citizens of Earth the year is 2030. a global pandemic and fossil fuel climate and cost of living crises have propelled us into the metaverse international travel is too expensive for anyone except the very wealthy and the environmental cost is hard to justify businesses of all sizes no longer rent office space and Executives and States people conduct negotiations remotely with few exceptions a partnership between meta and Microsoft announced in 2022 created what is now the global market leader in workplace metaverses and it is all but impossible to do business on other platforms families and friends spend time together in one of several Virtual Worlds where they can hug and kiss and be together as easily as they would offline reported levels of loneliness have fallen and therapeutic use of technology is slowing the progress of dementia whether in Leisure spaces or workplaces more people have content delivered in line of sight than at their arm's length people fall in love have sex have children in the metaverse the only thing they can't do is eat in a way that gives them any kind of sustenance okay confession time this is just a prop and I'm going to need to put my glasses back on so I can see all of you um it's a cyberpunk mock-up and a very fun one of what a heads-up data display could look like but just as easily I can turn it off and you can see it is a dumb printed display those of his mind are to find out what the metaverse is and on which Technologies it depends might turn to Dr Google but when we search the web we often see images like this which owe more to science fiction than they do to science fact and when we hear about the metaverse in the media it tends to be in one of two contexts enthusiasts conjure a world in which the next iteration of Information Technology will revolutionize how we work and play disrupt established economies and challenge the dominance of big tech companies all through the wearing of visors that look like they've come straight off the set of a Spielberg movie just as readily this vision is shot down its Advocates ridiculed for their idealism or for not developing the required technology quickly enough unpacking exactly what the metaverse is is made more difficult by the fact that the very term itself has its roots in science fiction now it's generally agreed that it was the first coined by Neil Stevenson the author in His science fiction novel a snow crash in 1992 and it denotes a digital world into which characters escape a dystopian near future conceiving of the internet as an environment one can enter physically and emotionally has become something of a Trope to readers and Cinema goers alike through novels such as William Gibson's Neuromancer through Tron through the Matrix franchise and even Disney's Ralph breaks the internet but even the fact that the word meta verse is a port manto a composite of ancient Greek meta meaning with among or Beyond and the English Universe makes for a concept that feels remote from people's understanding that feels scientifically niche and incredible but once we peel back the layers of hype and reaction we see that the metaverse is in fact more of an umbrella term for features and technologies that are already in development and in some cases in mainstream use the evolution of these Technologies in such a way and at such a rate that they enable and accelerate each other and are able to converge seamlessly in Connected environments is the story of how we may get from where we are now as summed up in the Oxford English dictionaries definition a virtual reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users to Media theorist Matthew Ball's recent vision of a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence and with continuity of data such as identity history entitlements objects Communications and payments and if we map those features to the infrastructure and it required to make them a reality we get something like this and the fact is that all of these Technologies are already in use anyone who has interacted with a chat bot is familiar with the concept of synthetic humans automated characters with human features populate online games and Virtual Worlds synthetic influences like the fashion model Lil Michaela are presented as humans on social media and they have some human characteristics even though they do not exist at all outside of data in recent years cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and ethereum blockchain-based Technologies and non-fungible tokens nfts have become increasingly visible in the economy and if you'd like to know more about these I strongly recommend you watch Professor raghavendra rail's upcoming lectures on love trust and crypto and defy decentralized Finance crypto and nfts in business for some people the metaverse is a chance to reshape the internet they argue that there will be many different metaverses or at least an ecosystem in which not only finance but also software and governance are decentralized decentralization is at the heart of what is currently being called Web 3. where web 1.0 consisted largely of read-only websites and Web 2.0 marked the emergence of users as content creators on social media web 3 is heralded as a new era in which internet users will have greater control and ownership of digital assets ongoing roll out of 5G and development of 6G connectivity promises greater reliability and speed and fewer delays in data transfer and together with continuous improvements in processing power even greater adoption of cloud computing we will need these if we are to experience in real time a metaverse that is a richly rendered and compelling 3D World Technologies such as augmented reality AR that overlay data on our view of the offline world are also widely in use when we use mapping apps like Google Maps or this one produced by Ordnance survey in the UK our view is enriched with data that a static map couldn't possibly provide 3D imaging enables us to see around corners data on vehicle congestion public transport load and pedestrian footfall privileges us with information that would not otherwise be visible until we had actually reached that location and when we play games like Pokemon go AR turns our offline surroundings into a treasure hunt for virtual items in fact this data world can be so persuasive that we often risk neglecting offline hazards and to that end believe it or not there's um even a website that tracks all the deaths and injuries linked to Pokemon go a successful metaverse is envisaged as one that is immersive and in which we feel embodied and we're going to explore the Technologies in the top right of this map in some more detail but first let's probe the concept of presence a little further anyone who uses social media or dating apps or plays games online already feels that they are present in those environments to some extent if you're a parent of a child who likes to inhabit fortnite or Roblox you may already feel that there are quite enough all absorbing alternate realities virtual reality VR intensifies that experience by presenting an environment in 360 degrees so hands up in the audience those of you who have tried on a virtual reality headset a headset like that gosh that's quite a few of you you know when I used to ask these questions a few years back you'd have about 10 or 20 percent so this is good this means you'll be able to answer my question so I want you to think back to that time the very first time that you tried on one of those headsets try and remember how it felt and what you did I can pretty much guarantee that the very first thing you did when you put on that headset was this why because of course what you saw through the goggles made you feel as if you were spatially in that environment presented to you perhaps that was a fantasy themed game or you were running for your life from a Tyrannosaurus Rex from a psychological perspective presence is a feedback loop in which the feeling of really being there heightens your emotional experience of that given situation and that heightened emotional experience in turn intensifies the feeling of really being there there's an Associated concept of co-presence and this applies the same feedback loop to our interactions with others intensifying our feelings of being there together again a sense of online community is of course also nothing new as members of Facebook groups and guilds in online games like World of Warcraft will testify and it's nearly 20 years since inhabitants of second life started owning property earning money socializing falling in love having families immersing themselves in the virtual world shown here but our quest for immersion can be traced much further back and arguably to the earliest works of human literature and art given our time constraints this evening let's just go back a century or so thank you in 1896 this film by The Lumiere Brothers of a train arriving at lassiota station in France reportedly caused chaos among Cinema goers who were convinced that the locomotive was going to hit them while this claim has not gone unchallenged since the lumiere's second attempt suggests that making audience members feel as if they were really in the scene was precisely their intention in 1934 they re-shot the footage in stereoscopic 3D so those of you attending in person should each have received a pair of these a pair of 3D glasses and it's time to put them on some of you I'm very impressed some of you put them on at the start of the lecture that was fantastic the idea that I might have presented the whole lecture in 3D thank you so much for having such high expectations of me okay are we ready foreign to the audience at home apologies that you're not equally technically enabled here and but hopefully you do get the picture and really the point isn't so much the quality of this print is the fact that there was perceived demand for it later in the 20th century 3D versions of mainstream movies became popular who could forget that classic jaws 3D incontroversible proof that the sensation of being pursued by a great white shark is a bigger thrill than quality acting or a worthy script and for my generation The View Master here was a highly desirable toy with numerous brand tie-ins I hankered after one of these as a child so I could immerse myself in The Muppet Show to feel like I was in the scene with Kermit Fozzy and Gonzo so in empirical terms virtual reality is a direct descendant of 20th century 3D the Quest for immersion for presence is a constant what changes all that changes is the sophistication of the hardware the Reliance on Computing and I.T and the extent to which technological developments promise to heighten the intensity of those emotional and physical reactions headsets dominate current developments in AR VR and Mr mixed reality which projects 3D models and spaces into the wearer's physical environment Mr headsets such as Microsoft's hololens in the center here and AR glasses such as Google Glass are already used in Industries like manufacturing and Healthcare where workers need to have their hands free on the top row here we can see a number of VR headsets we've got PlayStation meta and HTC variants according to one estimate and it's based on devices delivered in 2019 there are 171 million people using VR around the world so there's clearly some way to go to World Domination but equally that's not a negligible number of people is it the most recent release which is in the bottom right of the screen is the meta Quest Pro that's a mixed reality headset it was announced just a couple of weeks ago some of you may have noticed that apple is missing from this lineup and missing from the screen they're rumored to be releasing an MR a mixed reality headset next year 2023 and AR glasses in either 24 or 25 and we can speculate I think with some confidence that whatever Apple launchers will aim to be lighter simpler to use and better looking than its competitors they could be the Tipping Point for Mass consumer adoption as well as creating a sense of presence through what the user can see and can hear technology is in development that engages sensors hitherto underused online so at least one company is working on a device to emit fragrances in Virtual Worlds older members of the audience you may remember the BBC's April Fool's joke in the 1960s when it claimed to have invented smell of vision such as the strength of the links between our senses that viewers called the BBC convinced that they had smelled the onions and the coffee shown on screen so in order for us to feel really really there in a virtual environment it is logical for us to try to engage all five of our senses so then what about taste well researchers at the Meiji University in Tokyo have designed a lickable TV screen that mimics Food flavors such as chocolate and pizza staying around the mouse researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S
have invented a device that creates Sensations on the lips like kissing excellent brushing one's teeth okay and the unequivocally horrific spiders yes it is already possible to feel virtual spiders on your mouth if you ever wanted to some of the most exciting developments are in this area of touch haptic technology tactile sensors capture the movements of a user and feed vibrations or resistance back to them and many of us actually routinely experience this without realizing it so if you have an iPhone the same setting that allows you to turn the sound of typing on the keyboard on and off also allows you to set the keyboard to vibrate when you touch it that's haptics some game controllers incorporate vibrations that correspond to certain actions such as firing a weapon picking up an object or steering a vehicle haptics promise to take us though far further than that several companies have patented designs for haptic gloves that allow the wearer to feel resistance and extension as if they are really reaching out to touch something Disney has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop the force jacket whose internal airbags enable the wearer to feel a hug a punch the sensation of rain and even a snake slithering across their body South Korea's B haptics here on screen they combine vests with hardware for hands arms and feet for a whole body experience and Tesla suit on the right here based in the UK has integrated haptics based on electrical stimulation motion capture and Biometrics all in a full body suit rather like a wetsuit as with everything related to the internet the adult entertainment industry has been at the Forefront of innovation in this area people inevitably want to have sex in VR and there are devices already on the open market that enable them to do just that ask me afterwards if you would like to know more this is our current Virtual Worlds may contain fantasy-based elements so too the metaverse promises to give us Brand New Sensations for instance No One Alive knows what a dodo's call sounds like and we have no recordings a few of us claim to have seen the Loch Ness monster but none of us knows how it feels to stroke her for she is a she isn't she as the CEO of an olfactory tech company mused in a recent interview what does a uni unicorn smell like we get to invent that well in case you're watching Mr vishniewsky I reckon it's probably an equal mixture of two ingredients horse and bubble gum in its less playful applications VR is already enabling us to do things that we're hitherto impossible where previously we might have physically put our whole bodies inside a simulator we can now enter simulated environments using just headsets and other Hardware extensions people can now train more effectively while minimizing the risk of real-world harm for example the Norwegian Army has been using VR headsets since 2014 so quite a long time now to improve the peripheral vision of its tank drivers to literally see around corners the related concept of digital twinning creating a copy of a system that only exists in data has also been around for a while particularly in the area of critical infrastructure testing the outcomes of a scenario or of environmental or process change helps to prevent planes crashing into each other or nuclear reactors going into meltdown but with the addition of virtual reality workers can actually enter a digital version of a reactor and safely interact with it we're also seeing already life-changing and life-saving applications in healthcare and every time it's quite distracting this video because every time I see it I am absolutely gobsmacked by it earlier this year the Gemini team at Great Ormond Street Hospital led by Dr awasi jilani separated three-year-old conjoined twins with fused skulls intertwined brains and shared blood vessels 3D modeling here and use of VR enable the team to perform a procedure previously thought impossible with teams in London and Rio de Janeiro trialing techniques and practicing the procedure in the same virtual room I'm getting sorry I'm getting Goosebumps talking about this because it is nothing short of amazing I am brimming over with admiration imagine Having the courage to perform a procedure like this however much you'd practiced this is absolutely it's it's kind of I'm gobsmacked as I say every time I see this video we're also beginning to see the results of therapeutic use of VR in Primary Care the benefits for psychological therapy don't only extend to being able to reach more people more often successful Trials of it it's used to treat conditions such as agrophobia to combat social isolation among the elderly and to help dementia patients recall past memories all promise that immersive environments will bring improvements to our health and to our well-being and that ability to generate a feeling of presence means that VR is also a powerful technology for generating empathy this is clouds over Sidra it was co-produced by the United Nations and it's one of several immersive experiences that allow the viewer to see life from the perspective of a refugee in 2015 members of the UN General Assembly nearly 200 of them were given cardboard headsets to experience 12 year old sidra's life in the zatari refugee camp in Jordan in the UK the Alzheimer's Society has released a walk through dementia and that's a series of short VR movies that puts all of us in the shoes of someone who is suffering from the syndrome in everyday environments such as the home the supermarket and on the street now the covid pandemic is seen as having accelerated a move to remote working which has brought its own technical operational and security challenges but as much as we found zoom and teams to be lifelines in lockdown we also found that they weren't quite enough that while families and friends were able to connect with each other over virtual drinks and for celebrations they were still very much a part it enabled Core Business to continue but not quite as usual organizations of all types and sizes missed opportunities to collaborate outside meetings and for the creativity and the camaraderie that comes through happenstance what has come to be known in business as the water cooler moment trust is also difficult to build remotely and this is something that diplomats and politicians really struggled with during the pandemic think about it on Zoom or on teams there's no way to whisper to a colleague without noticeably having to go on mute and there's no opportunity to exchange information in the corridors around a meeting venue but in the metaverse so the thinking goes we will be able to create different spaces with different levels of access and privacy that take us Beyond heads in boxes now in my research I get to imagine how people might use technology in the future and I get to identify potential benefits but also potential risks the intention in doing that isn't so much to make specific predictions within a specific time frame that's fraught with danger because so many different factors can be difficult to foresee but by considering how metaverse Technologies might be used and indeed misused in all of these aspects of society and more by for instance 2030 we can consider the steps that take us there and any potential barriers to it Hardware that people want to use and be seen using will certainly be a key driver for Mass adoption of metaverse Technologies but so will having identities or avatars that reflect how people want to be seen in Virtual Worlds if there are different metaverses they will need to be interoperable and our identities portable so that we can have similar avatars in different worlds the same designer outfit the same branded trainers and that sophistication seems quite far away when what the major platforms promise us right now is something rather like this particularly in our workplace metaverses we'll probably want more lifelike avatars what about if we all had something like this this pleases me greatly to look at this video I can't tell you I was saying to some of the folks earlier it's a little bit like the first time you hear yourself in a voicemail or an answer phone message and you think gosh do I really sound like that you can imagine when you see something like this for the first time my first thought was gosh is that what I look like so what I look like from the back um but it is I think I don't know about you I think it's slightly more realistic isn't it it's the kind of identity that I could take into an immersive board meeting or to deliver a lecture in the metaverse and be recognizably me with sufficient proof of ownership a non-fungible token for example recorded on a blockchain ledger perhaps I could potentially use it to access government services Healthcare do paid work now I should say this is a 3D scan of my entire body produced by professionals who normally do this for the movie industry and to be honest I do find it rather jaw-dropping to look at so much so that I'm going to play it again because I can um companies like BGA here have started scanning people animals and objects into Virtual Worlds and it was I have to say it was hugely exciting to see how they do this but it is also as you can tell quite unforgiving it's a rendering of exactly how I looked when the data was captured on that day I was slightly concerned I was slightly concerned firstly about whether it would pick up the bags under my eyes I was also quite concerned that they had six projectors and I did wonder whether those six projectors would add 10 pounds or 60 pounds now people already touch up their appearance appearance with filters on social media so it's entirely plausible isn't it that they will want to do so in the metaverse and the acceptable thresholds for that how idealized or unlike myself my avatar is permitted to be are yet to be said if levels of trust are to some extent determined by ones being identifiable and recognizable as oneself we may need to review our indicators for fakery an avatar this compelling also has a value Beyond its purchase price not because I'm anyone special but because it provides access to other spaces and services in my name unauthorized access to a meeting what's become known as Zoom bombing in recent years in the metaverse may be more akin to house breaking or conning your way into an office hacking of realistic avatars is likely to be of interest to criminals particularly where they may be linked to privileged access to workspaces to property and money or where impersonating someone else could be an advantage think of it as turbo charging the identity theft we already see now I have all of these online identities already and broadly what we can say about them is that they're either photo real or a bit cartoonish but they're all equally me as far as I'm concerned on different social media platforms I'm different versions of myself this then prompts the question of what authenticity might mean in the metaverse should we demand that people in immersive Virtual Worlds look exactly like their offline selves would that requirement extend to for example not presenting as a different gender or to using a wheelchair online if you do offline the more the metaverse is centralized the greater the likelihood that we will be required to have a single or a dominant identity conversely if there are to be many metaverses we will be able to have many different identities and avatars but we might not be able to transfer these as easily now the metaverse that Neil Stevenson depicted in snow crash certainly does give the user the possibility to be someone completely different and he writes as the main character who arguably has the best name ever of a main character in fiction when you live in a slime hole there's always the metaverse and in the metaverse hero protagonist is a warrior Prince now virtual world's already provide us with an escape from real life just as they enable us to do different things so they give us an opportunity to look different to be someone different in massively multiplayer games I can be a World War II infantryman I can be a penguin I can be an orc if I want to a metaverse which is not only more compelling and interesting but also potentially more empowering than life offline is not something we should dismiss as frivolous many people have found themselves able to do things in Virtual Worlds that they've simply can't otherwise people with health conditions or impairments that prevent them from participating participating in sports as fully as they would like are able to become Esports champions people who suffer from anxiety have found ways to socialize that feel more manageable for them virtual worlds are levelers insofar as they can alter conventional measures of attainment and success people with limited Mobility can walk run fly unimpeded and that raises the possibility that as online spaces become more immersive and persuasive some of us will want to spend less and less time offline our current concerns over young people's screen time may come to seem quaint as more and more of us feel embodied online and our responses to digital addiction may need to evolve to provide adequate psychosocial support to those who for very good reasons may not want to leave the metaverse if we apply the logic of presence and co-presence positive experiences in the metaverse may feel more positive and more immediate than our current online interactions equally we may need to prepare ourselves for negative experiences that feel worse both emotionally and physically technology that allows the user to touch and be touched presents greater possibilities for intimacy but also for abuse and assault the sheer physicality of which we won't have seen online before a scenario in which you can punch somebody on the other side of the world presents a particular conundrum for Criminal Justice Services because they're used to proving bodily injury through evidence of physical proximity and in the metaverse No Such physical proximity may exist offline VR platforms have already started to deploy personal boundaries to prevent avatars coming too close to each other news and fake news may be more persuasive when delivered in your line of sight or by an avatar that engages you in a fully fledged conversation YouTube videos of adults humorously scaring children with unsuitable VR games already signal the need to ensure that metaverse content is age-appropriate and that people of all ages are not recklessly exposed to traumatizing or triggering experiences and since what is triggering for one person may not be so for another monitoring and vetting in a mature metaverse may be just as challenging if not more so as policing the offline world accidental physical damage may occur if people mishandle or misuse equipment for example the driver of a car using a VR headset that's intended only for passengers like this hollow ride modular infotainment toolkit developed for Audi or a medical practitioner injuring a patient when the data feed on their display is hacked insurers have already seen increases in household damage claims due to accidents when using VR there's been a lot of broken TV screens apparently and we can take also those Pokemon go deaths and injuries as a sign of how things might evolve Pokemon pun entirely intended by imagining the consequences of an evolved metaverse and the steps that take us there we can also be alert to issues in The Wider world that deserve our attention the first is digital inequality Virtual Worlds already require large amounts of processing power and bandwidth high speeds and low latency countries that lag behind in terms of Internet infrastructure and accessibility of the necessary Hardware may find themselves at even less of an advantage in the metaverse where for the foreseeable future at least full enfranchisement requires uninterrupted high-speed connectivity core devices with enough processing power to render Rich realistic environments in real time and Hardware whose price points exclude many members of society the rapid development of a metaverse economy in some countries but not Others May widen this digital Gap and while moving meetings into Virtual Worlds will have a positive impact on the environment if it means that we travel less without sustainable energy sources the demand for greater processing power may be untenable we've already seen a signal of this in Iceland where the energy consumed by cryptocurrency mining already outstrips Supply to households privacy is another key concern in 2014 a woman was reportedly attacked outside a bar in San Francisco because she was wearing a pair of Google Glass AR spectacles and the fear is that people who wear headsets that can capture images and video May record other people without their consent now many of us already take photos and videos of other people with our phones but those people can generally see when we do that because we hold our phones in the air in a certain way but when someone has something on their face which they activate using voice commands or some other invisible gesture this can contribute to a feeling of being constantly under surveillance in VR too some users are already recording all of their interactions just in case they need to evidence something bad happening to them so the technology effectively equips us to operate our very own CCTV wherever we go online or offline but just because we can does that mean we should for many of us this would seem to be an unacceptable intrusion of our privacy especially when we have not been asked so trust in the technology is certainly a clear barrier that we need to overcome none of this really gets us much closer to answering the question of when or even whether the metaverse envisaged by its current Builders will arrive so we have no way of knowing whether City groups recent prediction that the total addressable Market of the metaverse will be 8 to 13 trillion dollars per annum by 2030 is at all accurate but perhaps insisting on the metaverse as a moment in time as an end State rather than an ongoing evolution is to miss the point the more we depict it as a futuristic fire shape as Farscape the easier it is to ignore the incredible progress these technologies have already enabled and to put off dealing with human challenges that are already here if we instead consider immersion presence and co-presence as established human drives that shape technology and in turn are shaped by it we can recognize that the metaverse has a pre-history it has a present not just a future and it's entirely up to you whether you think that the world I described at the start of this talk um is idyllic or dystopian but many of us are already in a version of it we are already digitally enhanced humans as we travel further down the road of technological development we can expect further merging of the data world and the human world cyberspace and so-called meat space with consequences for both of those when it comes to the metaverse we do not just have to wait and see thank you [Applause] uh thank you very much actually Victoria's not here but um Avatar has done awfully well tonight we did think about how we could make it more immersive it seemed that the wood paneling wasn't very well suited to projections so thank you I I I work with Oasis jilani who made the the twin video and um we couldn't have done my job without early VR to manipulate the images of the heart that we do to do cardiac surgery it is is here in my world I I to be honest with you when you put me in touch with that team I couldn't stop watching that clip I really couldn't you know and you look at all of the um all of the blood vessels and all of the the tissue being separated absolutely incredible can't show on the screen is that you can also play with that image in space with your hands which is the same movement that you do during the operation so you're actually acquiring three-dimensional space without doing any harm and that you can do it over and over and over again until you get better at it which the England football team could occasionally benefit from any questions from the audience um I was curious about your comment on the digital assets that web 3.0 users will own more of their digital assets I wondered if you could say more about that yeah so um if we if we use the analogy I've used the example of a designer outfit I'm not suggesting I'm not sure I would buy a designer outfit in the metaverse but um if you have a particular way that you want to look so I presented that scan of myself and at the moment I can't wear that dress and I can't wear these boots in different Virtual Worlds so I have to recreate myself and even though um companies like Nike and and and other um clothing and Footwear retailers are selling virtual outfits um you want to be able to pay for those wants and use those across lots of different Virtual Worlds not to go into different environments and have to buy them all over again so with something like a non-fungible token that proves your ownership of that particular pair of Nike trainers and other trainers are available by the way sorry it's just I know that they're ones that are retailing virtually um that you can actually say well I I've got that I prove my ownership of that digital asset so I can transfer it to other environments so that's how it would work for some consumers but obviously we have an entire infrastructure of decentralized Finance behind that um which is another lecture and thankfully really is another lecture because that's what raghavendra is going to be talking about um in a few weeks time so I would certainly recommend to everybody that you come back for that because unless you've got the rest of the evening free um we probably don't have time to cover decentralized Finance but it's it's that idea that wherever you go online you will be able to prove that ownership of certain assets so it might be furniture for your house that you want to recreate in in different environments um sorry I'm just gonna have to gather my thoughts my mind is a bit blown but um how do you think the psychological challenges of existing online will work because obviously what we're currently seeing is people aren't really morally accountable for a lot of their actions so would we foresee kind of like an online law enforcement rather than like moderators that we get now and also is there a danger it could lead to segregation in the real world where currently you have people who have social media accounts people who don't and there is actually quite a lot of separation between how people react to each other so could we potentially have a situation where there's people living in the real world and then people living in the virtual world and they're kind of become two distinct societies have you considered becoming a futurist because those are all fantastic considerations and these are the things that you know I I get hugely exercised by so so firstly um with accountability um I think you're absolutely right there's um in my previous talk on internet governance and who owns the internet I was looking at you know the extent to which you can make technology companies liable for their users actions and behaviors and I can see why governments are going down that route but equally I think we mustn't lose sight of the fact that people need to be responsible for their actions and their behavior and I'm a great fan of digital citizenship which increasingly is being taught in schools in a number of different countries but not all around the world I think digital citizenship is going to be especially important in the metaverse if you can thump one of your schoolmates outside of school online and not just be nasty to them then absolutely you need to be told why that's not a good idea and conflict resolution skills and risk mitigation skills so all of what we do in Internet safety for young people but also those neglected groups so older people I think are hugely neglected in Internet safety and that's a subsequent lecture but um you know we we need to equip people to navigate these spaces themselves to behave respectfully towards each other and not just wait for somebody else to clear up the problem for them um remind me of the second part of your question because it was it was all so interesting just the idea of potentially having thank you oh virtual police yeah and like segregation between online and offline communities yeah so I think um I I think particularly from the climate perspective the environmental perspective we're seeing greater resistance to more and more processing we're seeing more and more protest of energy consumption for big technology I think it's entirely possible that that could start creating a kind of it increased interest in being an off-grider so I I worked on a cyber security Futures exercise a few years ago where we called these people the splitters that they kind of went and lived on a reservation and you know generated their own energy and weren't really on the internet and that said if an avatar like the one I showed of myself is how I access benefits and Healthcare it could be that you can't access essential Services unless you have a metaverse a digital version of yourself we already see that don't we in terms of government filing taxes um visiting the doctor Etc doing your banking you're a person because you're a person online as well so I think there is some tensions around that um but certainly I would see you know that I get the impression that if you were to ask Greta tunberg and I would love to have the opportunity she'd probably say more Bitcoin mining in Iceland isn't necessarily a good idea for the environment that's I'm going to take one question from the cyberspace why not yes please um so you alluded at the early part of your lecture to how work might change so let's expand a little bit on the question is how is the metaphors going to impact work gosh um so I think you'll be unsurprised to hear that um I see metaverse workplaces is really just an extension of of what we've got but turbocharged you know souped up so um you can already see where it's headed because I don't know if for those of you who use Microsoft teams you'll have seen that there's a there's an option where you can put people in a row like they're sat in the cinema um like they're at an all hands team meeting so there's this idea that will create different rooms in which you could meet more informally or you could actually have a you know a a metaverse version of the kitchen where you could be making a cup of tea together I mean you're not going to get that lovely taste what you might do lovely Taste of tea rather than spiders in your mouth while you're having that that kitchen moment um but but the idea that you'll be able to collaborate in lots of different ways and already we've had some workplace I.T solutions that have tried to do that so we've had metas at workplace which is that idea that you collaborate Lifetime and really that's what share points and products like that are getting at so if you put all of what we have together and then imagine feeling like you're actually in a room with people and potentially like you can shake the hand off the important client that's come to meet you Etc um that's where we're headed I think so Zoom plus teams plus okay let's take this question from here whenever I'm going anywhere new Google Street View and explore the area when I arrive it's like a feeling of deja vu I've been there already it's weird it's absolutely weird but it's amazing amount of data they've got there because you can go to all remote parts of the world even dangerous countries who never would have gone to before explore little side streets how do they manage to do this wow I mean there's a there's a data-based version of that answer to that and there's a kind of lower Tech offline answer to that and the offline answer is they go they drive around they drive around and they capture they just take 3D photos but yeah you're absolutely right I mean I'm I'm as um baffled by it in some senses um not to suggest that you are baffled but I have that sense of wonderment if you like that um you get there and you think gosh it is as busy as they said it was going to be I really shouldn't have traveled then but then of course if you start to be driven if your choices are then driven by the data what you're seeing in augmented reality or what you're seeing on your mapping software whatever you use is then it's informing you it's empowering you but it's also changing your choices it's influencing your choices so when I say we're already digitally enhanced humans Even If all we're using is Google Maps or Apple Maps we're digitally enhanced tubings because we know the quickest way to go but not just the quickest way to go the quickest way to go at 5 30 in the evening so you know we're we're artificially intelligent ourselves already do you think there's a an interesting question about the perception of reality so if those if you have watched today's events some people you see crowds of people with their cameras up not remembering in their head they spend ages looking through the lens at something which is a structured memory not the memory one used to get from just wandering around soaking it all up and then talking about it with your friends afterwards if you then superimpose what is currently a modified reality on that how what is what does memory become what is the the structure of what we recall that's a very good question Martin and I suggest that you come back to my lecture on fighting fake news um because no I so I think memory is is super fascinating in this space because um we don't really need to have our own memories anymore do we um and what what I know from a law enforcement background and from people investigating crimes taking witness statements Etc is that people's memory is fallible a device's memory isn't in quite the same way it is fallible in some senses but it it's not inherently fallible in the way that a human memory is but for Leslie Thomas's lectures on well I know but but equally I I I I watch with interest I have um younger siblings um and obviously I work a lot with young people and they will sometimes say to me that they're making memories by taking photos and making memories I don't need to make memories I have memories um but equally that idea that if you hadn't taken a photo of it it didn't really happen yeah you had a slide up there and you had like um seem to have all all different you know sort of um human activity you know you might know you she had like um military annoying here was missing but obviously so obviously that obviously you know um military and soldiering and warfare is a yeah who all throughout human history it's been a feature of the human history so I mean um so how about sort of militaries and governments and law enforcement using the metaverse either inside the metaphors or using a metaverse you know to it you know to do their do their way activities in the real world absolutely right so actually when I was putting this presentation together that's a a mind map that I produce for some cyber security scenarios that we did for 2030 and because we were coming at it from the perspective of security and law enforcement and Law and Order and governance that was kind of underneath all of those different activities but wasn't listed as a separate one but actually when I came back to that for this presentation I thought oh I haven't got military in there I haven't got law enforcement in there um but so well spotted in the in the first place but also um it's something that law enforcement have been doing for a really long time so we had you know the FBI and other law enforcement agencies setting up police stations in Second Life nearly 20 years ago they weren't particularly successful but that idea that the police that governments had to be in those Virtual Worlds has been around for quite a long time yeah Victoria thank you very much for a wonderful lecture Victoria thank you
2022-11-06