Avatar as an extended human interface. 3:3
This is the third part of a story, so it should work better having read or listened to the earlier episodes (01, 02, 03), but to briefly recap what we need today: we are assuming that it is acceptable to modify how you look in a videoconference while at work. It’s not cheating. It’s a job, and you modify what is needed to survive. The company is happy because of your performance, and you are not cheating because they pay you for your undertaking.
She/them is Aech. In Ready Player One, Aech is my favorite character. She is strong and bright: Aech is just too big to hide.
“Aech doesn’t want to be judged in any way. She doesn’t want to question why she’s such a great mechanic and why she’s so good at the games.”
Maybe, today, we are not yet ready to welcome a co-worker that never shows up with its real aspect. #nofilters.
We have fully remote work today, and fast-forwarding to the future, we will have a fully on-metaverse job, where showing up as the Hulk (or whatever you like to be) will be culturally acceptable or either preferred.
Would you feel embarrassed if somebody shows their avatar in a full human-sized projection on the wall instead of a video call? Or with a holographic projector?
Today, we might feel uncomfortable having a video meeting with a colleague we have never met in person who looks like Aech. But you know what? It depends a lot on the environment too.
These are a few recent pictures of my office in San Francisco, CA.
We can virtually create any kind of interactive door to any metaverse, blending the physical space with a walkable VR and AR.
Why should I feel uncomfortable being a part of a Viking co-workers team in an office like that?
…and please do not argue that I can be a Viking in the office while I cannot do it remotely. :D
So, again, where are the impassable borders, if any?
My 2 cents? There aren’t.
As an extension of today’s inclusivity and pro-diversity habits and rules, we will probably embrace a policy for people with digital enhancements.
In fact, why should we consider any physical add-on -from a wheelchair to hearing aids- that a colleague needs at work and not a real-time software translator? So, where exactly should the limit be?
Embracing digital extensions means fully embracing the person with the digital devices he/she/them uses to extend our intelligence, senses, memory, etc. Do not close the door to anything the person likes to bring in.
Now, it’s time to connect the dots and see the complete picture.
Digital offshoots like a car, a gorgeous villa, or a drone- designed to expose our identity, are personal digital artifacts we build to propagate ourselves in a given context. — That’s an extended interface.
In the Metaverse age, these interfaces are even more powerful.
Future augmented reality projects could allow people to show digital auras, and each of us could have a different aura and choose what to share. Maybe a list of our “likes,” a series of images representing our core values, or anything specific for the moment we are living.
We cannot wear two interfaces while walking in a public physical space, and whatever interface we present to interact with the world will be visible to anybody in the same way.
In the Metaverse’s age, we could behave differently:
Our interface can be fluid and behave differently according to specific algorithms we set. Moreover, our interface can be visualized differently by the people we interact with.
In this sense, we could walk in a public physical space, showing different interfaces to the various people we meet. These interfaces will not be physical but digital, and not represented in the public space but visualized in the glasses of the people we meet. No other users will always be able to see it, and it will not be necessary to enter any virtual world: Our extended interface will be projected on the glasses of our interlocutors.
Everybody will probably develop multiple digital versions of himself.
Some are more private, and some are neutral to protect our privacy or take a break from the other version of us: an influencer, a mistress, or a cat.
Can you imagine a world where co-browsing of our digital souls will become standard practice? Can this digital aura, or extended interface, represent our soul? What if the image we create to extend ourselves to the world will diverge from our deep identity, eventually reshaping it from the outside in?
Walk hand by hand in the other digital self: Is this the new DIGITAL INTIMACY?
Maybe somebody will get lost acting in a diverse role according to the context, but I am still optimistic. I feel that generations who grew up with video games, cameras everywhere, and immersive technologies at their fingertips, will quickly adapt and take advantage of the new powers.
My generation rewrote its brain operative system multiple times. The next generation will feel normal to be in a constant re-design and evolution of the self.
Three more things.
1. Avatar portability is the most critical piece of the technology path for a desirable metaverse’s age.
I am impressed by Adam Varga’s interoperable avatars for virtual worlds and augmented reality. He wrote:
I recorded some videos to demonstrate the avatar interoperability across different platforms, games and AR/VR: my avatar is showing his cyberpunk apartment in VR, exploring an NFT art-world on desktop, fighting in a video game and taking a stroll in the real Tokyo in AR.
These examples are made possible by VRM, an interoperable, gltf-based humanoid avatar format developed by the Japanese XR community. The VRM format is a perfect example for what kind of cross-platform standards we need for a truly open metaverse. | Reddit
2. According to my friend and venerable MIT prof David Rose, augmented reality can really become a human superpower.
This chart, from David Rose’s (MIT) Supersight book, it’s enlightenment and makes it easy to understand how we should leverage A.R. for good, allowing people to visit different a place while “seeing” other moments in time, or empowering them to see super macro or super micro.
Note: No academic study or book or movie has shown the potential of AR in walking a physical space while seeing a different time, like this MARVEL movie intro. at the contrary, we should repudiate to weaponize A.R., like in “Men Against Fire.” (Black Mirror)
3. Is there anything actually new out there?
About 12/13 years ago I was working on the concept of embodiment. Embodiment is when -in a product or service- the physical and digital parts are colliding until being completely overlapped or fused. During that time I led a project in which a virtual assistant (a piece of software with a cabled intelligence) had its full body look’n feel. We installed this VA in various companies for troubleshooting or simple phone calls routing, pushing the idea that “she” -the VA- was a colleague. After a while we started to organize meetings in the “metaverse” (SecondLife) where an avatar that was looking and behaving exactly like the VA, met other avatars used by human colleagues. While in SecondLife, the VA was interpreted by a human, and the effect of these worlds colliding were a great learning.
Mixed reality SL and embodiment were a thing, I often organized hybrid events.
Later, slowly, the hype disappeared. People’s attention span was mostly fragmented by social media, and that level of metaverse -as a “place” not wired with socials network and requesting the full focus- barely survived.
We should not confuse new technologies with their actual adoption.
In the HCI, the complexity stands on the humans’ side, and until the users will be the measure of success, how they behave, their emerging habits, and social attitudes will make the difference.
Conclusions
- Dystopias are dangerously close. We must stay awake and vigilant, protecting our critical thinking. “San Junipero’’ is probably the most optimistic of other Black Mirror episodes. A single exception (including euthanasy) is the counterpart of many other terrible dystopias. A potent reminder that the future must be imagined, prototyped, and developed to fulfill desirability requirements.
Like a giant UCD project. The future is just too relevant and the complexity too high to be left in the hands of random evolutionary experiments or pretend to be lucky and land a desirable one. - Whatever is the mask you might wear or far you can go, the reality will knock on your door.
- The Metaverse is mostly a time, and not necessarily a place.
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All three episodes links: (01, 02, 03)
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The Black Mirror mentions:
“Men Against Fire” is an episode of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. The episode is about soldiers who hunt humanoid mutants known as roaches. Each soldier has a neural implant called MASS that provides data via augmented reality. “Stripe” Koinange and “Hunter” Raiman are squadmates in a military that hunts roaches -pale, snarling, humanoid monsters with sharp teeth. After a malfunction of his MASS, a neural implant, he discovers that these “roaches” are ordinary human beings. The title of the episode comes from Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall’s book Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947), wherein Marshall claims that during World War II, over 70% of soldiers did not fire their rifles, even under immediate threat, and most of those who fired aimed above the enemy’s head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire
San Junipero” is a two Emmy Awards winning episode of the science fiction series Black Mirror. The episode is set in a beach resort town named San Junipero. San Junipero is revealed to be a simulated reality (VR open world) where the deceased can live and the elderly can visit, all inhabiting their younger selves’ bodies in a time of their choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
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Thank you to my NTT Disruption colleagues, and in particular to Diego and Gian Pablo (they are in the pictures too).
