How to live a life as an metaverse architect?
Is metaverse going to be our second digital life—an escape from the real world into a borderless digital universe, where everyone is their architect?
By George Nicola (Expert Stager)
Imagine the year is 2030, and metaverse is already part of our lives, and you are an architect, working in your virtual office with clients across the globe.
Almost everything is everywhere, and everyone is obsessed with being in the digital world, living their life how they want it.
Your small architecture firm designs projects in real life, not within the metaverse. Since everyone works in the metaverse, you’ve never met the physical body of your colleagues, but you know very well their digital avatars.
A metaverse is cyberspace where reality meets imagination, perfect for an architect like you.
Metaverse - a dystopian future?
Let’s look back in the past, more precisely the year 1992.
The novelist Neal Stephenson speculated that giant corporations would create a virtual reality world called “metaverse” from greek (beyond) and verse (universe) where digital people will meet to work, socialize, and play in a not so distant future.
Except for the post-apocalyptic and bleak prediction that the world economy has collapsed, it’s safe to say that his speculative prediction is at the doorstep of our lives, but you know that because you are the architect living in 2030 and working inside the metaverse.
Metaverse in 2030
Now let’s go back to the future and your day to day life at the metaverse.
By 2030 it’s hard to imagine that the world we know will be a dystopian one with colliding planets in space, an advanced AI solving complex problems with the help of quantum computers, but it’s safe to say that some kind of virtual reality space exists.
Federal governments maintain the balance and the world piece. Every country has its metaverse world.
Tech giant corporations have advanced a lot. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have their metaverse virtual worlds coexisting with the physical one. Everyone has a choice of using the preferred metaverse system for work, play or potentially social life.
The life of a metaverse architect
Your job is idyllic, no time to travel from home to the office, you rarely visit your clients physically as everything happens in digital reality.
Unfortunately, the graphics of the digital world are still a far cry from being realistic, the metaverse is powered by headsets or glasses, which by then are still not capable of running heavy graphics, and that’s where you struggle a bit.
However, it’s not a significant hurdle, but you still rely on the standard CAD and rendering software after each meeting for every interior and architectural project.
One Monday morning at work, you decided to cancel all digital meetings for the day after seeing several forced ads. Not to mention the marathon of ads during the weekend between each video clip on the Metatube streaming services.
You know that metaverse utilize and gather millions of data points for each person’s life, choices and preferences and obliterate them with ads. This is something that has been bothering you for a few years now.
Metaverse & human contact
For you, it’s been a challenging year after not having much human contact apart from your cat (a digital copy) of your cat that died a few years ago, trying to swim in that lake across the park. That project you’ve worked so hard on for 11 months took its toll.
After a brief few minutes, you decide to call your family. Five years ago, you decided to ditch your smartphone and use the metaverse device for calls and everything else. No other option, you put it on and connect with your brother. At that time, he attends a meeting, but he’s able to meet you at your favourite game room.
In metaverse game rooms, you are not just looking but also living with your digital avatar experiencing it, doing those actions, yourself digitally, along with other people who want to be part of your experience.
In this room, you’ve designed a whole part of a village, using your architectural knowledge and memories, and you wanted to recreate the place where you played with your brother when everything was offline and real. You’ve designed even real-life people parallel to the real ones from your memories.
In metaverse, everything is possible; there can be billions of virtual worlds that you can create and experience with the cost of your data.
In metaverse game rooms, you are not just looking but also living with your digital avatar experiencing it, doing those actions, yourself digitally, along with other people who want to be part of your experience.
In this room, you’ve designed a whole part of a village, using your architectural knowledge and memories, and you wanted to recreate the place where you played with your brother when everything was offline and real. You’ve designed even real-life people parallel to the real ones from your memories.
In metaverse, everything is possible; there can be billions of virtual worlds that you can create and experience with the cost of your data.
Metaverse & real-life questions
After you’ve spent a few hours with your brother in the game room, you’ve decided to take some time off and walk in the park alone.
It’s a lovely afternoon, and the lake in the park has one of these wooden bays with benches, where you can sit and soak the fresh air and nature’s sounds. Of course, only a few of you are walking in the park without their metaverse devices.
Being on that rotten wooden bench, looking at the calm water surface, your brain works to answer some of the questions you have about the metaverse.
- What lines do we need to draw where this does end?
- Why are we relying on technologies to fulfil the gaps?
- Is it made to make you socialize even more and forget at the same time your reality like hugging, having lunch with friends, walking your dog, buying your first car, stepping into a new house?
After a few minutes, you conclude that digital holograms cannot replace human relationships, and sensory experiences cannot replace real emotions.
The metaverse is not a second life but a carefully architected imprisoned reality.
