If used improperly, the metaverse could be more divisive than social media and an insidious threat to society and even reality itself.
- Social media manipulates our reality by filtering what we are allowed (or not allowed) to see.
- We live in dangerous times because too many people use social media to disseminate untruths and promote division.
- Augmented reality and the metaverse have the potential to amplify these dangers to incomprehensible levels.
At its core, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible — by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds, and even feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means AR, more than any form of media to date, has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences. In an augmented world, simply walking down the street will become a wild amalgamation of the physical and the virtual, merged so convincingly that the boundaries will disappear in our minds. Our surroundings will become filled with persons, places, objects, and activities that don’t actually exist, and yet they will seem deeply authentic to us.
Early augmented reality (AR)
Personally, I find this terrifying. That is because augmented reality will fundamentally change all aspects of society and not necessarily in a good way. I say this as someone who has been a champion of AR for a long time. In fact, my enthusiasm began 30 years ago, before the phrase “augmented reality” had even been coined. Back then, I was the principal investigator on a pioneering effort conducted at Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) with support from Stanford University and NASA. Known as the Virtual Fixtures project, for the very first time, it enabled users to reach out and interact with a mixed reality of both real and virtual objects.
This early system employed a million dollars’ worth of equipment, requiring users to climb into a large motor-driven exoskeleton and peer into a makeshift vision system that hung from the ceiling, all while they performed manual tasks in the real world, such as inserting pegs into holes of different sizes. At the same time, virtual objects were merged into their perception of the real workspace, the goal being to assist users as they perform the complex task. The research was a success, showing that we could boost human performance by over 100 percent when combining the real and the virtual into a single reality.
But even more exciting was the reaction of the human subjects after they tried that very first version of AR. Everyone climbed out of the system with big smiles and told me without prompting how remarkable the experience was — not because it boosted their performance but because it was magical to interact with virtual objects that felt like genuine additions to the physical world. I was convinced that this technology would eventually be everywhere, splashing techno-magic onto the world around us, impacting every domain from business and commerce to gaming and entertainment.
Now, 30 years later, I am more convinced than ever that augmented reality will become central to all aspects of life, touching everything from how we work and play to how we communicate with each other. In fact, I am convinced that it will happen this decade — and yes, it will be magical. But at the same time, I am very concerned about the negative consequences, and it is not because I worry about bad actors hacking the technology or otherwise hijacking our good intentions. No, I am concerned about the legitimate uses of AR by the powerful platform providers that will control the infrastructure.
A dystopian walk in the neighborhood
Let’s face it:…
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