Gideon Burrows - Your Life In the Metaverse

I magine a world where almost everything you do is online. After breakfast, you pull on a headset and sensory gloves. You check your feed - it contains all your emails, WhatsApp messages, posts, texts, and recorded messages. Only, theres no difference between them. Its just communicating. Most times, the person whos left you a message appears as a video.

Only that video message is from a computerized version of their face. Their avatar. You can see in all the messages and the video, a high definition floating hologram. The messages are from friends and family, some local marketing, some spam messages.

You use your hands to swipe away the trash using your sensory gloves, then settle in for three or four minutes of reading, hearing and viewing messages.

You then record a few messages yourself. Your own avatar will show up when your friends next check in. Thats likely to be right away or in the next few minutes. You send a few email messages yourself, speaking the text, instead of typing. It all appears before you, perfectly spelled. The system recognizes your voice and knows your intonations well enough. It can get a next to perfect version of what you want to say.

The system might even improve what you want to say: adding more emphasis, powerful words and phrases, depending on whether youre messaging your mom, your boss or your childs teacher. It will have learned who these people are and will adjust accordingly.

Now its time to work. Theres a 9 a.m. meeting, and you swipe your hand to enter the virtual chat room. Before you, you see six workmates gathered around the table. Only, youre seeing their avatars. Computer generated versions of your colleagues in their work-mode - clothing and presentation appropriate for your online workspace. Probably not the comedy avatar you use when you meet with your children and friends. You greet your fellow avatars, and go through the latest sales results, or plans for the local council, or the patients you are treating, or the community event you are putting together.

In the center of the table, you can all see a clear image floating. Its a financial graph, perhaps. A proposal for a brand identity. Some designs for a poster. A copy of the local legislation you need to edit.

You discuss it with fellow avatars, and the image is manipulated and edited in real time. Until you and your colleagues are satisfied. You swipe the graphic to your boss, or civil servant, or marketing team. Each of your team prints off a copy of the logo, or poster, or legislation in the real world on their printers at home, or store it on their virtual wall in their home office. If you are designing an object, perhaps youll print a 3D version in the real world. The meeting is over. You sign off.

The online meeting has saved you time, so you take a moment to browse an online toyshop for your daughters birthday. From your home life screen, you select ToysToGo, and virtually enter the shop. Directly before you are toys appropriate to her age. The shop already has a profile of you. It shows you 3D projections of the toys most suitable for your family. No plastics, no fake guns. Yes to dinosaurs, prince and princesses, puzzles and the latest online games.

The virtual shop has already screened out things youve bought before. It wont show you things it knows you dont want to buy or dont have a track record of looking at previously. Though it offers you a search bar, as well as a speak to search function, in case you want to explore deeper into the shop.

You call for soccer. An entire shelf of soccer related toys hurtles towards you in 3D. You swipe a kids soccer shirt. It appears already in your daughters size. A matching pair of shorts appear, though you didnt request them. Both go into a virtual shopping basket. An avatar (of a race and gender an algorithm has decided is most likely to ensure you complete the transaction) smiles as money is taken from your account in Metacoin. They thank you for your business today. You swipe one of five hovering buttons to say how satisfied you are with your shop.

Ten minutes have gone by, and you swipe back into your office. Theres a report to write, and numerous feeds to respond to. Virtual meetings to prepare for. Its going to be a busy day, so you decide to pre-order your lunch. You pull up your companys menu and a cabinet of 3D versions of the dishes on offer appear. You select what you want by swiping them onto a virtual tray and set the time you want it to be delivered in the real world by bicycle courier.

During the day, the system youre using reminds you to take screen breaks. It lets you know when your heartbeat is too high or your blood pressure is too low, or your sugar levels are awry. It already knows youre short on your medication. A feed appears in the afternoon from the avatar of your online pharmacist asking you to approve re-issue of the drugs.

Your drugs will be delivered with your next weekly shop delivery. You will be reminded tonight about your shopping before the final list is created. All your usual grocery items will appear on a virtual shelf before you. If you turn your head, you will see other items. Things you have bought before. You can swipe items onto your shopping list, or off them, and they will move across visually, the cost in Metacoin changing in real time.

You can choose new items, using the voice or text search box youre familiar with from the toy shop. You exit the virtual shop and your Metacoin is charged automatically. The goods will be delivered by a zero-emissions electric vehicle. Its five years since you had your own car.

After lunch, you virtually visit the gym for a half an hour session of cardio work. Among other avatars youve come to know - all at the same level as you - you do crouches, press ups, leg stretches, jumping jacks. Your coach, which is the avatar of a real life coach in his own studio, sees your avatars movements and he is able to offer advice.

Work is over by mid-afternoon. Time to see the kids. Theyve been in the room next door. In their own virtual classrooms, in their own virtual schools. Their teachers have been delivering real time lessons, and your children have been typing in the air, swiping, putting up their hands, and speaking out loud to their teachers. Inside their headsets, their own school avatars have been in class with those of their fellow pupils. Your son says the best lesson today was music, where he played virtual guitar.

You have an offline family meal together, and your older child asks if he can meet online with his friends afterwards. He goes into his room, pulls on his headset, selects his social avatar, and is gone for an hour. Your daughter pulls on her own headset and visits the virtual library, swiping between books - appropriate for her age, her reading level, and according to the rules you have virtually discussed with the online librarian (an automated bot, this time, rather than a real person). No romance; no guns; mild bad language permitted. Fact and fiction allowed, especially soccer and books on a reading list set by her schoolteacher.

Your daughter downloads the book she wants and sits on her bed as she virtually flips through the pages, her hands swinging in the air. While she reads, other anonymized readers of the same book are leaving voice, avatar, and text messages, discussing the book in real time. Your daughter responds to a few. The whole chat is monitored remotely by the system, to ensure language is measured and fair, and any spam is immediately deleted.