Metaverse: Old wine in a new bottle?|Guest Column

Jayendrina Singha Ray’s research interests include postcolonial studies, space literature studies, English literature, and rhetoric and composition.Before teaching in the US, she worked as an editor at Routledge and taught English at universities in India.She is a resident of Kirkland.
The Metaverse is a space at the cusp of the physical and the non-physical.The space itself is not entirely different, but it is like old wine in a new bottle, replicating the current set of relationships we are already familiar with.
Think shops, clubs, classrooms—these are other places in society where faithful replicas can be found in the virtual world.However, unlike physical space in reality, the metaverse provides institutions that distort our reality like plasticine.So a derelict car living in Cleveland could own the most expensive real estate in the virtual world of Manhattan.
Time in a virtual world is just as malleable as one’s ability to temporarily abandon the clock’s flow of time—like Stephenson’s fictional character Ng in Avalanche, who nostalgic about owning a virtual world villa in 1950s Vietnam.
Despite its malleability, spacetime on the metaverse replicates real-world relationships and institutions inconceivably.Virtual world avatars can replace bodies and even reimagine them, but not beyond sociocultural conventions and human propensity to exercise power and control.Take, for example, reports of groping and sexual assault in virtual worlds.
In December 2021, Nina Jane Patel, vice president of metaverse research at Kabuki Ventures, described her harrowing experience of gang rape in the field.She recounted the incident in the following words, “Within 60 seconds of joining – I was verbally and sexually harassed – 3-4 male avatars with male voices…gang raped my avatars and took pictures” Some Social media responded to this by Patel in her blog post “Reality or Fiction?”The incidents identified in ‘indirectly corroborate this behavior.
She wrote, “The comments on my post have a lot of opinions – ‘Don’t choose female avatars, this is an easy fix.”, “Don’t be silly, it’s not true…”There is no lower body to attack”" According to Patel’s experience and these reactions, gender norms, bullying, the realities of power games – these are things that human society and institutions cannot The missing aspect – penetrates beyond this space, beyond the confines of reality. What happens in a video game can happen in the metaverse. So killing, violence, beatings are all forgivable crimes, as long as they are pretended to be Enter a surreal space. You step out of the virtual world and you become a law-abiding, thoughtful citizen of the real world.
The replication of the current set of relationships in this space was so faithful that Meta had to intervene using the “personal boundaries” feature in its VR space to stop unwanted intrusions into the avatar’s personal space.This feature acts almost like a regulation, protecting avatars from potential harassment by establishing a 4-foot distance between them and other avatars.This is in addition to Meta’s other anti-harassment features, which will make the avatar’s hand disappear if it tries to invade someone’s personal space.These attempts to introduce a “code of conduct… for a relatively new medium like VR” (Vivek Sharma, Horizon VP), reminds one of civil society institutions and laws to curb the unabashed penetration of reality Social crime in time and space.Yuan Festival.
If human nature demands that the power structures and laws of the real world be reproduced in a virtual world, the question is how will this manifest in an essentially invisible and elusive virtual space-time?Do we need Metaverse Police, Lawyers, Courts, etc?Outdated real-world laws will find newer replacements in the virtual world, and engineers will roll out quick software patches to control deviations (like Meta’s anti-harassment feature)?While the metaverse is still developing and it’s too early to know, it’s worth thinking about the possibility of this space recreating/exaggerating/downplaying real-world structures and relationships.
This brings me to the “philosophical foundations” of the Decentraland Foundation.Like the other VR platforms that make up the Metaverse (such as The Sandbox, Somnium Space, etc.), Decentraland is a space where users can “create and monetize content and applications” as well as own, buy, and explore “virtual lands” (coinbase. com).According to the Decentraland white paper, “Unlike other virtual worlds and social networks, Decentraland is not controlled by a centralized organization. No single agent has the power to modify software rules, land content, monetary economics, or prevent others from accessing the world.”
The spaces we find in this metaverse platform draw on elements of real-world societies, such as social networks, land ownership, markets, economic exchange models, and more.But it also claims a refusal to centralize control – an essential element of most, if not all real-world societies (left, center or right).This fine-tuning of reality to make it more community-based is commendable.However, if recent speculations about a possible monopoly of the metaverse by Meta are to be followed, only time will tell if such a platform will abide by the principles of decentralization.
Like companies, we don’t know if governments will enter these areas in the long run.If there are regions named after “anarchy,” authorship, virtual world crime, markets, economic transactions, and land ownership, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine legal structures and surveillance mechanisms coming into virtual worlds.
So, is the metaverse an unimaginably sparsely modified replica of our reality?possible.who knows?Only time will tell.
Jayendrina Singha Ray’s research interests include postcolonial studies, space literature studies, English literature, and rhetoric and composition.Before teaching in the US, she worked as an editor at Routledge and taught English at universities in India.She is a resident of Kirkland.
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