The Metaverse as Virtual Heterotopia

1 The Metaverse as Virtual Heterotopia David van der Merwe 1 Hogeschool Utrecht, the Netherlands Abstract. William Gibson s quasi-prophetic vision of cyberspace as a consensual hallucination may have predated the commercial inception of the worldwide web by nearly a decade, but given the emergence of online worlds and the blurred Virtual /actual (or phygital ) interface, contemporary social and cultural investigation seems more appropriate than ever. The proliferation of online environments making up the shared Virtual worlds now dubbed the Metaverse is bringing us one step closer to this vision. By applying Foucault s six qualifying requirements of a Heterotopia to this largely ungoverned digital realm, it becomes apparent that the illusory nature of the online environments users inhabit makes them heterotopic in nature.

2 This in turn asks how these non-places should be governed, financed and regulated or indeed whether their Virtual nature precludes them from these real life (RL) constraints. Furthermore, the amount of time and effort invested in these blockchain-powered Metaverse environments and the construction of Virtual identities to inhabit them running the gamut of online social networks, gaming, commerce, blogs or otherwise lends credence to the relative importance of these environments in comparison to RL interactions. The Heideggerian concept of Dasein can subsequently be applied to the Metaverse and its heterotopic nature to question larger concerns at play regarding the essential nature of personhood and relationships within the Metaverse .

3 Keywords: blockchain, Foucault, Dasein, identity, phygital 1. Introduction Is it really a coincidence that both William Gibson s (1984) cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer and the eventual publishing of Michel Foucault s Diacritics article, Of Other Spaces (1986), stem from the same era? The mid-1980s was indeed a special time for imagination, philosophy and technology to mesh and these two disparate, yet still connected results are perfect snapshots of the zeitgeist not reflected in New wave music, neon colored clothing or other stereotypical cultural artifacts of the era. Gibson speaks in his sci-fi noir tale of another layer of reality draped across that which we can see, touch and experience, of an entirely separate realm that limits access to those enhanced or physiologically altered to interface with it.

4 A custom cyberspace deck is required to jack into this so-called consensual hallucination (Gibson, 1984: 6), itself a gateway to another level of human sensory experience. The obvious connection is explicitly made with the science-fiction motion pictures when Gibson dubs this alternate reality (AR) the matrix . Today, however, we are confronted on a daily basis with a similar vision come to fruition in much the same way that many products of science fiction from video calling to wafer-thin handheld tablets to automatically opening doors have inspired real life (RL) product development. Not a day goes by without the majority of the developed world accessing our own shared repository of knowledge and experience, the internet, on some level.

5 And the 1980s, with its third industrial revolution, the so-called digital revolution (Rothkopf, 2012:88-89) of home computing, was the perfect breeding ground for the imagination that spawned this tale as well as the eventual real-world applications we now rely so heavily upon. Currently, we (a collective term for internet and technology users) are experiencing a rapid expansion of the Virtual borders of the cyberspace we have grown so used to. The latest in these is an offline/online interface of a Virtual set of worlds that has been dubbed the Metaverse : a realm wherein information exchange enjoys an even higher value than financial exchange, and offline consumption of goods, services and experiences is matched by the online navigation of the interfaces required to unlock, access and purchase said exchanges (Roh, 2021).

6 Even this appellation is lifted from science fiction - a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash. Metaverse theorist Matthew Ball (2021) defines these worlds as a network of interconnected experiences and applications, devices and products, tools and infrastructure and just as this network employs a variety of emerging technologies to aid and shape its functions, the growing shift towards the smart web powered by blockchain is shaping the Metaverse itself and the safety of its users. The internet may be the foundation stones of the Metaverse , but blockchain enables a network of security instead of vulnerability.

7 Where everyone owns and controls their own data ( , 2021) safeguarding the prodigious amounts of data that power the idealized vision of the Metaverse . Foucault, on the other hand, already had a long history of deep thinking and critical discourse behind him and Of Other Spaces was merely another in a long line of academic musings on the complex relationships between knowledge and power for the French philosopher. Knowledge and power were enacted in equal parts in what Foucault called heterotopias , imagined spaces approaching a near-utopian faced of perfection but still requiring several levels of deeper engagement before access could be given.

8 In identifying that the current age would be the epoch of space (1986: 22) Foucualt s quasi-prophetic words take on new meaning as we see the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) establishing new frontiers within the ungoverned and undefined borders of Virtual space within the cloud. The immediate connection between a cyberspace or even a Metaverse of Virtual worlds unregulated by recognized human governmental authority but still maintained by a strict protocol of rules established between users and owners and Foucault s quasi-utopian space is unmistakable. As such, my goal with this paper is to draw parallels between Foucault s parameters of definition of an heterotopic space and the interfaces required when accessing the Metaverse .

9 Just as Foucault invoked the memory of Galileo, in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space (1986: 23), I find myself imagining similar unrestrained growth across the multiple portals of the Metaverse bordering on Gibson s matrix but much closer to our perceived reality than his romanticized novel could ever envisage. And I am not alone: Jonathan Glick, former New York Times senior editor of Product and Technology separates the Metaverse into two distinct areas: the enactment of the human aspiration to exist in an entirely Virtual space that is in some way better than the real world, as well as the actual set of technologies that can eventually enable this connection between fact and fiction (Glick in Hackl, 2021).

10 While the latter is a far more grounded, pragmatic perspective, the former is as much a product of escapist imagination as that of Gibson or indeed myself. Additionally, the importance attached to interactions within the Metaverse and their RL consequences must be considered. As a product of the Heideggerian concept of Dasein (1962), questions regarding personhood and relationships established in non-physical environments inevitably arise: are these identities and relationships any less real for being Virtual , especially when considered through the perspective of a citizen of the Metaverse ?