Sell Your Farts in the Metaverse — and Other Experiences Coming That Might Slide Out
Kids say the silliest, yet brilliant things.
This morning I was on a path to writing a serious article summary and opinion piece on the 3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities research paper from June 2013.
But like any typical work from home day, there’s a couple of mini-me’s hanging around begging to play Roblox or build an app after their homework and chores.
Little did I know, this day would be filled with fart jokes and lots of laughs that helped me think about one of the most interesting forms of content that is a pillar of the internet.
I’m talking about memes, here folks.
Is it possible to have memes in virtual 3D spaces?
What will a meme look like in the Metaverse?
How will they live up to the transcendent qualities of Internet memes?
Well, I’m not quite sure yet.
But here’s a start.
This is an NFT that I’m eyeing to get my hands on. Super sweet chubbiwhal from the Chubbiverse team. Shout out to my girl, String for founding such a delightful NFT project.
My eldest daughter, 10, is just in love with these NFTs and she gets it. Made her own batch of NFTs already. As a hardcore Robloxer, she understands the value of digital items. Trading, collecting and the bragging rights that go with them.
She suggested an idea for a game we should make that would be a lot of fun. In my opinion, this game is a perfect example on the blending of physical and digital worlds.
The game is….
Are you ready for this?
Fart Rockets: People record their farts in real life, upload to the game & depending on the quality of the sound and laughs other players have it makes your avatar go higher. Trade, buy & sell farts to help you get to the top!
Now this probably doesn’t have the gas to go very far but I started thinking about some of the issues behind scalability of the Metaverse that are being addressed today.
There’s no doubt, 5G networks will improve mobile networking speeds. The accelerating speeds are paramount to support the Metaverse.
However, it’s the network effects that take place when all of the participants in the network are able to share real-time data that will bring some of the most interesting applications. Kind of like getting your friends together to eat some beans before you play fart rockets.
Another issue behind building the Metaverse is realism.
How are we ever going to help people feel fully immersed in an alternative realm?
Technologies and techniques for improving immersive realism, especially for the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, continue to evolve independently. Bringing these developments into the Metaverse is typically a phase behind innovations in these other contexts due to the additional requirement for bidirectional information flow (i.e., input and output) and real-time performance.
Now there is work we must achieve either concurrent input/output capability or real-time performance, or both, in order to achieve a useful role in virtual world applications. Plus, developments for all senses must be integrated to form a cohesive immersive whole, decorated by the challenge presented by this magical gap. Getting to the other side of this gap serves as an endpoint for us because of the greater impact that psychological engagement has on virtual world realism more than it does for visual effects or computer games.
This isn’t a matter of will farts smell in the Metaverse, but when?
Our third issue around building the Metaverse is ubiquity. There are a couple aspects here.
The first aspect of ubiquity — ubiquitous availability and access to virtual worlds — rides on the crest of developments in ubiquitous computing in general. We have progressed here. Access to virtual worlds has begun to move beyond stationary computers to laptops, tablets, mobile devices, and augmented reality glasses, haptic gloves/suits and VR headsets. In addition, the evolution of Web browsers from static document viewers into programmable 3D engines in their own right can potentially reduce the barrier to entry into a virtual world environment to a single addressable link, without requiring time-consuming software installation.
The second aspect — ubiquitous identity or manifest persona — has emerged as multiple avenues of digital expression are already widespread. These artifacts extrapolate naturally into virtual world artifacts, such as virtual clothing, objects, and buildings, but currently suffer from organisation across multiple user accounts and information hubs that integrate only incidentally through the individual or individuals who know the usernames and passwords to each of these.
Will the Metaverse allow someone like my mom who runs around saying “what the hell is my password?” to flow in and out with ease?
Progress in ubiquitous availability and access to virtual worlds may very well take care of itself, as the increasing power, diversity, and availability of general computing devices as well as the capabilities of browser-based implementations continue to advance. As long as virtual world developments move alongside general ubicomp developments, moving in and out of the Metaverse may become as convenient and fluid as browsing the internet as it is today.
On the flip side, achieving ubiquitous identity will require more concerted and coordinated effort, both technologically and socially/politically, to allow one’s information to flow more freely among various digital real estate. Social networks are beginning to move in this direction though have not fully reached it yet, and virtual worlds must follow suit in this area.
It is also possible that virtual worlds may take a leadership position in this regard because virtual world artifacts may be more closely linked to one’s digital persona due to the immersive environment (and therefore may motivate progress in this area more than social networks or blog/community sites can).
The fourth challenge is interoperability. Interoperability in virtual worlds currently exists as a loosely connected collection of information, format, and data standards, most of which focus on the transfer of 3D models/objects across virtual world environments. Virtual world interoperability is not solely limited to 3D object transfer: true interoperability also involves communication protocol, locator, identity, and currency standards all which are coming to life with blockchain technology.
The widespread adoption of standards in any area of computing is brought together with much work, collaboration, and advocacy, where the most difficult barriers may not actually be technological or computational but social or political. The wide-ranging requirements and scope of digital assets involved in virtual worlds have the potential of making the Metaverse the “killer app” that finally leads the charge toward seamless interoperability.
Finally, continued improvement in hardware performance, as reflected in Moore’s law and Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns promotes confidence that sufficient computing efficiency will be available to achieve real-time performance of any computable function related to the operation of virtual worlds.
In sum, top-down forces (the priority focus of scientific and governmental institutions), bottom-up pressures stemming from expanding popular interest in immersive digital environments, and continued advances in hardware capacity and performance all contribute to positive expectations for progress in achieving a fully-realized Metaverse.
Now please excuse me.
I gotta fart.
Thank the gods! I have my Fart Rocket pants on to collect this so I can beat the kids tonight.
If we build it, will they come?
If you think there is a possibility, I would like to invite you to the 5G Catalyst Summit on 29 Nov — 3 Dec. This is a FREE weeklong summit for anyone interested in piloting, launching & commercialising 5G enabled AR, VR, XR & Metaverse solutions.
Speaking at the summit is Tano Bevacqua. He is founder of MUSURE world, an NFT play-to-earn Metaverse where Creators and Players own the economy through digital properties, daily quests & immersive parties.
Join us!
