Virtual Worlds and Metaverse in the early days of the Internet
Vision
In the 1990s, well before Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, the concept of a life connected to virtual reality was already part of the collective imagination, and it was much more similar to the present-day reality than you might imagine
The person writing to you, as a big fan of technology and innovation, still vividly remembers the arrival on the big screen in the 90s (more specifically in 1999) of certain movies that, in retrospect, would have had a lot to do with the current way of thinking about technology.
As often happens, due to narrative needs, these movies are excessive and exaggerated representations of reality. Nevertheless, they address themes that are still relevant almost 25 years later.
1999 was the year of The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, and that masterpiece that would become The Matrix, but even before these, the 90s produced a movie with few equals in the history of Italian cinema: Nirvana (1997).
A series of tales about dystopian virtual worlds, connected by the portrayal of the unbalanced relationship between mankind and technology, which, in most cases, sees men being enslaved by tech.
Metaverse before Meta
We all agree that these movies depict an extreme version of the man-machine relationship, but aren’t the themes discussed, such as technology dependence and the evolution of interpersonal relationships, more relevant today than ever before?
The possibility of a shared immersive virtual environment was already part of the collective imagination over 25 years ago, and the metaverse, understood as a digital experience, was a well-known idea in popular culture at the time.
To tell the truth, the term dates back a few years before the release of the aforementioned movies. We first hear it mentioned in Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash, which was published in 1992 (read it, it’s a heartfelt recommendation!).
To give you an idea of the scope of these projects, let me show you what the pinnacle of (civil) technology was at the time:
Experiments in the metaverse: some interesting projects
So, Mark didn’t invent or promote anything substantially new (we had legs in Second Life from the beginning), he needed to reposition his creatures (even social media age, more than we think) and made a quantum leap, perhaps too long, towards a theme that sooner or later we would have had to face.
Before Meta, and perhaps even more interestingly, we saw other research and virtual reality experiences develop; especially two of them offer us good food for thought.
Education and the Metaverse
The first was none other than NASA‘s work and was a fully immersive experience that allowed users to explore Mars with their feet firmly planted on Earth.
The project won the Cannes Lion in 2016 and was especially appreciated for demonstrating the real potential of virtual reality in education and scientific communication.
I believe that the video has now made everything a little clearer.
The main levers of this experience are the emotions generated by the experience itself and the human relationship, the latter supported by the sharing of the discovery of a new way of learning.
In the development of the education sector, the adoption of VR technology could certainly bring great advantages. Even Meta, always attentive to what moves people, is demonstrating a high interest in virtual experience as a form of learning. You may have come across some of their advertisements on social media at least once.
VR visors: pros and cons
The University of Cambridge conducted a test to verify the real effectiveness of virtual reality headsets in a work setting, having participants use them for an entire week. The results showed that, all in all, the increase in productivity and job satisfaction goes hand in hand with heavy eye strain and progressive social isolation.
Is it really worth it then? All great changes require a period of adaptation. We are in the midst of what we could define as a “technological revolution” and, like any revolution, this one also comes at a price, with effects that we will only see in the years to come.
Virtual Reality in Today’s Market
When we talk about the presence of big brands in the metaverse, we cannot fail to mention the NikeLand project: a collaboration between Nike and the online game Roblox.
It is essentially a large digital playground designed to engage the brand’s consumers by allowing them to interact with Nike directly and engagingly through a series of actions: starting with the customization of an avatar that looks more or less like the real person, continuing with the acquisition of power-ups, and concluding with the purchase of NFTs for the corresponding physical products for the player’s character.
In short, as the nearest future of the metaverse, Nike has indicated that of gaming; and the presence of an active, spending, and loyal audience tells us that the brand’s choice is perhaps the most appropriate for the times we are living in.
Following Nike’s lead, other brands have also entered the metaverse: Ariana Grande with her Rift Tour; Balenciaga with its massive presence in Fortnite; and all the companies that have found the new “Second Life” in Decentraland and its crypto mana.
The future of the Metaverse
Starting from Matrix, we have come to Ariana Grande, a comparison that may send shivers down the spines of the most nerdy of us. However, we cannot help but gather all experiences, especially in a historical moment where the potential of technology is still the subject of visionaries.
Experience teaches us that even if we try to build a path that’s already outlined from the beginning, in the end we are forced to take roads and make turns that we couldn’t imagine having to discover. Think about how the metaverse was seen in the 90s, the hopes placed in those projects, and compare them with the rejection crisis we currently have towards the idea of living (at least for us boomers or millennials) in a world where social relations are completely reduced to virtual worlds.
Times are certainly more mature now than they were when Second Life was released in 2003, but the perplexities, especially those related to the absence of social interaction, have persisted since the first experiments with the metaverse. It would be naive to claim that the metaverse is an experience without a future, but technology has its limits, and attempts to replicate the dynamics of reality are proof of this