The Metaverse: Beyond Siloed Spaces to a Three-Dimensional Interface
Defining the metaverse is an ongoing challenge, particularly for current virtual spaces which identify as “metaverses” like Roblox, Decentraland, and Horizon Worlds. While they do improve on predecessors like Second Life, they do not represent a fundamental revolutionary innovation. One critical limitation of these so-called metaverse spaces is their disconnection from the broader internet.
The Evolution of the Internet:
To understand the potential of the metaverse, we must first examine the evolution of the internet. Initially, we had static websites, followed by the use of indexes like Yahoo to find information. Then search engines emerged to make it easier to find relevant contents based on search terms. The rise of Web 2.0 brought user-generated content, sorted by an algorithm. But even while these platforms tried to keep their users on these platforms as long as possible, there was still a connection to the broader internet. Users posted content that could be found on the web, such as articles, links to websites, or businesses creating Facebook pages that referenced their websites.
The Current State of the Internet:
Today, internet access primarily occurs through two devices and interfaces: the browser on a computer and the apps on a mobile phone. Both interfaces are flat and two-dimensional. Users manage multiple “tabs” in their browsers and switch between their favorite websites, email clients, online platforms, and search engines. On mobile phones, users navigate between applications and receive notifications.
Envisioning the Metaverse Interface:
A true metaverse interface would revolutionize the way we consume online content by presenting it in a three-dimensional format. To grasp the metaverse fully, we need to differentiate between several elements:
- The Personal Metaverse:
Each individual experiences the internet differently, creating their personal metaverse. Your friends do not “see” the same internet as you do. They cannot view your browser tabs or the content of your phone’s newsfeed. The personal metaverse represents an individual’s unique online experience.
- The Inter-Personal Metaverse:
This aspect involves shared immersive experiences within the metaverse. It could be participating in the same Discord channel or engaging in live Twitch streaming. These shared spaces foster collective presence and interaction.
- The Purely “Virtual” Metaverse:
This dimension of the metaverse is disconnected from the physical world. It offers unique opportunities for exploration, creation, and social interaction unrestricted by physical constraints.
- The Replicated Physical Metaverse:
Another aspect of the metaverse seeks to recreate our physical world in a virtual space for various purposes such as education, training, or entertainment.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Artificial intelligence will play a vital role in transitioning to a metaverse-ready interface. As the internet has evolved, the challenge has been to sort and present the increasing amount of information in a meaningful way. Search engines and social media algorithms aim to assist users in finding relevant content quickly. The next step is the development of AI personal assistants that generate custom three-dimensional interfaces within personal metaverse spaces.
Imagine granting your AI personal assistant access to all your accounts and favorite websites. By learning from your behaviors and preferences, the AI generates an ephemeral custom built multimodal, three-dimensional interface that displays relevant information pulled from multiple sources. For example, within a virtual building, you could have rooms filled with pictures and posts from your friends arranged in a savant-like display. Interested in a video posted by your friend? Ask your AI assistant to transform it into a 3D immersive scene. Another room might resemble a kiosk with AI-generated newspapers featuring articles compiled based on your interests, and classified by topic. You could also have a room in the style of a movie theater where a short video generated by your AI personal assistant summarizes the latest content from your favorite YouTubers, helping you decide which videos to watch later. Of course, you can ask your AI personal assistant to change the design of the interface, to change the building specs, the color of the walls, the size of the text. You can ask the AI to create a video out of 20 news articles, or to immerse you inside a news story by cross-referencing several pictures, videos and articles about the story, and watch the event unfold as if you were there.
As I wrote in my previous article, the metaverse will be an intermediated internet. People won’t visit websites anymore, and website designers won’t be needed as much. Competition will arise in AI personal assistants, and users will pick them based on their capabilities of generating slick 3D user interfaces for converting 2D internet information into a 3D custom interface generated on the fly. Instead of visiting a website, a user will ask the AI to create a 3D representation of the information pulled from that website based on what he/she is interested in. The future of the internet will essentially be uploading information in a clear and understandable way, without so much focus on the design, in order to make it easy for AIs to parse it and convert it into ephemeral custom-built interfaces.
The Metaverse as an Intermediated Internet:
The metaverse reimagines the internet as an intermediated experience. Instead of visiting websites directly, users rely on AI personal assistants to curate and generate 3D representations of information based on their interests. The focus shifts from website design to the ease of parsing and converting information into ephemeral, custom-built interfaces.
The Future of Information Consumption:
In this envisioned future, users no longer need to visit individual platforms like Facebook or YouTube. They can produce content within a neutral AI-generated environment, allowing their AI personal assistant to autonomously disseminate and post it across all instructed websites and online platforms. In short, a user would never even need to load any of the current native interfaces of all of the existing platforms, which has many implications, some of which I have discussed in my previous article about this topic.
Current Limitations and Incremental Progress:
We are still far from this scenario. Even Apple’s Vision Pro headset completely bypasses this revolution, simply converting existing 2D apps into an augmented reality format, adding a few 3D bezels and shadows, but keeping the iOS interface. This is hardly a revolution in how the mushrooming information posted daily online can be channelled and digested by users in a timely and relevant fashion.
These advancements, while incorporating augmented reality elements, do not fundamentally transform how we channel and digest the overwhelming volume of online information.
In short, the future of the metaverse, as viewed through the lens of a person exploring reality from the perspective of interconnectedness and symbolic projection, extends beyond the conventional understanding of virtual spaces. In this perspective, the metaverse can be understood as the collective shared mindspace of humanity, where the thoughts, experiences, and creations of individuals converge and interact. This goes beyond this “personal” metaverse space, and into inter-personal metaverse spaces.
Exploring the Inter-Personal Metaverse:
In the next essay, we will delve into the dynamics and implications of the inter-personal metaverse space. Stay tuned for further insights into this exciting concept.
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