Cultural Hermeneutics Paper Installment # 2: The Metaverse

The term “Metaverse” had its genesis in the 1991 novel by Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash.[1]  Stephenson’s book is an imaginative journey through a futuristic world in which the line between the virtual and the real is quickly eroding.  When friend and fellow hacker Da5id experiences mental breakdown after downloading a mysterious virus, Hiro sets out to discover what “Snow Crash” is and who is supplying it to the Metaverse. 

Hiro finds that media mogul and religious activist J. Bob Rife introduces Snow Crash into the Metaverse in an attempt to convert its users to his aberrant sect of Pentecostal Evangelicalism.  Rife seeks to return to the days prior to Babel in which religious leaders controlled the minds of worshippers through the use of religious memes implanted by glossolalia.  Viruses in virtual reality corrupt the hard drive, severing the user from the Metaverse and thus “breaking the metaphor.”  But Snow Crash is different – it transcends the Metaverse – it completes the metaphor in that it corrupts not only the hard drive but also the user.  Hiro discovers that Snow Crash is a meme – information – which, when received, radically remaps the human brain, exposing its’ deep structures and enabling mind control.  This metavirus thus turns the Metaverse into a worldwide host.

While Stephenson’s vision of the Metaverse remains out of reach, it is just out of reach.  The Metaverse Roadmap (MVR) is a collaborative effort between leaders in computer science, education, entertainment media, communications, web development, psychology and sociology cooperating to blaze “pathways to the 3D web.”  As a result of the Metaverse Summit held in April of 2006, leaders of MVR have published a document in which they summarize technological and economic problems, possibilities and implications of the Metaverse.[2]  In this document they define the Metaverse as, “the convergence of 1) virtually-enhanced physical reality and 2) physically persistent virtual space.  It is a fusion of both, while allowing users to experience it as either.”[3]

They define four types of Metaverse experiences: (1) augmented reality is a technologically enhanced experience of the real world [e.g. GPS], (2) life logging is the recording of intimate life states, events and conditions [e.g. blogs], (3) mirror worlds are virtual models which visually represent the world “as it is” [e.g. Google Earth], and (4) virtual worlds are data networks which simulate life in the real world but with significant augmentations [e.g. Second Life].[4] 

In some of the most interesting reading on the Internet, the MVR makes projections on anticipated integrations of these four user experiences.  While the MVR considers the implications of the Metaverse to be far-reaching, there are some areas they expect will undergo massive change.  Education and information based business, for example, stand to benefit tremendously.  Educational institutions around the world, including Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, are already utilizing Second Life for distance education with great effectiveness.  Librarians are also beginning to discuss the virtues and vices of a completely virtual library.[5] 

But not every change will be a welcomed one.  As the MVR points out, a world where no data goes recorded plays to the tune of Totalitarianism by increasing tools of political manipulation.[6]  Unchecked access to this information could create a culture of blackmail.  Further, we might also consider the exacerbating effect the Metaverse will have on the cultural ‘pornotopia’ – indeed, pornographers were among the first adopters to the Metaverse.  Second Life, for instance, is already struggling to devise methods which will protect its’ underage users.[7]

More than any other aspect, the MVR thinks, “the most widely-felt impacts coming from the development of [the Metaverse] will be in personal and social relationships.”[8]  In other words, identity and society are poised to take the brunt of the technological “big-bang.”

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 [1] Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (New York: Bantam Books, 2003).

 [2] Smart, “Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D Web, A Cross-Industry Public Foresight Project.”

 [3] Smart, 4.

 [4] Smart, 6-16.

 [5] Krista Godfrey and Donna Dinberg, “A Brave New Virtual World, or, 500 Librarians Can’t Be Wrong!,” Feliciter no. 4, (2007), 214-215.

 [6] Smart, 19.

 [7] Shawn Elliot, “Escort Mission: Massively Multi-player Online Games Have Attracted a New Class of Character – Virtual Call Girls,” PC Magazine 25 no. 10 (June 6, 2006), 140-141.

 [8] Smart, 18.