The embodied internet is Web 3.0
Meta (the artist previously known as Facebook) currently proposes a seemingly clunky VR experience that relies entirely on tricking your optic nerves into "seeing" depth perception in a world displayed on a flat screen hanging an inch in front of your nose.
This means to truly have an all encompassing VR experience, the user will require not just optic nerve stimulation but also olfactory stimulation through the nose, acoustic stimulation through the ears, full body haptic feedback for the skin, and the ability for the users physical body in the physical universe to move (i.e. run on a treadmill, aim a weapon, etc.) so that their metaverse avatar will respond accordingly (think Steven Spielberg’s characters in the dystopian “Ready Player One”).
The user requires an enormous amount of equipment, seeming more similar to a medieval knight in full battle attire than a user casually plugging into their virtual life(ves).
Let’s call this particular option to experience virtual reality the “Embodied Internet”. Is this really a step change or just a cell phone strapped to my face? Does this really make me in any sort of metaverse?
Web 4.0 will be Bodiless
Enter the Brain-Machine Interface (BMI)/ Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). A BMI is a direct communication pathway between external devices and the electrical signals of the brain.
This is the central technology behind Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. Thus far, Neuralink seems to be the only actual metaverse CAPABLE company.
Instead of strapping up like Scuba Steve, Neuralink could offer the ethereal capability of giving the user the ability to effortlessly navigate virtual reality and the internet as a bodiless, INTELLIGENT, and dreamlike experience. Guided imagination is the ultimate Virtual Reality. Neuralink technology does not require any external equipment for consistent physical stimulation of sensory organs; currently an experience that delivers information with varying levels of accuracy and granularity, through worn-on-the-body devices.
Compare the body worn VR experience to a Neuralink like BMI with micron-scale threads that are inserted into areas of the brain that control movement, feeling, vision, etc. While external based VR hardware is bulky and awkward, BMI VR hardware is small - essentially imperceptible to both the user and observers of the user. These BMIs will be able to stimulate the precise areas and voltages of a user’s brain synapses to internally project both individual and networked / socially merged virtual worlds of currently unimaginable detail, scope, and complexity.
The closest parallel may be to imagine the experience of a lucid dream, or dreams, where you can manipulate a limitless universe across endless space and time, at will...aka, Metaverse(s).
Not only will BMIs offer the ability to enjoy virtual worlds, they will also allow your conscious mind to instantaneously search and retrieve information from public, or private, internet databases. BMIs will truly augment the user’s reality in ways more similar to The Matrix than today’s Oculus based VR systems that are essentially View-Masters on a helmet. BMIs will provide a user experience that seamlessly integrates with human’s physical reality and biology.
Implications for the future
Will the Haves who receive the first successful, and likely expensive, BMIs radically surpass the intellectual and productive capabilities of the Have Nots who cannot yet afford to upgrade to a BMI and the Will Nots who refuse to “upgrade” on moral / religious grounds?
From a user experience and productivity* perspective, BMIs may alter the course of human evolution as we know it. If we do not currently live in a simulation, the not so distant future may allow it**.
*Tests and professional examinations as we know it could be eliminated and replaced instead with a dynamic market of database products to upload to your BMI. These products, like computer programs, will be sold with the working and specific knowledge needed to perform a trade or service in the physical world, or to perform a trade or service in a virtual world, or a program/virus to hire/hack into other BMIs and use/hijack the computational power of multiple linked brains/BMIs; all while projecting comfortable “dreams” for the hired/hijacked users.
**With the mass adoption of Neuralink type devices, large portions of the global population may choose to indefinitely remain immersed in their virtual life.