From Zoom to the Metaverse: we have started building our extended human interface. p1:3
The expression “profile picture” is very web 2.0 (sound old, yah?)
When have we started to build our extended identity?
It was a short step from the profile photo to the customized zoom/team background. Just as our profile photo represents us -mostly statically- to our colleagues, our video call background extended our profile, creating an entire imaginario.
Yes, knowingly or not, the real or digital background behind our shoulders played a role. Our interlocutors watched it and learned from it. We were talking, and we communicated something: an imaginary world: An extended interface of us, built to interact with the others.
The Zoom’s bravest added a twist using Snapcam’s real-time effects. These FX modify both person and the background. Snapcam can transform people into a fully digital marionette, hack the background, add virtual puppets, and make everything looks like Christmas, Halloween, etc.
Now…
What happens if we broaden the background of our video calls and step into it? Can we bring/blend our identity into it? Is this our closer gate to the metaverse everybody is talking about? Is it fair to have a job interview and add digital detail to our background or edit the eye color?
Where is the border -if any- between a video call we felt as physical and a virtual stage where to perform?
Is the background we chosen for our video calls the first digital brick of a personal “metaverse” that extends our identity or -at least- extends the interface we want to project to the others?
What will we need next? Real-time makeup? Colored hair? A virtual home? Flying virtual post-its? AI-generated soundtrack?
More questions, and a few tentative answers here:
> Avatar as extended human interface. p2:3
