Since when Facebook changed its name to Meta (it was October 2021)one cannot speak of metaverse without mentioning Zuckerberg’s company, as if the idea of a virtual world were his or as if there were no other virtual worlds before his Horizon in which to get lost, socialize, do business. Is that so? Obviously, no: that’s not the case.
Not just because (to date) there are at least 40 different metaverses (here is the map to distinguish them), but also because first of all there was Second Life: born as a video game at the beginning of the 2000s, it can definitely boast the title of “first metaverse in history”, also because it is still active and popular. From these concepts, and from the idea that the metaverse is not just that of Meta, he started the 2022 edition of Alphabet of the Futurethe tour of the GNN publishing group dedicated to our country’s ability to innovate.
Coordinated by Professor Davide Borrarenamed the Metaverse Alphabet and produced by No Real Interactive under the artistic direction of Marina Belliniand with the director of the XIX Century, Luca Ubaldeschito act as moderator / conductor each time, the tour is divided into 7 stages: after that of Mantua (June 16), it will touch Trieste (June 23, to talk about tourism), Genoa (7 July, sustainable mobility)Udine (7 September, food), Padua (26 September, culture), Pavia (13 October, agribusiness) and Turin (27 October).
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“The idea was to make people understand that metaverses are there, they are already here, they are not only the future but have existed for at least 15 years – Borra explained to us – And also to help them understand what the technologies and purposes are, what the potential and what the risks, especially financial “. According to him, the important thing is to reiterate the fact that “a metaverse is not just a game and above all it is not just a place to buy NFT, exchange money, buy land at crazy prices, a bubble that sooner or later will burst“. So what is it? “It is a social network, just like the other social networks, only it is in 3D”.
Here perhaps lies the true intuition of Zuckerberg, who bought Oculus in 2014, a company that produces headsets for virtual reality: “Now he is able to make them himself, to sell them and to create the contents and environments to be able to exploit them”. All practically independently, without having to depend on anyone. According to Borra, the viewers are slowly becoming the object that will make us make the technological leap between the real world and the virtual world: “By now they have a relatively affordable cost and are able to offer a much better user experience than a few years ago – he explained – And the fact that a company as big as Meta has taken the field will give a significant acceleration to everything, so much so that within 5 years they will become an object of common use“. Like the smartphone? “No, maybe not: our mobile phones will for a long time remain the preferred and most convenient tool for going online, for accessing the Net in 2D version”. So? “And then the viewers may not become a necessity, but they will be an opportunity – was the reflection of Borra – Una possibility plus to do in a different way what we did before “. That is to socialize, meet people, enter the virtual environments that they have built, and even work.
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The future of journalism in the metaverses
Even providing information, which can have new lymph from the virtual world: Ubaldeschi is convinced of this, who in the first appointment of Alfabeto Metaverso, with his avatar in a suit and tie (“But for the next few occasions I asked for a more informal one”, he confessed), he met the architect Dario Buratti and the designer Alice Tartaglia. Indeed, their virtual counterparts (Colpo Wexler and Astralia): “If life moves to virtual worlds, our work will go there too, because information has and will continue to play a role central”.
This is demonstrated by what has happened in the last two years, first with the coronavirus and then with the war in Ukraine, with people who were hungry for reliable and verified news and went to look for it. in unthinkable places, such as social networks (TikTok, above all) and YouTube. Obviously, it cannot be done as it has been done so far: “I don’t think there will be virtual newsstands where readers will go to buy virtual newspapers – Ubaldeschi imagined during our chat – We journalists will have to be more fluid, acquire new skills and adapt to new and less formal languages“. In short, less jacket and tie.
According to the director of the 19th Century, this is “the beauty of providing information nowadays: there are possibilities that were not there before, and they are all stimulating. But we will have to be good at making them profitable too”.
Borra agreed: “There are countries, such as China and South Korea, where the highest positions of the state already exist in the form of avatars, so that they can intervene in the metaverse to communicate with people, like the anchormans of old television“. With one caveat, though. Indeed, two: “We will have to pay attention to the legal issues generated by the construction of people’s new digital identities – he told us – And above all, with increasingly realistic avatars, we will have to become very, very good at distinguishing the true from the false, the true president of a country from its digitized copy “. IS the problem of deepfakes, and how we often wrote about Italian Tech, will definitely be among the problems of the next decade. Which is one of the reasons why it’s best to come prepared.