What Is the Metaverse and What Could It Mean for the Future of Aging?
Last week, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, introduced us to Meta: A Social Technology Company. From now on, Facebook is no longer the name of the company, but rather one of Meta’s products – alongside Whatsapp, Instagram and Oculus. In a lengthy 1+ hour live video from Facebook’s annual AR/VR conference, Zuckerberg elaborated on his vision of “The Metaverse” and how his company, Meta, plans to lead us into it. Yesterday, Microsoft released a video explaining its version of the metaverse, and when we have two tech giants battle over who gets to define (and potentially control) the future – we should all be paying attention.
So what exactly is “The Metaverse”? And what could it mean for the future of aging?
What is The Metaverse?
According to Zuckerberg, “the next platform and medium will be even more immersive, an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” In Meta’s vision, the metaverse is a “successor to the mobile internet — a set of interconnected digital spaces that lets you do things you can’t do in the physical world. Importantly, it’ll be characterized by social presence, the feeling that you’re right there with another person, no matter where in the world you happen to be”.
Microsoft defines the metaverse as a “digital space, inhabited by digital representations of people, places, and things… It’s an internet that we can actually interact with, like we do in the physical world”. According to Microsoft, it’s not just a vision these days, current metaverses enable you to do things like attend a concert with other people (inside a video game), visit a factory using virtual reality or host a virtual meeting with your co-workers and be in the same “room” together.
When Google presented Project Starline earlier this year, which uses 3D imaging to capture people as they are, and present them to the person they are conversing with on a 3D display, we caught a glimpse of how realistic 3D video chat could be. This is an example for incremental progress in technology, that we can build upon to eventually get to a fully immersive experience.
While some parts of the metaverse already exist in some shape or form in video games, and virtual/ augmented reality devices, there’s still a long way to go before we will be able to have interactions that feel real in the metaverse. If we want to have lifelike social interactions with people who are geographically distant, we’ll need to know how to build lifelike avatars of ourselves, like this one of Yaser Sheikh, the director of Facebook Reality Labs.
Meta is also working on technology that will be able to detect hand gestures, which will enable us to manipulate objects in the metaverse.
At this point, if you, like me, are appalled at the thought of wearing a VR headset for a long period of time, you might think that participating in the metaverse sounds like a nightmare. It may not come to that. First of all, VR headsets should get less bulky with time. It’s also possible that by the time we’ll have lifelike avatars and gesture recognition figured out, we’ll be able to project people and objects onto our existing environment with realistic holograms. Check out these recent examples of a whales on land and pandas at the mall.
The Metaverse and the Future of Aging
Since virtual/ augmented reality solutions that provide an immersive experience already exist, you could say that these are metaverse 1.0. In fact, several agetech companies already utilize these technologies. Embodied labs offers immersive caregiver training, XR health offers rehabilitation and Rendever and Silver Adventures offer meaningful virtual experiences with the purpose of improving the well-being of older users.
On top of this, the metaverse could offer us a way to have more lifelike remote communication, with people who are geographically distant from us. This is where it gets interesting.
There are numerous ways this could benefit older adults. First of all, better, more lifelike communication will greatly improve telehealth. The phrase: “the doctor will see you now” can take on a whole new meaning when they can actually see you in 3D. This will also mean you could also get a second opinion from a physician anywhere on earth.
Another thing that could be greatly improved is your legacy. Leaving something behind for people to remember you by, long after you no longer have any physical presence in this world, is still a challenge these days. Many people are actively looking for solutions to document their life stories for future generations.
Companies like Storyfile and Megilla allow you to record videos of yourself telling your life story, with the purpose of leaving a legacy for your offspring. Personal AI is building technology that allows you to record your memories with the purpose of using AI for later recall. What if we could combine these and similar technologies, with 3D imaging to create a looks like, talks like version of ourselves, that our great grandchildren could have a conversation with, long after we are gone?
The possibilities of the metaverse are endless. From leaving a legacy to traveling the world in a holodeck and playing a tennis match with Serena Williams. But the most critical challenge the metaverse could solve – is loneliness and social isolation. If Meta delivers on its promise, and creates a world in which people can have realistic social interactions, regardless of their physical location – this could be a game changer.
Since it is still very much work in progress, we have the opportunity to shape the metaverse in a way that adds value to our lives, and benefits our society. We can make the metaverse a truly age-inclusive place, if we only chose to do so. Whether it will end up being that or not, is up to us.
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