Virtual Reality & Blockchains: Towards a more empathetic Society
“At first, I was quietly immersed. Then, I felt a tear well up, blurring the view. Then I was choking back sounds as my wife was next to me reading a book, not realizing I was feeling so overwhelmed. I was a person in a messy apartment in New Jersey, with a virtual reality headset on my weeping face, far removed from Jordan, or Syria.”
Donning Gear VR (a virtual reality head-mounted display), Scott Stein, writer at CNet, explained his experience being immersed in the “Clouds over Sidra” demo. It’s a virtual reality experience that follows a quick walk through the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan for displaced Syrians.
When we look at these experiences, we can see them as as culmination of decades of building immersive & escapist experiences. From film to games and now, the ultime immersion: virtual reality. It’s a space where people are brought to tears: not just from empathising with Syrian refugees but alsomarvelling at the beauty of a space station in “Elite: Dangerous”. To some extent, you can argue that the rise of these momentary “alternate spaces” has had a positive effect on humanity.
It is seen as escapism, but it also has another edge to it… that of creating a meme that we should look at reality, and modify it to fit with the alternate worlds we were a part of. People have been inspired by the sci-fi technolgy in Star Trek. People have learned on how to conduct a community by being a guild leader in World of Warcaft. Each time, these other worlds where memes cultivate, finds it way back to reality. However, these alternate realities, have only been exactly that: alternate ones. It is always tangential to our current reality. I remember being amazed by Eve: Online, a complex MMO where you can be anything: a space trader dealing in commodities trading, or a backstabbing mercenary sent to infiltrate a rival corporation. I would start playing it, and I really enjoyed it, until I realised… the only way I could fully enjoy this experience is if this was my only life. To understand the complexity of it, and to engage fully in it, would mean I had to perform trade-offs. Wouldn’t it be grand, I thought, if that could legitimately be your well-being? I could drop out of high-school and become a leader of a grand galactic space corporation.
Wouldn’t it be grand, I thought, if that could legitimately be your well-being? I could drop out of high-school and become a leader of a grand galactic space corporation!
You still had to some real-life job, and that was what we accepted. In some circumstances, these alternate realities could become our livelihoods. Second Life has a legitimate way to trade the virtual currency in & out of the virtual world. You can build objects for other people to use, own land and rent it out, all earning Linden Dollars, which has a market-based exchange rate. However, it became increasingly restrictive (for fear of money laundering), and for the most part was basically restricted to affluent countries. However, these alternate economies, by virtue of some loopholes (game time is sold as virtual items in the game) accrue a valuation. Early 2014, it was estimated that the Eve: Online universe was worth $18 million. In this regard, you can see that to make this your livelihood is restrictive and propably the domain of very few.
The blockchain can help bring forth these alternate realities as legitimate avenues to “live” in several ways. Using a combination of decentralized finance, property, trade, organisations, artificial intelligence and law, it not only creates a decentralized basis for our current reality, but any other one.
When you look at blockchain technology, it is nowhere near the potential for it to host things like Quake or Doom on it (and maybe never). It’s a basis for “state logic” that’s relevant to decentralize. Even at this early scale, it can have quite profound effects on us and society. When we look at games, we do to some extent imagine them as alternate “pockets” of reality. They do have an impact on real life in more ways than one: some subtle and others more pronounced. What is interesting, and perhaps a culmination of this extrapolation is its effect on current structures of power. Subconsciously, spending more time of one’s life “in” World of Warcraft (for example), versus not, has an impact on how one conducts oneself in real life. If we feel that an alternate reality is better and more desirable, wouldn’t we feel (consciously or unconsciously) that we should expect that in real life? We do see the result of this: guilds forming in World of Warcraft travelling to be at each other’s weddings, forming a wonderful colourful patchwork of people from all over the world. In this instance their ethnical, national or religious identity is not as important as the fact that they share a passion for Azeroth and its denizens.
The author, Benedict Anderson, coined the phrase “imagined communities” that describes the sense of identity we imagine is shared amongst a certain community. It was initially used to describe the rise in nationalism. It’s the idea of saying, although we aren’t an actual community (in the face to face sense), we are “in this together” because we share certain commonalities. I will care for my fellow African, because I am South African. I am a brother to fellow musicians who needs a helping hand in dire times. I will share my couch with a travelling World of Warcraft player because we are both fans (and so forth).
Balaji Srinivisan sketched how communities form based on online interactions and the time in which they have an impact.
For example, having coffee with a person you met online lasts a day, and involves 2 people. eHarmony or Tinder, means 2 people could stay together for 10+ years. That is one extreme: the other is the Arab Spring, that brought together 100k+ people in a very short period of time. What’s interesting is the communities that take shape over 10+ years, that have yet to exist. On that extreme, 100k people that have been brought together for more than 10 years could called a cloud country. Other variations include cloud cities, communities, town and gatherings (for example). The premise remains the same: an online interaction that led to the creation of a community in real life that lasts for a certain amount of time.
Supranational communities have been growing quite extensively, and as shown above, they’ve had their impact. There are however certain factors that undermine their greater potential: 1) inability to decrease systemic weight and 2) any possibility for the cloud community to enact power, make it grow and keep it. “Imagined communities” based on geography has the added benefit of always being at the top of mind of people. Voluntary, online communities don’t have this luxury and thus are more prone to natural decay: it becomes forgotten if the novelty of it is not kept up. It is a bit like Stockholm syndrome (although not quite as harsh): you come to like involuntary communities, because what is the other option? Nation-level “imagined communities” thus have strong systemic weight. It persists on different levels. It is not just one thing, it is multi-faceted. An online community is highly dependent on the implementation that birthed it. For example, if World of Warcraft were to shut down, that community will decay and not persist anymore (over a long time). It is possible for this community to continue to exist by frequenting forums, chat-rooms and other online tools, but the core that kept it going has disappeared. The only thing that keeps these imagined communities going is the relationships that were forged and the idea (or meme) that keeps this imagined community together. If it does not remain top of mind, it goes away. The potential thus of the online communities to enact strong change is thus limited, and not as strong as say, the imagined community of a nation state. What’s important however, is that when the imagined community is thriving, the relationships that exist should be made stronger, so that if & when it kind of starts decaying, there’s still systemic strength for it to retain momentum.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but hear me out here. In these circumstances, these online communities can become a lot more powerful if it incorporates blockchain technology. The reason, is that, when you have the combinations of finance, property, trade, organisational tools, law & so forth at your disposal that does not involve the requirement of current jurisdictions, these online communities can form a much stronger layer.
Blockchain tech will allow people to use services that were previously only delivered by the state. When that deteriorates, and an online community of “My Little Pony” fans can provide mutual benefit for each other without welfare states, it is going to have some pretty profound effects.
Conclusion
This is even more powerful when you consider tools such as virtual reality to create these “cloud countries” in completely different realities. We can live, immerse, be present and thrive in an alternate virtual reality whose state logic is run over a blockchain. There will be thousands of experiments: realities with basic income, realities where there is no property rights, realities where everyone is just a faceless avatar. Anything. And these experiments will rise and die, because they are voluntary. The empowering effect it will have to try different realities, and to see what is the best will hopefully cascade back into real life: where we insist that if virtual reality is a better place to be in, we damn as well need to sort out all the other problems we face in real life. We don’t have to contend with stasis, because there is no other option anymore. Let’s scaffold, build & enact ourselves into different realities, so that hopefully at the end of the day, we can make real life just a little bit better.
It’s going to get very, very interesting. And hopefully lead to a more empathic society.
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I’m, Simon de la Rouviere, the author of “The Blockchain: Mapping the Decentralized Future”. This is an excerpt from this book of which I’m currently writing out in the open on Github. Join the conversation! If you think I”m wrong about this, let me know. If you think you can add to this, pull requests are also welcome!
