Right now the metaverse is a popular buzzword. Facebook has changed the name of its parent company to META, and the second release of the popular Oculus Quest 2 has come out with 128 GB. VR is finally going mainstream, and AR is all the talk as well, following closely behind. Smart phones have passed the $1000 USD threshold, 5G has come online, at the same time homeless encampments have sprouted everywhere. Oil executives have finally admitted to congress that climate change is real, and that the use of fossil fuels are the main culprit.
Meanwhile, there is a chip shortage, and COVID is still mutating. That’s the world of now, as I write these words. However, that’s not what I want to show you or tell you. I want to describe the world of tomorrow, or at least what it possibly can be, and maybe a little of how we all can get there together.
Let’s get technical. Technical, I want to get technical . . . let me hear your brain think! Substitution words for the popular song, “Physical”, Olivia Newton John.
The killer app of the internet is the browser. It exists in nearly every device with a large enough screen, in some form or another. It has evolved to include extremely important standards such as WebXR, and WebRTC. Despite what some may say or think, “It has the technological potential to build the Metaverse”, a layer of virtual and augmented reality (Mixed Reality too) onto the internet.
Hardware devices will continue to decrease in size, weight, and price, until as many people have them as have smart phones today. The mouse will seem archaic, and people will consider the z-axis more for a variety of new applications that are non-2D. A more sustainable version of the blockchain will be everywhere, for everything.
I’m going to even wildly predict that the app stores will be much less popular than they are today. I mean, when was the last time you where able to find anything on one of them, really? And even if you could, how many apps downloaded into your phone do you actually use daily?
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will come about, but homes will have edge AI built into their Alexa’s, Hey Google’s and Siri’s. And finally, you will be able to customize their names to anything you want. SAL 9000 will operate privately from the cloud, if we so choose. Giving us truly, unmonitored privacy, at least I hope! In fact, they will be built into these devices we wear, and eventually embedded into our bodies, brains as chips (BCIs), really, really, in the not too distant future.
Turning us all into transhuman cyborgs? I mean, aren’t most of us already? Don’t you have one of those Dick Tracy watches? The ones that tell you to keep on stepping.
Imagine technological telepathy, not mind control. We already have that with our smart devices, more, and more everyday. Programming us to stickily return to the next text messenger, and social media app, constantly throughout the day. Showing us things we should want to buy, because somehow it will make us cooler, sexier, and more fulfilled as individuals. Take a selfie, or a picture of your food! Tweet your thoughts, with trending hash tags. Yeah, right you say! I don’t even have a TV, she or he or they said.
Sorry, I got on a little rant there. I’ll try to control those, or maybe not. The Singularity isn’t here, just yet. So there still is time.
Poetic License
So to wrap things up for the first chapter, I thought I would leave you with my poem “Posthuman” composed over a decade ago, but still very very futuristic.
This poem is deeply personal to me and represents years of work blogging and thinking about humanities possible future. It went along with my science fiction blog at the time, which I wrote under the pen name Michael Blade. It describes only one possible version of a transhumanist future
Posthuman by Michael Blade © 2010
I am Human becoming
A Transhuman to be
My existence transforms itself through multiple substrates
I am flesh of evolved genetics
Technology cyborg robotic
Digital virtual and neural simulation
Networked information itself
Yet I retain sentience through all my transformations
I travel among the stars at the speed of light and now faster still
I am now immortal but not eternal
Not all powerful for I still make mistakes, always learning, always exploring
Time is only a measurement to me, I control my rate of consciousness
I allow myself to feel happiness, sorrow and compassion
Respect for my origins, my emotions, so human basic they are
But I have become so much more now, my mind merges with others like myself
On multiple levels of being we are
On the verge of becoming we are
Making love with thought . . .
Posthuman I have become
I remember showing this poem to Steve Mann, at a Singularity conference in San Francisco at which he performed on his hydraulophone. He said he liked it, and it could become lyrics for a song. High praise, indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWmiBVndVMY