaverse are substantial enough, they will have to respond
Even though they refused to acknowledge parts of the crypto movement, they are very happy to tax the capital gains or income coming from it
Importance of fun
Quite a few platforms are moving towards the open metaverse direction e.g. Decentraland and Sandbox, but they have not quite grasped the importance of fun yet
Fun is the on-ramp to mass virtual worlds adoption. This is also why games like Axie Infinity are so popular
Not a bad thing to start prioritizing decentralization first, but eventually platforms will have to evolve into more fun, game-like experiences
The more traditional centralised gaming studios are in the business of fun and entertainment, while many in the open metaverse or web3 movement have been more focused on technology and the principles around self-sovereignty
Facebook going into the metaverse is not a new strategy but the term may have just entered the conversation very recently or given a new form or life to some of their ideas
Back then, Facebook had acquired Oculus a few years back, and people were baffled by their decision.
Mark Zuckerberg must have been thinking about this for some time and seen the writings on the wall. Given their resources in terms of their user base and R&D efforts, they took proactive steps to get ahead
"But I think even Mark admits that Facebook will never build the metaverse because it can't be built by a single entity. It has to be something that's much more organic, that emerges based on some shared principles and protocols."
- Benjamin Bertram Goldman
Benjamin is sceptical of any centralised effort to build the metaverse because he believes the metaverse will be weirder than most people think it is, with different people expressing themselves in different ways
For the metaverse to succeed it must grow organically based on some shared principles and protocol, but it needs to be weird, just like the internet, with nobody permitting what is allowed or not allowed
How to find out more
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