The race to the Metaverse, with Mark Zuckerberg in the lead, proceeds with the enthusiasm of the pioneers to conquer a new world. The Japanese startup H2L Technologies tries to transport physical sensations into the virtual world, more generally the possible developments of the decentralized economy in the metaverse are studied, as the Italian Coderblock is also doing.
We ask ourselves what we can and can do, less about why we are doing it. A question that has been absent from the debate on technology and innovation for too long. In this, philosophy has its faults, explains Cosimo Accoto, digital philosopher and research affiliate and fellow at MIT in Boston: “Over time it has withdrawn from the world and has focused too much on itself. Today it is time to produce new sense and a new action because the world is in profound transformation. There are innovation domains that are modifying, between opportunity and vulnerability, our being in the world: from artificial intelligence to decentralized blockchain, from synthetic biology to quantum computing for four very important ones. It is a development that is chaotically remaking the world and we must ask ourselves if and why we do it (reason and purpose) and how to do it best (with ethics and politics) “.
What jobs will serve in the Metaverse
by Massimo Canducci
April 19, 2022
The essay is born from this assumption of responsibility The world at a glance. Five short lessons in the philosophy of simulationwhich concludes the trilogy that began with The given world e The ex machina world. And it is no coincidence that the return to the scene of philosophy comes at a time when the innovative drive touches and puts a strain on what is considered the very essence of the human. Artificial faces and cultivated meats, digital twins and cryptographic assets, biorobotic creatures and emerging virtual realities up to quantum simulators and neuroprostheses: a world of wonders for some and monstrosities for others, of which the metaverse represents only the tip of the iceberg. It will be essential to know how to use simulations to increase our knowledge. “Rather than humanizing artificial intelligence, as if we already knew what human is, or to say it separate from humanity, we should use it to dig and re-explore our being and our meaning on this planet – warns the philosopher -. What Do the artificial neural networks, called to read our biometric and physiological data, teach us about ourselves and our bodies? How much will an intelligent computation that scales planetary help us to solve complex criticalities such as those of climate change? “.
The teleported hologram as in Star Wars: the metaverse is among us
by Riccardo Luna
April 19, 2022
By focusing on the metaverse, ne The world at a glance virtual worlds are seen as intermediate steps towards a broader and more all-encompassing transformation. It starts from Matthew Ball’s definition of metaverse: “A massively scaled and interoperable network of 3D virtual worlds rendered in real time that can be experienced in a synchronous and persistent way by a truly unlimited number of users and with continuity of data such as identity, history , rights, objects, communications and payments “. The thesis that emerges is that, just as the mobile internet has changed our experience of the world compared to the fixed internet, the immersive internet will have the same impact. Accoto broadens the point of view: “For me virtuality is only one of the possible visual renditions of the metaverse. I think that the immersive internet will also be the internet that is incorporated into objects, environments, bodies. It is the internet. of things as well as augmented reality. It will certainly be my identity in the video-graphic form of avatars in virtual worlds, but also my identity in cryptographic form (self-sovereign identity) that acts within interoperable decentralized networks for produce and exchange digital assets and non-fungible tokens “.
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The future to come: all the roads that lead to the metaverse
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
April 23, 2022
Remaining in the field of virtual worlds, which represent the most immediate horizon of the metaverse, it remains to be asked how much people will want to immerse themselves in simulated worlds and why some should prefer the simulated world to other types of experiences. At least for two valid reasons, according to Accoto: “The first is the transition from pixels to voxels, a three-dimensional version of the pixel, which options a high-dimensional digital simulation of reality and allows immersive interactions, more suited to the human mind. The second is that the new generations have grown up and are growing in virtual play worlds and are more inclined to this kind of immersive experiences. For many boys and girls in the pandemic the first concerts were those on Roblox “.
Closing with a more philosophical question: as the essay highlights, simulation is making the distance between the world and the simulated model disappear, so it remains to ask where the human being will position himself, in this future of synthesis. “Self Matrix literally it tells us that we live inside a simulation, I think more engineering that we will live thanks to the simulation. Or rather by virtue of the many simulations that are transforming our world. In this new scenario, the human is again decentralized and must reposition itself. It is a new terraforming, a new world of inhabiting the planet. “This passage is well highlighted in the essay, which opens by quoting Blue Marble, an iconic image of the earth seen by Apollo for the first time in the form of a blue marble lost in the universe, and ends by talking about Earth-2, the digital twin of the earth produced by Nvidia, with the aim of fighting the climatic disasters of the anthropocene. “Evocatively, this is our period passage, a passage that requires new maps and views . And also new views on humanity “.