How far do we need to be engaged in virtual worlds to keep coming back and what kinds of engagement are meaningful enough?

There was a commercial in the 90s that ran on Nickelodeon.  It’s aim was to get children to go outside and engage with the world more.  It was famed as a new form of reality that made Virtual Reality seem weak and referred to simply as ‘Actual Reality’.  With references like ‘feel the weight of the ball because you are actually holding the ball’.  This was framed as a selling point that couldn’t be ignored.  An opportunity not to be missed.

Certainly getting outside and getting exercise is something we all should do more.  For our pyschological as well as our physical health.  Given the direction of the metaverse right now and the very poor reception that major projects like those put out by Meta have seen it seems like we may be a long way off from more immersive virtual worlds.  So far there is nothing on the general market that is more popular or offers better services than second life a world which was first launched in 2003.  It’s nearest competitor, VRChat, was launched in 2017.  For at least five years now we haven’t seen anything innovate in such a way as to challenge the existing titans of the field.

Neither Second Life nor VRchat are pulling in numbers like old school games either.  A new release of almost triple A title will outperform them both.   This begs the question then.  What will it take to finally make all the promises of VR as a revolution in our lives and one or more metaverses become a genuine replacement for everything from shopping to baseball?  Such promises have been made for a long time but progress continues to be slow and anemic.   What is it going to take to really convince people of this value proposition?

To guess exactly when this might happen is a hard game.  There are many prognosticators but we will leave that aside in this case and focus on what it might look like when the right platform and right technology are finally available.

The first thing that is probably needed is an element we haven’t seen yet.  That would be more full immersion.  It is hard to get as excited about a couple of hand controllers as it is being able to actually walk somewhere.  There are scale setups in places and walking pads of varying kinds but these remain expensive and cumbersome.  None have really seen wide market adoption.  There are a few headsets that track feet and these are an improvement but so far locomotion remains minimally tracked.   Next gen suits can help with this to some extent.  With trackers across the body minor movements will at least translate.   Getting real sensation may be the harder problem.  As yet most VR does not provide anything more than semi-immersive 3d visuals and sound.  Some hand trackers also give haptic feedback in the form of vibrations but this is a very limited form of tactile engagement.   A far cry from the wind in your face or the smell of petrichor as you walk up a simulated hill after a rainstorm.  That experience remains firmly in the realm of the real for the time being.  Even with the most sophisticated setups and virtually unlimited money.

So we’re a long way off on that front and shouldn’t expect a virtual trip to the holodeck (sad as that is) anytime soon.  But perhaps we should be a bit more charitable and look at what has had the best success so far.  What has been the most engaging and immersive experience that people have really taken to?  For this we need to look to the far less sophisticated and perhaps open up our definition of what a virtual world is in the first place.  In this case then we are looking at not just open worlds although those are the ones with the most freedom to the user.   Yet that doesn’t seem to be what is most demanded in a virtual world.  Games seem to be the most engaging and immersive places to go at this time.  World of Warcraft remains a titan in this area bringing back users year after year and expansion after expansion.  It will hit its limit eventually but there are plenty of other game examples to choose from where we see similar outcomes.  Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantays XIV remain top contenders despite some early hiccups.  These worlds contrast with the top players in open worlds at this time.  Namely Second Life and VRChat.   While both such worlds have a strong userbase and continue to be profitable their concurrent numbers do not reach the same level.  This is despite the potentially more practical elements for use and much greater freedom afforded especially by Second Life.    Suggesting that the largest portion of the users out there want games and more immersive consistent worlds to exist and explore.  Having characters and objectives is more important to them than freeform exploration and creation and a single cohesive world is more interesting than a rainbow panoply of unique expressions.

It is worth noting that the most popular of these worlds do not not even have any immersive systems like a headset or haptic feedback in controllers.  They rely on the now old fashioned keyboard and mouse for controls with a screen and speakers for the only feedback methods.  Some of this is of course down to the fact that these elements are widespread and most people have them now but there is also something to be said for easy of access and simplicity.   It is easy to hop on and off and to develop large spaces in a well understood development space.

So metaverses at this point it is clear that gaming is going to be the strongest selling point for people.  It continues to draw in large crowds and provide engagement value that exceeds anything provided by advanced technology.  Next gen MMOs would appear to be the place to look to look for multiuser engagement and experience.   In this regard then Meta is probably going in the wrong direction.  It is one that has been tested repeatedly recently by efforts such as High Fidelity and Sansar with little success.  Even during its heyday around 2008 when Second Life was able to bring major companies like Nike onboard with the pitch of using it as a new wave sales platform it never reached gaming numbers and since then has never been able to pull in people in sufficient numbers or make the use of it for business purposes or education sufficiently compelling.

Not that there isn’t some market for business meetings, classes or other immersive applications.  There has been a small one for a long time and it will probably continue to slowly grow.  However, most companies and people still prefer face to face video rather than avatars.  It remains simpler to setup a teleconference than to try to get everyone in world and familiar with all the unique controls and systems required for regular use.  So for the time being gamers and gaming will continue to dominate at relatively low levels of sophistication.  Only a relative handful of users driving the innovation market.

When we finally get to something more immersive while remaining simple to access and fun then we will begin to see a shift in movement on a wide scale.

Next time:  Is Fantasy Transhumanism easier to accept than Sci-Fi transhumanism?

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During its heyday from roughly 2008 to 2011 Second Life was full of major brand storefronts and a thriving in-world economy. However those brands moved out after it became clear that the economy wasn’t driving any traffic to their stores and few were buying real-world goods and services. The focus was on elements of the world itself and the Linden allowed close management by the people who run Second Life.

Second Life is still around but few if any real-world businesses have a strong presence there. After 2011 it began to decline noticeably as not just companies but general users began to lose interest. What gave it such strength initially and what has kept it going has always been its core user base who sink their time and money into the world. The custom building in-world while clunky at times worked remarkably well. The users have always kept innovating new ideas and experiences into the world to provide content and engagement for one another.

This will be the first test of Meta, whether it can or is even willing to give the right tools to the users. If that happens the users will make the world their own and then they will want to stay there and make more stuff for themselves and each other. However, what we have seen of Facebook in the past suggests they will not want to give this level of freedom and control to the user base. If they run it is as a cohesive game experience more like an MMORPG that might work. Certainly, those worlds have large and committed player bases but they don’t support anything like the real world. One won’t find a Nike storefront in World of Warcraft for good reason. Blizzard doesn’t want cross-branding nor do they want that kind of immersion-breaking.

The next test for them will be whether they can avoid interfering too much. Virtual worlds tend to work best with little micromanagement. This actually would seem to suit the hosting companies as it means they have less work to do. Still, some have a tendency to try to handle every element. This removes the freedom and opportunity that makes the metaverse so exciting in the first place.

Future virtual worlds like Metaverse will be making use of new technology that hasn’t been available in the past. This may give them an edge. Virtual headsets and wide consumer availability of more immersive experiences may help to increase the variety. These experiences can be enough in some cases to hold a user base. VRChat is perhaps the most notable example of this. Despite being very feature-poor to the point of not even having a text chat system it maintains a small but regular and dedicated user base that seems to be enough to keep it moving. It will also have access to greater interactivity through camera systems, motion trackers, full in-world persistent presence, and more. Such tools provide the possibility of wholly new levels of engagement for the user and new opportunities for the creators to provide content to their audiences.

Whether Metaverse and other emerging virtual worlds will take advantage of these things will be seen soon enough. To date, no truly open world has been more successful than Second Life and it remains the best starting model for non-game virtual worlds. Yet even its own parent company, Linden Labs, has failed to replicate its success with its second virtual world Sansar. Why this is probably the case is a matter for another article but suffice to say that nothing about this is easy. A company like Meta might have a leg up with its very large influence and reach getting people in the world. Just having a large enough number of users is a core component and so driving hype and enrolling enough users is a powerful start. But if there is nothing there to keep people interested and coming back it won’t last long.

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Transhumanism, at least in the human enhancement segment, is largely absent in much of our fiction.  While there are usually a few amazing medical devices or the occasional specialized implant enhanced human features take a back seat to other technologies in the story.  Indeed while we see amazing advancements in most fields areas such as medicine, cybernetics and biotech often seem to be lagging.

Not only are some elements of transhuman tech largely missing but the attendant changes in society are often not explored very much either.  After all how would one delve deep into the effects of superlongevity on a widely distributed basis when no one lives much longer or better overall than they do now?

This makes a sort of sense of course.  Good science fiction is like storytelling of any kind in any medium.  It works best when the audience can connect with the familiar.  If there is a good opportunity to build on a common ground and relatable people and their experiences.  Many of the most transhuman actions and ideas involve a degree of unrelatability.  This is largely a result of the fact that we haven’t seen the implemented in our lives yet.  There was a time not so long ago when speaking in real time with someone on the other side of the planet was the realm of total fiction and people could only dream about it.  It is why such abilities would show up regularly in our fiction as the powers of heroes and gods.  What someone could or would do with it was a highly speculative realm and for most people it wasn’t something particularly relatable either.   Now of course that has changed dramatically and  such abilities are widely available around the world.  So it is something that people all relate to and of course something that shows up all the time in our works.

This points to something that is rather interesting in modern works.  We see a lot of highly popular speculative fiction now becoming every more popular in the area of superheroes.  Some of whom did get their powers via science or technology.  These seem to be increasing popularity but continue to be restricted to stories of the more sci-fantasy variety than harder near future works.  Despite their unquestionably superhuman capabilities these characters remain relatable and evidently quite marketable.   So why is it that modern people just like those in the past still dream of godlike powers and find connection with them but we see far less connection with those who are just a little ahead and using more realistic current or near-future technology?   How can we make those near future technologies more palatable in characters?

After all science fiction is in part about looking at ourselves and where we might be going.  Speculative fiction more broadly uses the lens of the fantastic to consider elements of ourselves and our societies from different perspectives.  Some of them are, of course, simply allegories for existing situations.  But many a good tale does indeed cover elements that have truly come to be in one fashion or another.   So to set that all aside and ignore some of the more pertinent questions about these elements is not only to miss out on some fantastic fiction but to fail to consider as a society what they might mean to us.

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One of the more important questions to understanding and being transhuman is the basic question of ‘what is human anyway?’.  If we are transferring human or altering human or just being better human we are still modifying that basic concept.  Of course philosophers and scientists throughout history have struggled with this question and there is no easy or single answer but it is worth examining some of the basic realities of being human and what that means to explore some of the ideas around it and what that means for transcending, transferring, transposing, transgressing or otherwise trans* humanity.

When we look at a human we see the obvious.  An upright bipedal mammal with clear sexual dimorphism.  Two arms, two legs, two eyes etc.  We see distinctive faces and body shapes and hear distinctive voices.  Cues that we have developed to help in determining who in the world it is we’re talking to.  These are natural guidelines and if you ask people on the street a question of ‘what is a human’ these physical features will often be a considerable part of their answer.

The defining feature of humans is their brain.  It really is the focus of human survival and evolutionary advantage.  No other known species has a brain as large relative to their body as do humans.  This has led to humans being sapient and sentient and really has been the leading force in enabling humanity to not only survive but thrive.  Every species has its evolutionary advantage and a big brain is ours.  What is odd about this is the fact that big brains are not the sort of thing that one would think of as being such an advantage.  They take up a lot of resources.  With demands that far outstrip any equivalent bodily mass of cells and they don’t do much more than data processing and output.  This is part of the reason other species have never gotten quite such a ratio and why evolution hasn’t, to our knowledge, succeeded in reaching this level of capacity before.

So evolution built the human around the brain.  So what?  It means we are smarter than your average organism and can abstract things in ways not seen in other creatures but that’s just evolution.  Transhumanism is about more than evolution isn’t it?  Going beyond what nature has given us to take charge of our own destiny and making things better all around is certainly at the core of the Transhuman ideal.   But what this fundamentally means is that what we take with us on that journey must be the human mind since that is where we live.   If a human loses an arm their life is made more difficult.  The same applies for any limb or organ.  We regularly replace hearts, livers, kidneys etc. now and none of these things fundamentally change who a person is.  Indeed the fact that who we are resides in the brain is right there in the term ‘personality’.  You can knock or damage anything else but if you just dent the brain fundamental changes take place to the individual.  They may not be the same individual who they were before having different actions and reactions to the same stimuli.   As we go forward then what we need to remain human is only what is in our heads.

Interestingly this doesn’t strictly mean that we always have the brain.  Nor that the brain is somehow sacrosanct.  The cellular structures making up a human brain are a substrate on which we run the software that is the mind and perhaps if one wants to get metaphysical, the soul.  The mind is truly what we are at the most basic level.  It is the effect of all that processing power and myriad connections that allows us to ‘think’ and it is the thoughts, the ideas, the memories and the will that we need to take with us.  For these are the elements that make up the mind.   What we need to be careful us is that we don’t damage or lose the mind along the way.

People may choose to change their mind structures whether that means brain alteration through physical or chemical means or simply that they didn’t like their previous decision.  That is part and parcel of morphological freedom but this is where we have to be careful.  This is the area where we are truly and centrally human and once we start making alterations to that we are truly into unknown space.  We may alter our hands into paws or change our mouths to fans or simply replace everything with a fancy new helicopter body.  None of that changes who we are at the most fundamental level.  It is just a new face or coat of paint on the basic mind.   But we should think long and hard about any changes to that mind itself.  We should keep in mind all the possible outcomes and remind ourselves that we will not be the same once it is done.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it at some point or at some level.  The human mind has its limitations just like everything else and while we want to take great caution in doing so there are definitely opportunities for improvement.  Indeed we are already deep into this territory.  Just as more visible prosthetics are being used to improve the functioning of other parts of the body there are a host of interventions that alter the brain in various ways and thus impact the mind.  The majority of these are chemical in nature and come from a host of drugs that can have impressive effects on neurochemistry.  Many are used clinically but some of the most popular have been banned because they are seen as detrimental or harmful.

The drug war(s) and their effects are perhaps the most visible example of the debates that are only going to increase as mind alterations become ever more visible and substantial.  The issues at hand should be carefully considered in who we are and what we may wish to become as humans.  We can and should change our bodies in a variety of ways to suit our needs and should worry far less about that.  If we replaces our bodies with robot parts or leaves we are still still human fundamentally.   But once we change our minds in a permanent way we may begin to ask questions about what that means.  Where are the lines and what kinds of limitations should there be?  This is a much deeper discussion and warrants the whole range of reasoned debate.  What thoughts do you have on the mind as the defining feature of humans?  Where would you fall on the question on how we should approach it?

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Transhumanism is a broad idea and it has an equally broad group of people who support it.   There are many amazing folks out there with interesting ideas that don’t make as much of a splash as they should.   One such group is the Freedom of Form Foundation ( https://freedomofform.org/ ).  This organization is dedicated to the concepts of morphological freedom.  Its particular goal is to develop and make available the best possible scientific and engineering approaches to allow people to alter themselves to fit their personal preferences.

Now one may say “But morphological freedom is something everyone does in Transhumanism.   What makes them so special?” Well now I’m glad you asked.  The FFF as they are often called aren’t just typical transhumanist types.  Indeed many of them wouldn’t even identify as such.  They are passionate about morphological freedom because they are interested in how it can help them achieve their desired forms.  Most of these forms are related to those of animals of one kind or another.   There is something primally interesting about this idea.  Who hasn’t at one time or another thought about what it would be like to have a tail or webbed feet?  Modern society reinforces this idea with the popularity of ‘talking animal’ characters which are very common, especially among childrens programming.  So the idea is there from our earliest ages.

Of course not everyone wants to be an animal nor the same sort of animal nor even the same degree of the same species of animal.  This variety is part of what makes this such an important attitude for us to keep in mind as transhumanists and one area where an organization like the FFF can really provide a useful lens to consider the wider realm of transhuman thinking.

Of course there are plenty of groups that are excited about adding things or taking a different shape.   What sets the FFF apart is their commitment to do something about it.  They currently have multiple projects such as integument review, anatomical modeling and social considerations.  That last is particularly interesting since it something that often gets less consideration than it should.  There are a lot of issues that will come up as people begin modifying themselves in ever more radical ways.  We’ve already seen mixed responses to various piercings or the very limited animal mods that have been made to date.   The FFF and  some of its thinking will help in making that transition a bit easier and, hopefully, bring a little more attention to the issue ahead of its full realization.  Professionalism and community engagement will set a more positive tone and dovetail nicely with technological improvements the FFF is working on.

To date the Freedom of Form Foundation has published and funded a few studies but it is early days yet.  It is likely safe to say that they are off to a good start but there is a long road ahead.   We as transhumanists should be excited to see technology and ideas in these fields advancing.  After all if you can make a working tail you can solve a lot of other biological problems and the inverse is also true.  Greater morphological freedom and opportunity to be who we choose is something that is meaningful across the full spectrum of possible forms we might consider.  Just like becoming a robot or uploading to the cloud or simply improving our existing human selves to be stronger and faster we want all options on the table.  So go check out the FFF and say hi to some of the more esoteric arms of transhumanism.  We’re all in this together.

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