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It feels like I\u2019m on a roller coaster that\u2019s gently climbing before the real<\/em> <\/em>ride begins. I glide into what looks like a cross between the Death Star and the USS Enterprise. A door opens to reveal a circular stage in the middle of a dark metal room. I feel the motion in my stomach and brace myself for whatever might come next, then the haptic feedback function in the controllers sends an anticipatory tingle through my hands before the lights come on and the rapper herself appears in front of me in three dimensions. She launches into her 2020 hit song \u201cBody.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Welcome to the metaverse, where the real and the virtual merge in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wallace (\u201989) is one of COM\u2019s newest hires, an associate professor of the practice who spent the previous three decades in the video game industry. She founded Playmatics, an interactive game studio, in 2009, and was the head of gaming technology and metaverse for the Swiss blockchain company PraSaga. At COM, Wallace will use that experience in the Media Ventures Program<\/a>, where students learn how to develop their ideas into products and businesses that sit at the intersection of media and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wallace confesses that her definition of metaverse might differ from someone else\u2019s. \u201cThere\u2019s little consensus,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s continuously evolving.\u201d To some, the metaverse is an immersive digital world where anything we do in real life will have a virtual equivalent. To others, that\u2019s the stuff of science fiction and the metaverse will exist as isolated experiences, where the overlap of virtual and real worlds makes sense\u2014such as in video games, online shopping or, as I\u2019m learning, virtual concerts. Either way, demand is high for creative, digital-savvy thinkers, and Wallace is helping COM students navigate into this uncertain future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Author Neal Stephenson (CAS\u201981) created and named the first metaverse in his cyberpunk novel Snow Crash<\/em> (Bantam Books, 1992). Avatars populate virtual buildings and streets, socialize, spend digital currency and dodge computer viruses. Despite being a dystopian vision of the future, Stephenson\u2019s novel influenced a generation of coders, gamers and tech entrepreneurs<\/a>\u2014many of whom have devoted their careers to making elements of his fiction into reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirty years later, technology is catching up to Snow Crash<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of his company to Meta<\/a> and placed a huge bet on being able to create a virtual platform that will host the work and play of billions of people. But so far, building that virtual world has cost a lot of very real money while users and investors remain unimpressed<\/a>. A recent study of Decentraland, another metaverse project, revealed that it had as few as 38 active users a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been pretty apparent to me for a long time that things I\u2019ve been working on in the video game industry are extending into other areas.<\/p>Margaret Wallace<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As newcomers struggle to find footing in the metaverse, there is one industry that has thrived: gaming. Every day, millions of people compete, socialize and spend money in immersive video games like Fortnite<\/a><\/em>. In 2020, nearly 28 million people reportedly watched an avatar of rapper Travis Scott perform a virtual Fortnite <\/em>concert<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see how much games impact people, and it really resonates with me,\u201d Wallace says. One of her first jobs was with P.F. Magic, which designed virtual pets. More than two decades later, she says, she still comes across fan sites raving about the product. \u201cIt\u2019s been pretty apparent to me for a long time that things I\u2019ve been working on in the video game industry are extending into other areas.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jodi Luber<\/a>, an associate professor of film and television and associate dean of faculty and student actions, admits she wasn\u2019t paying attention to the metaverse until Facebook\u2019s name change. Now, she says, she feels her students\u2019 excitement about it. \u201cThey\u2019re all digital natives who have grown up with the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The metaverse, says Luber (CGS\u201984, COM\u201986,\u201989), is \u201cthe next iteration of the internet\u2014but what are we going to use it for and how are we going to use it?\u201d Those are the types of questions she brings to her students in the Media Ventures Program, where the goal is to develop the plan for a startup. \u201cYou look for areas where you can innovate. What can you do that\u2019s going to be different, or add value?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The word \u201cmetaverse\u201d doesn\u2019t appear in any of the 2022 Media Ventures projects<\/a>, but here are some of the ideas students came up with: virtual recording studio, remote work and collaboration platform, AI-powered fashion platform and 3D modeling and game development tools. Whether or not those students were thinking about the metaverse, they were very much focused on the future of the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A current Media Ventures student, Sanjana Kumar (\u201921,\u201923), returned to COM because she considers the metaverse to be a solution to a problem she saw in her industry. Kumar, who has worked in television production and who founded Mous Films, a studio focused on sharing authentic Asian stories, was underwhelmed by the \u201cold-school methods\u201d she saw in pre- and postproduction. As a director, she has also struggled to explain her vision to actors and creative teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What if, Kumar thought, she had a virtual world-building tool where she could create a digital version of a set? Art directors would understand what she was looking for, crew members could explore and actors could rehearse in the space, and communicating across cultures and languages would be easier. Even auditions could be held in the virtual set, giving directors a sense of how an actor would interact with the world of the film. Under Wallace\u2019s guidance, Kumar is studying the metaverse. She\u2019s also networking at the BUild Lab<\/a> in hopes of finding a partner to develop a prototype of her tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Technology has come a long way since Margaret Wallace wrote her thesis at COM. \u201cI was really interested in how humans were being replaced and whether people trusted interacting with a machine,\u201d she says. Her topic? Automated teller machines. After graduating, she headed to San Francisco. \u201cI was really excited about the way it was possible to reach, potentially, millions of people through the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anything we do on the internet could have a metaverse equivalent\u2014and, after shifting our lives online during the pandemic, what don\u2019t<\/em> we do on the internet? Shopping for jeans online? Have a virtual twin of yourself try them on and see how they look. Meeting with remote colleagues? That Zoom call could be around a virtual table. Wallace expects complex trainings to occur in virtual worlds. Surgeons, for example, could practice a procedure on a digital twin of their actual patient\u2014or guide a robot through a surgery in a remote hospital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two major technological hurdles remain between the internet of today and the metaverse of tomorrow: widespread adoption of headsets (Apple\u2019s is in the works<\/a>) and networks robust enough to stream extremely high definition video without any lag\u2014so everyone sharing a virtual experience is in sync. Interoperability in the metaverse\u2014the ability for users to seamlessly move between experiences\u2014also remains unresolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Companies are already building products for that future\u2014which brings us back to Megan Thee Stallion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s remarkable about AmazeVR\u2019s first metaverse concert is that although the setting is computer generated, it\u2019s really Megan Thee Stallion in front of me rapping, dancing, then practically brushing my shoulder as she walks off stage. It\u2019s a recording, not a live show\u2014filming and streaming a live performance in 3D will require a few tech breakthroughs\u2014but it\u2019s a glimpse of how immersive and intense a virtual experience can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gohree Kim, AmazeVR\u2019s vice president of marketing, had explained the technology to me a few days earlier. While I viewed the concert at a resolution akin to an HDTV, that\u2019s far smaller than the resolution of their recording\u2014which provides a level of detail indistinguishable from reality. The company spent one day filming Megan Thee Stallion in a studio, but eight months in pre- and postproduction designing the virtual world that surrounds her\u2014the water, the space ship, the floating bubbles that I can reach out and pop with my virtual hand. \u201cIf you don\u2019t do it right, people will throw up,\u201d says Kim (\u201912, Questrom\u201912), who previously worked at LiveNation and was involved in some of the first international K-pop tours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don’t do it right, people will throw up.<\/p>Gohree Kim<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Kim was an early graduate of the Media Ventures Program, where she studied how Microsoft could develop apps to attract customers to its Nokia phones. Now she\u2019s drawing on that training again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn VR, we\u2019re where mobile was 10 years ago\u2014starting to build an ecosystem and building up the user experience,\u201d she says. For AmazeVR, Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s Enter Thee Hottieverse<\/em> concert was a demo of the product they hope to eventually market. In spring 2022, the company <\/strong>rented out movie theaters and sold tickets to the virtual concert, providing headsets to all attendees; they\u2019ve also launched a Meta Quest app where users can view a demo<\/a>. Their ultimate hope, however, is that headsets will become widely adopted, and record labels will license the AmazeVR platform to produce virtual concerts for all of their artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Metaverse\u2019s BU Roots<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Next Internet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nEnter Thee Metaverse<\/h3>\n\n\n\n