People have an innate need to communicate with other individuals to develop social interactions.
Nowadays society is experiencing a transition from digital technologies to immersive technologies, and the impact of AI is facilitating interactions and communication between people across the world. However, questions regarding socialization and how behavioral modification can manifest are still in their infancy.
Focusing on these immersive technologies, there is no doubt that they have the potential to shape an entirely new user experience and to generate new interactions between people, technology, and spaces.
Notwithstanding that Digital twins, Virtual twins, and 3D immersive experiences have been around for more than a decade, several tech companies invested a considerable budget to develop user-friendly digital, virtual, immersive environments, named the Metaverse (Meta), the Omniverse (Nvidia), or the Multiverse (Forbses).
The metaverse, currently known as a set of digital spaces, including interconnected immersive 3D experiences, allows people to be virtually represented by avatars in a digital immersive environment where they can connect, socialize, work, and explore 3D immersive spaces with others who are not physically present.
However, it appears that a clear, uniquely agreed definition is still not yet strongly emerging.
There are different nuances that currently characterize digital, virtual, and immersive environments as they can provide new sensorial experiences, improved cognitive feedback, and even more to what people can currently experience with smartphones, tablets, computers, and other mainstream consumer electronics.
The boundaries for what the metaverse and digital, virtual, and immersive environments could be and what people could do with them and in them are just set by human abilities of imagination.
Whilst many opportunities are rising, several challenges appear.
The Institute of Digital Fashion, in partnership with the Circular Fashion Summit, reported that avatars are failing to represent the identities o users want to express.
Considering some behavioral and social aspects such as inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and safety in the digital world society is urgently looking for answers about the impact that the metaverse will have on human beings.
To answer these ethical questions and to identify new challenging queries, the Metavetics Institute is the only global, community-driven independent global network of passionate scientists thought leaders, and industry experts committed to ensuring that metaverses and digital, virtual, and immersive environments are designed and developed by delivering integrity, privacy, safety, diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
Do you want to become a Metavethicist?