IBB: Wandering thoughts after “Wandering Earth 2”

The story this time is inspired by the sequel of a China-made movie I recently saw, “Wandering Earth.” Let the records show that I am astounded by what the movie proposes about the future – humans open to the idea of avoiding extinction on an increasingly hostile Earth environment via the en masse activation of their digital consciousnesses.

The movie suggests that they would not have need for physical bodies, but large powerful super computers uploaded with recordings of their individual minds, would enable them to achieve digital immortality.

Are you all-aghast? Or think it’s a Groovy idea? I just had to share it.

And now on to the other thought that I’d been meaning to pen down since last year, but just never got around to because I thought I would be stating the obvious.

I still think I am stating the obvious thought that is topmost for every profit-oriented organisation. One such is a cloud MNC whose solution architect shared the following thoughts he had generated after speaking to his customers:

• Businesses are uncertain how to realise ROI from AI, much less the metaverse.
• As long as someone pays for it, the possibilities are endless
• As of now, exactly what problem does the metaverse solve?

Before generative AI with text and images (ChatGPT, Bard, MidJourney, and so on) dominated social media news feeds and many conversations, metaverse was THE hot tech topic for a sizeable part of 2022.

The hype seems to be cooling down for this immersive virtual ecosystem of technologies. And it might be accurate to say metaverse, or a future iteration of it, will not emerge till some challenges are sorted out.

I don’t say this just because the biggest metaverse proponent – the social-focused Meta – is scaling back metaverse initiatives and shifting focus towards AI, but heck… we are simply not ready for the metaverse in all of its glory.

As of now, it’s really hard to see the metaverse as anything beyond a utility for gaming and digital trading and NFTs, and whatever else that is catching the attention and pockets of metaverse communities these days.

Yes, several parties were eager to jump on the bandwagon and start large intensive initiatives or kickstart ‘scratch-the-surface work on the metaverse.

After a good many months, these organisations seem to have exhausted their reserves of creativity, resources, and what not. Metaverse technologies have panned out to all it can be currently, until something shifts.

It could be any of these things:

• Maybe technology and connectivity needs to make a few more leapfrogs ahead
• Maybe the generative AI we are so raving about now needs to evolve to integrate with the metaverse ecosystem of technologies
• Maybe policy has to be more conducive for the metaverse to become more pervasive, more friendly, and really STICK
• Maybe consumers need to a longer time to soak in the idea of having virtual personas doing things FOR them, when they can it do as themselves. In the meantime, again, what problem exactly does the metaverse solve?
• Which is the biggest metaverse ecosystem right now that others could fall into? Remember what happened to Meta? Maybe when enough individual ‘metaverses’ agree to work together seamlessly. What’s that magic number? We shall see.

IT BYTES BACK! said: Maybe the metaverse is being all it can be for now. Until something bigger catalyses it.