Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the Metaverse and tools of this type, these should serve us and not us to them. The Metaverse is a tool that is in full development and that many think that it could become our new reality.

What is the Metaverse?

We talked to Andoni Martín, Ironchip's product manager. He is a fan of the metaverse and cyberspace, so he gave us his opinion on the subject. 

Andoni says: "The current reality of most people is already framed within a sort of Metaverse in which digital life and physical life intertwine in a fluid way. The term cyberspace began to soften and came to denote a kinder, more human context. This softening occurred at the same time that a people-oriented, people-created virtual space was actually being born in the world outside of literature.

In my view, the term "cyberspace" evoked just that, a safe, virtual space where one went to explore and where one usually ended up encountering welcoming people and communities aligned with one's personal interests. The Metaverse will not be part of our daily lives; however, cyberspace is already part of our lives, and it doesn't look like it will disappear any time soon.

Finally we, as people, have to watch over the use of our tools, so that they serve us and not us them. As a simile, which industries call people users? The technological ones, drug trafficking, and, in Spain, public healthcare (although it coexists with the term "patient" )."

Finally, Ironchip's product manager comments: "Those of us who have been in cyberspace for a while still remember the times when we felt we had two distinct identities, i.e. a physical and a virtual one. Both identities coexisted but generally did not intrude on each other. You were known by two names - minimum - and you felt equally identified with both identities, the only difference, the context and, importantly, the anonymity that living behind a keyboard provided."

One factor that had an impact on this fact may lie in the fact that the network of networks did not have such an extensive penetration in society as it has now, the ubiquity of the Internet is undoubted today. Another plausible factor lies in the assumption by all inhabitants of cyberspace that giving out your real identity over the Internet was at the very least dubious if not outright dangerous. Ordinary, non-computerized people thought of cyberspace as a hostile environment, full of hackers eager to exploit any chink in your being.

As the penetration of the Internet has been spreading, companies of all kinds have been joining the network: first communication companies, then banking companies, then online commerce platforms and, nowadays, the misnamed "social networks". It is at this point that people begin to use their real identity, and not their virtual identity, to make use of the tools that these companies have made available to their users, causing this intrusion of the real and virtual identity of a person.

The future of metaverse

What are the risks involved in the development of this new reality?

The risks involved in this intrusion of a person's identity between the physical and virtual space are well known: Commodification of our identity (data markets), identity theft, extortion, alienation in our social relations, money theft, etc...

In addition to the risks of operating in cyberspace as we know it today, there are also the risks of a single company controlling all aspects of our online identity. These risks would mainly concern the freedom to associate freely in secure spaces, the censorship that would result from the policies that these companies impose on their users, the risk of exclusion that would result for a person not to be admitted to this Metaverse (due to financial resources or the arbitrary decision of the platform that controls the Metaverse).

In short, we would be talking about the Metaverse increasing the risks currently present on the Internet through the imposition of a single set of rules and a monopolistic operating framework.

For cyberspace or Metaverse to be a positive space for people, it is they who have to build it and not the companies with their spurious interests. If in these virtual spaces people are understood as users, then the risks and implications of our virtual presence tip the balance against us and make these tools useful in the hands of our own destruction as individuals.