Angelus News | April 8, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 7

demic has forced many sectors that
privileged face-to-face interaction to
embrace virtual communication and
community. As a result, workplaces
have changed the way they carry on
business when people are not able
to meet in person. In many respects,
the pandemic paved the way for it to
be more socially acceptable — and
in some cases, cheaper and more
practical — to “virtually connect.” But
instead of having meetings on Zoom
mediated through a screen, developers
want to create virtual meetings that
“feel” like ones in the real world.
Modern technology has a history
of creating accidental problems,
one Catholic technology
scholar says. “But in this case, it’s
distinctive how deliberate the
developers have been.”
Others predict that industries which
used to rely on in-person meetings or
hands-on training will shift to virtual
and augmented reality.
While this type of technology is
already used in the military, health
care, and law-enforcement fields for
training, forecasters predict that any
industry that requires training on
sophisticated or dangerous equipment
could utilize it.
Others see educational opportunities.
If organizing a field trip is too difficult
or cost-prohibitive, teachers could opt
for a virtual tour. Destinations could
include any place in the world — and
beyond to the solar system.
In lieu of showing students films or
footage of a historical event, educators
could simulate the event itself and
have students “experience” it firsthand.
(That would raise the issue of
interacting with avatars of dead people,
the implications of which have
yet to be considered in full.)
The metaverse is also expected to
create new jobs and industries. Presently,
companies working on building
the metaverse are engaging with engineers,
graphic artists, data scientists,
and hardware developers. But just as
with the dawn of the internet and the
smartphone, new job sectors yet to
be imagined will emerge in its wake.
How they might affect brick-and-mortar
industries and employees serving
real world needs has yet to be seen.
Emerging issues
While the tech companies developing
the metaverse are mostly
focused on gauging market interest
and removing barriers to entry, those
reporting on its development have
already identified ethical, legal, and
social issues ripe for consideration.
In the Meta rollout, Zuckerberg
pointedly said that privacy and
security will have to be built into the
metaverse, but he stopped short of
saying how that would be done.
Jerry Bautista, Ph.D., who had been
leading an augmented reality project
at Intel, told The New York Times,
“We can build amazing things. The
hardware is not the hard part. The
business models are not the hard part.
Finding ways these devices can be
used is not the hard part. The hard
part is: What happens if the data leaks
out?”
Others have concerns about how
addictive social media and screens already
are, and some worry about people
preferring virtual reality so much
that they neglect their real-world
duties and relationships.
“There’s a potential to preferring it to
traditional life,” said Rachel Kowert,
an Ontario, Canada-based psychologist
who has studied the mental health
of gamers.
Social media, gaming, and screen
time already affect juvenile and adolescent
development. “Their primary
learning about how to behave and
engage with the world is through their
peers and social interaction,” Kowert
has said. “It’s a critical component of
how we learn to be people.”
Social scientists have come to the
14 • ANGELUS • April 8, 2022