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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse

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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse

Rajesh Kasturirangan
Mar 1, 2022
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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse

www.ranganaut.com

‘Qualia’ is the term of art in philosophy and consciousness studies for the ‘what it’s like to experience something.’ The way a rose looks and smells are essential to how we experience a rose. The rose qualia is different from the tulip qualia, though they are more similar to one another than either is to the cat qualia.

So what is the qualia of the metaverse? What does it feel like to be in one? What should it feel like to be in one?

We have speculative fictional accounts from Snowcrash or Ready Player One or the Matrix, but I am convinced we don’t need to lean on fiction any more. In fact, we can point to a full spectrum metaverse experience this past week: the war in Ukraine. If we keep thinking the Metaverse is a technology platform, we will miss the woods for the trees, for it’s the experience that counts, not the particular tech on which it’s grounded. Consider the following list of metaverse features:

Immersion: here you go

Twitter avatar for @RALee85
Rob Lee @RALee85
Footage apparently of the Russian Mi-35M attack helicopter that was shot down on February 26. t.me/milinfolive/77…
12:03 PM ∙ Feb 28, 2022
36Likes12Retweets

Augmented Reality: here you go

Twitter avatar for @ckoettl
Christoph Koettl @ckoettl
Satellite images show large unit of Russian troops near #Kyiv. Hundreds of vehicles, around 40 miles NW of the capital. #Ukraine 🛰️📷@Maxar nytimes.com/live/2022/02/2…
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7:37 PM ∙ Feb 27, 2022
2,183Likes1,062Retweets

Realtime maps of the fighting: here you go

And in the annals of unintended consequences, you don’t want to give away troop movements because they left their phones in their pockets.

Twitter avatar for @KyivIndependent
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent
⚡️Google Maps disables Google Maps’ live traffic overlay and Live Busyness, a feature that displays how popular a location may be at a given time. Google reportedly made the change in an effort to help keep Ukrainians safe.
5:17 AM ∙ Feb 28, 2022
62,953Likes7,220Retweets

The automation of work: here you go

Twitter avatar for @hiddenmarkov
Bogdan Kulynych 🇺🇦 @hiddenmarkov
New (to me) dimension of crowdwork platforms: Russian military uses Premise microtasking platform to aim and calibrate fire during their invasion of Ukraine. Example tasks are to locate ports, medical facilities, bridges, explosion craters. Paying ¢0.25 to $3.25 a task.
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11:21 PM ∙ Feb 25, 2022
4,649Likes2,174Retweets

Fake news that looks like real news, here you go

Twitter avatar for @IAPonomarenko
Illia Ponomarenko @IAPonomarenko
BREAKING: It’s official - 🇺🇦 Snake Island sailors are alive, Navy confirms. They were taken prisoner by Russia.
11:59 AM ∙ Feb 28, 2022
25,904Likes5,164Retweets

Cryptocurrency speculation, here you go

Twitter avatar for @alexstamos
Alex Stamos @alexstamos
Legitimate cryptocurrency companies need to be planning right now for what happens if Russia gets kicked off of SWIFT and turns to BTC and other, less monitored coins to prop up their economy and sell oil.
5:12 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2022
3,902Likes694Retweets

The Neo of the Ukrainian Matrix: here you go

Twitter avatar for @mrsorokaa
Oleksiy Sorokin @mrsorokaa
President, his Chief of Staff, the Prime Minister, head of the Servant of the People are all in Kyiv. We will win! 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
5:17 PM ∙ Feb 25, 2022
124,814Likes17,750Retweets

Snark: here you go

Twitter avatar for @jathansadowski
Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski
Instead of selling war bonds, Ukraine has a golden opportunity to mint NFTs of unique and important moments in the conflict. Selling these NFTs will fund defense while generating community. WW3 will be Web3 native. The winner will embrace the power of decentralized networks.
7:52 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2022
6,487Likes458Retweets

All of these sources are coming together because of a major world event. The energy unleashed by that event is:

  1. precipitating investments of time, energy and money by millions of big and small actors; which in turn is

  2. leading to a densely interconnected network of individuals and institutions who are creating a collective reality on the fly.

It as if Elon Musk had said, I’ll hand over $100 billion of my fortune to anyone who wants to create a worldwide metaverse with first person shooter games, real time location tracking and mapping, massive money flows, a select group of elite players and hundreds of millions of extras, and Putin had raised his hand and said: I got this.

The ongoing war is the hand-crafted prototype that will be broken down into chunks and repurposed for everyday experiences.

The Ukraine war is like the moon landing for the Metaverse: the massive (if unplanned) investment out which arise many smaller outcomes.

What’s missing in this picture is the second by second surveillance of every single object and action that’s essential to a full blown Metaverse. For that, you will have to travel from Kyiv to Washington.

Twitter avatar for @nytimestech
NYTimes Tech @nytimestech
We shopped at the most Amazon-ified Whole Foods in the nation. 
nyti.msHere Comes the Full Amazonification of Whole FoodsA newly revamped store in Washington shows how thoroughly Amazon has woven itself into the grocery shopping experience.
8:14 PM ∙ Feb 28, 2022
1Like1Retweet

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Reality Media 9: The Moon Landing for the Metaverse

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