{"id":30663,"date":"2022-08-12T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=30663"},"modified":"2022-08-13T12:42:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T12:42:24","slug":"the-metaverse-isnt-here-yet-but-it-already-has-a-long-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-metaverse-isnt-here-yet-but-it-already-has-a-long-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The metaverse isn\u2019t here yet, but it already has a long history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Boellstorff<\/a>, University of California, Irvine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nattie\u2019s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first \u201cC\u201d would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned \u201cClem\u201d was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie \u201clived, as it were, in two worlds\u201d \u2013 the world of office tedium and an online world where \u201cshe did not lack social intercourse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Texting drew them closer: \u201cannoyances became lighter because she told him, and he sympathized.\u201d Nattie soon realized \u201cshe had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend \u2018so near and yet so far\u2019.\u201d Their blossoming relationship almost failed when Clem\u2019s co-worker visited Nattie\u2019s office pretending to be Clem, but the deceit was exposed in time for their \u201cromance of dots and dashes\u201d to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that last sentence I gave away the ending to \u201cWired Love<\/a>,\u201d source of the quotes above. Published in 1879, Ella Thayer\u2019s novel of \u201cthe telegraphic world\u201d makes remarkable predictions. Yet \u201cWired Love\u201d is planted firmly during the time of what journalist Thomas Standage aptly termed the \u201cVictorian Internet<\/a>.\u201d Many aspects of the current metaverse were already familiar 143 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s old is new<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

History is more than fun facts: It deeply shapes ways of thinking and acting. As an anthropologist who\u2019s been studying virtual worlds<\/a> for almost two decades, I\u2019ve found that the metaverse\u2019s rich past shapes what too often appears unprecedented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t accidental. The contemporary metaverse is overwhelmingly owned and developed by corporations whose profit models demand focus on the Next Big Thing. This typically sidelines history \u2013 with massive financial and social implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, the metaverse is defined by the concept of the virtual world<\/a>. As \u201cWired Love\u201d illustrates, the telegraph and later the telephone constitute early virtual worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multi-user dungeons, or MUDs, arose in the second half of the 20th century. These virtual worlds appeared on local computer networks in the late 1970s, and entered dial-up internet services in the 1980s and 1990s. Richard Bartle, co-creator of the first MUD, noted that by 1993 over 10% of all internet traffic<\/a> was on MUDs. Virtual worlds with graphics, including avatars, date back to Habitat<\/a>, launched in 1985. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UWI8f9QpnR8?wmode=transparent&start=0 Big media companies were already promoting their virtual world offerings in 1987.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With advent of broadband in the 2000s, many key aspects of the contemporary metaverse became established. Longtime metaverse observers like Wagner James Au have repeatedly emphasized<\/a> how many \u201cnew\u201d developments have rehashed long-standing debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real estate and the laws of virtual physics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Consider what metaverse history reveals about virtual real estate. Pundits enthuse<\/a> about the virtual \u201cland rush\u201d and emphasize location. For instance, virtual world The Sandbox<\/a> sells plots for around $2,300, but in December 2021 someone paid $450,000<\/a> to purchase land next to a virtual mansion<\/a> owned by rap star Snoop Dogg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the price spike? Co-founder Sebastien Borget explained<\/a> that The Sandbox has a finite number of plots, and people can access only adjacent plots. Thus, only a few people can own virtual land next to Snoop Dogg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that The Sandbox is deeply indebted to the virtual world Second Life, where spaces to practice building have been termed \u201csandboxes\u201d since its 2002 launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second Life originally had \u201cpoint-to-point teleportation\u201d (P2P). You could arrive anywhere in an instant. But in 2003 Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, disabled P2P. Residents trying to reach a destination would appear at the nearest \u201ctelehub.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This had implications for real estate. Valuable for businesses and entertainment, plots of land near telehubs sold for top dollar \u2014 until 2005, when Linden Lab suddenly announced<\/a> the end of telehubs and the return of P2P<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Land near former telehubs no longer had special value; some people lost thousands of dollars<\/a>. The most powerful landlord can\u2019t change the laws of physics, but Linden Lab could literally recode scarcity out of existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward almost 20 years. Land next to Snoop Dogg\u2019s virtual mansion is scarce: A plot could cost $450,000 because The Sandbox doesn\u2019t have P2P. But were the company to suddenly add P2P, that $450,000 investment could become nearly worthless. That pundits have tended to ignore this fact reveals the danger of forgetting metaverse history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immersion \u2013 sensory or social?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another example of metaverse history\u2019s importance concerns the idea of virtual environments. Virtual worlds don\u2019t just connect places; they\u2019re places in their own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
From their earliest days, telephone calls have brought people together across great distances into shared virtual conversational spaces. Theodor Horydczak Collection, Library of Congress<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

People played chess using the telegraph<\/a> 150 years ago; those virtual chessboards weren\u2019t located on either end of the wire. In 1992 Bruce Sterling noted<\/a> that telephone calls don\u2019t take place in your phone or in the other person\u2019s phone. They take place in a virtual environment: \u201cThe place between the phones. The indefinite place out there, where the two of you, two human beings, actually meet and communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1990, Habitat\u2019s founders concluded<\/a> that the metaverse is defined more by the interactions among people within it than by the technology that creates it. They were particularly skeptical of virtual reality technologies, noting \u201cthe almost mystical euphoria that currently seems to surround all this hardware is, in our opinion, both excessive and somewhat misplaced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At issue isn\u2019t VR\u2019s potential, but the Matrix-like idea that sensory immersion is necessary to the metaverse in every instance. The key distinction is between sensory immersion and social immersion<\/a>. The idea that virtual environments require VR misunderstands \u201cimmersion.\u201d It\u2019s also ableist, since not everyone can see or hear. The metaverse\u2019s history indicates that social immersion is the metaverse\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning from history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The metaverse has a long way to go, but it already has a long history. Proximity and immersion are just two examples of crucial topics this history can demystify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is important because the current, rampant mystification isn\u2019t accidental. The emerging version of the metaverse is overwhelmingly owned and developed by Big Tech. These companies seek to manufacture the perception that the metaverse is new and futuristic. But metaverse histories are real; they can reveal past mistakes and contribute to better virtual futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Boellstorff<\/a>, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Boellstorff, University of California, Irvine Nattie\u2019s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first \u201cC\u201d would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned \u201cClem\u201d was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie \u201clived, as it were, in two worlds\u201d \u2013 the world of office tedium and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":30664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410,8],"tags":[5846,10938,12300,255,6356,12302,4391,12301],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30667,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30663\/revisions\/30667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}