Between Two Worlds

The world looks like a perfectly edited photograph with them over my eyes.

It filters just enough light to allow me to see colours, which I am otherwise unable to see with my bare eyes.

Although I have had them for at least five years, I still forget that what I see isn’t what someone else, who is not wearing this particular pair, sees. So, while I admire the turquoise water on a clear day, and exclaim, “Gosh! Look at how gorgeous that water looks. The colour is so rich!” “Uh hmm” comes the reply.

I then remember that I’m wearing these glasses, so the green I’m seeing isn’t what friend A is seeing.

So, I hand over the pair for the individual to look through.

Initially I would be puzzled by the difference in colour. It was so stark that I would keep taking off the glasses, looking, and then putting them back on again.

So I turned to a friend one day, a science major, who has a similar pair and asked, “Which one is the real world? How do I know that what I’m seeing through these sunglasses is real? What’s real? Why don’t my bare eyes give me the real picture? So what, does everyone have to wear this brand of sunglasses to get this view?” She shrugged.

“I don’t know. Just enjoy it.” I stared out the window.

This week the National Geographic Channel aired quite a disturbing yet interesting documentary on the metaverse in a series called Year Million. The Year Million series imagines life, as it would be, a million years from now and the metaverse is basically a virtual world that is built to look like the real world.

While this might be a projection of the future, the process has already started. With new technologies that are now available to provide people with an immersive experience, from games to 3D cinema, there is a constant shifting back and forth between what we know as the real world and the virtual world. To an increasing number of people, the virtual world is home, their own real world, a place where, as some of the interviewees say, they can be whoever they want.

One of the central focal points of the metaverse episode is the nature of reality, a theme that films and literature have been exploring for some time - The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Inception and The Matrix to name a few.

Soon enough, the documentary posits, we will be living online.

From 3D cinema and gaming, the next step is, what if, you can plug yourself into a world where you can live virtually? The brain is fooled into believing that it is inside a real world based on the illusory world’s ability to engage all five senses. Essentially the technology blocks out all external reference points, such as with the use of 3D glasses. So in a 3D world where you can traverse countries and cultures, you can live within any space without having to leave your chair.

And best of all, before you die, you can remain alive because although you leave your body, your consciousness – your memories and everything else that made you - can be uploaded into a giant computer.

With this looming possibility of life in a virtual world, (after all submarines and smart watches were science fiction until they did become our reality), it is a space where science and philosophy will have to come together to question the uses and misuses of such ‘progress’. While technology will most certainly open up the world further, how open is open? As I see it this is the proposition: we sit in a chair belonging to the embodied world, disembodied.

What then, is the meaning of life? A series of questions were raised in the Nat Geo episode, deeply philosophical ones, which should be at the centre of such innovations. What does it mean to be human? Am I my mind or my body? “Who am I” essentially, seems to be a central question, one with which many of us haven’t even come to grips as yet, where wars are still being fought over such things like natural resources and cultural supremacy.

One is afraid to think of the possibilities of one’s consciousness uploaded into a giant computer brain where everyone else’s brains are hooked in when we haven’t even solved our basic wars in these “progressive” times. It begs the question, exactly where is progress located? And how does the idea of progress affect the way in w h i c h we will, y e t a g a i n , conceptual i ze life and the act of living?