This is the year of 2022 AD, which is the year of 3 after COVID, is the universe meta enough?
The memory of COVID is still fresh, while the impact of COVID is fading out from our life. When we look back to the past 3 years, nothing has really changed, except remote meeting becomes common. “I will Zoom in” not only means making an image larger, but it once became a fashion word referring to online meetings on Zoom. As a researcher in VR, I have been asking myself how the pandemic could influence the world (except the pandemic, death, and the evil side) regarding transitioning part of our life into the metaverse. Getting used to remote meetings could be the first step towards that. The barriers of habit could have caused a much stronger resistance if the whole world didn’t have to press the pause button and break up the natural in-person connections. 3 years is a long time for us, but it is just a short moment in history. The changes in the past 3 years are small and big, they are small enough so that you don’t feel much incompatibility; but in the meantime, they are big enough for us to notice when we look back.
A lot of people are concerned that the metaverse could make us indulge in the virtual world, because the virtual world would be way more perfect than the physical world can ever provide us when one day The Matrix movie comes true. When the day comes and we fully indulge in the fantasy, we are basically nothing more than a brain in a jar (I really like the analogy by Ken).
Everytime when I think about this, I will tell myself what Kennedy once said, “We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable — and we believe they can do it again”
