“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” (Chiseled on stone at Farley Post Office in NYC). Information delivery is important and has been essential to humans for thousands of years.
My father was a mailman, and he estimated that he walked around the world twice over the many years of carrying his mailbag. My career as a librarian spanned 30 years and I came to realize we were both in the information delivery service!
Information delivery requires discerning priorities. All data is not equal, and we are now drowning in it! AI is rapidly becoming our number one information delivery service provider, which raises the question about how human beings prioritize the value of information and the evolving process of information seeking behavior.
Humans should be able to discern and prioritize information from accurate sources and experts. Humans should not be robbed of the quest for knowledge and the journey through the “snow, rain, hear or gloom of night” to bring it forth!
Just think, for years it has been a federal crime to open mail that is not addressed to you! Yet privacy is now on shaky ground.
While we waited for days for news to arrive in the mail, we now expect answers to come to us instantly and rarely care where those answers came from nor the long history of humans working hard who created those answers. While a letter from one we love touched us deeply in the past, we now simply scroll and delete messages too quickly to bother with any reflection or savoring of the tactility.
I often think of my father’s wisdom even though he is now gone. I’ve never known anyone wiser, yet I had to watch his brain fail the last decade of his life with dementia. The human brain is the most incredible and mysterious thing on our planet. AI can never replicate it.
Here’s a must read title for anyone who wants to understand the metaverse– Making a Metaverse that Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For by Wagner James Au.
In my own personal view, the metaverse is a virtual place not an app. Wagner James Au agrees and he shares Tom Boellstorff’s comment about the metaverse being a place by stating, “And you even see this in English with prepositions, where people say you go on Facebook, but you go in Roblox or Second Life or whatever” (Au, 2023, p. xxiv).
Au’s book gives a thorough examination of the past, present, and future of the metaverse, introduced up front with his definition: “The Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology” (Au, 2023, p. xxiii). I feel that my own definition aligns well with his and the book is rich with information about the many uses of virtual environments.
History of the Metaverse
Au validates my belief that Second Life (SL) is the original metaverse stemming from the “now classic” Neal Stephenson novel Snow Crash. While it is obvious that SL didn’t become widely adopted (as predicted in the early days from 2003-2006), it has survived for over twenty years with dedicated users, albeit mostly over the age of 35. Second Life provided lessons upon which to build a sustainable metaverse platform and Au shares great knowledge of this history, complete with an early days story in the appendix (don’t miss it!) about a revolt against virtual taxes reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party!
His depiction of the ups and downs of Second Life includes amazing stories of artists, musicians, content creators, and close-knit communities from around the world. Having spent years in Second Life and other virtual worlds, Au believes VR headsets are not necessary to experience the metaverse and many educators I work with agree that the metaverse can be experienced on a screen as well as with a headset (which I greatly prefer). The background presented in this book is important for understanding how the metaverse came to be and how it may evolve.
Current Popular Metaverse Platforms
Roblox and Fortnight are current gigantic metaverse virtual worlds with primarily a gaming focus. Some companies (and even politicians) utilize these worlds to advertise or campaign or promote activism. Personally, I have heard concerns and frustration from Second Life colleagues about Facebook changing the platform name to Meta and Au highlights Meta’s failure to become the metaverse with a capital M as he shares an excellent overview of all the current platforms rapidly growing in popularity.
Surprisingly, Au holds the view that interoperability (which has been talked about for years as being essential to the real metaverse) may not be necessary! He argues that it is the communities within virtual environments that need to be able to cross platforms—not the platforms themselves. He tells us that most virtual world users, my colleagues and myself included, use Discord as the connection between virtual worlds. The concept of interoperability as a core element of the metaverse is, according to Au, a myth.
Another myth, which may surprise some people, is that the metaverse is for everyone! Au believes that possibly only one in four individuals find engaging in a metaphor of the world to be an exciting, advantageous experience. He states, “That said, recall that 1 in 10 of the globe’s Internet users, 500 million+ people, are already active users of a metaverse platform” (Au, 2023, p. 201). This leaves room to expand in the future while still allowing choice for users to find communication tools that work for them in particular ways for specific reasons.
What are the reasons to be in the metaverse? There are many! Wagner James Au provides many stories, such as an elderly blues singer, a clothing designer, and a thoughtful artist. Most virtual environments provide opportunities for gaming and socializing (such as VRChat, Roblox, Fortnight, and many others). While Au does mention the potential for education in the metaverse, it is not at the top of this list. This is unsurprising because there is way more money made in the entertainment industry than in the field of education. But research shows that virtual worlds like Minecraft and Second Life have potential for education and the next generation is already struggling with the perils of social media and the “endless scroll”. Rather than “edit their lives” with photo apps and constant posts, young people need to understand digital citizenship (my own passion as a librarian educator) and these skills can be embedded in the metaverse through metaliteracy.
Future of the Metaverse
Those of us who have spent years in the Metaverse (Second Life and other virtual worlds) understand that anything you can imagine can be created there. The memories of experiences and places are real. Yet, reading about “uploading our consciousness” or “potential immortality” can seem downright creepy.
Au’s view of a future metaverse that brings people together and provides positive outcomes for our economy, culture, and planet are positive. Of course, I would include the importance of edifying experiences for our youth and educational content rather than more zombie slaying! Wagner James Au believes that we can learn from the past lessons of metaverse origins toward using virtual environments for best practices. Hopefully, education, reading, bringing history and stories to life, advocating values like empathy, and connecting people through creative and enlightening experiences will all be in the forefront. Ban those griefers!
It’s personal! Each of us gets to set up our personal dashboard on digital devices (computer screens, smartphones, tablets and more) with our own color schemes, favorite apps, and background pics. Students may have the icon for their classroom learning management program, shoppers have their favorite apps to stores, and we all have favorite creative apps, health apps or travel and weather apps.
Personal screen dashboard
So what’s the big dashboard deal?
In the past, prior to the digital age, sources of information were limited. We had few channels of incoming information, such as radio, television and the books. Research meant heading to the library! Now, the library is in our pockets and so are a million apps that we can personally choose.
My personal dashboard is great, right?
Maybe not so great! This personalization of our incoming and outgoing information (as prosumers: both producers and consumers of content) means that our sources of information are unique and there is no more “shared culture of information”. Each of us lives in our own digital bubble of so-called friends and each of us follows a unique personally chosen never ending stream of information.
And what’s wrong with that? Well, big data companies impact what we see by tracking our preferences, for one thing. If I am seeing completely different information than you are…do we really live in the same world?
Is Confirmation Bias a real concern?
From https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-confirmation-bias-2795024
Our personal dashboards are impacting the way we think. Back when we had limited sources of information there were gatekeepers (librarians, researchers, reporters, historians, etc.) who helped weed out inaccuracies and helped us trust information. That responsibility for evaluation has been handed to each of us- or should I say thrown on us like a ton of bricks since the Internet has millions of pieces of information bombarding us every minute of the day. Unless we are alert and aware, we easily fall into confirmation bias and our dashboards are turned into narrow-focused channels that do not provide opposing views. Our “friends” become our information sources and we choose them because they think like we do. Without critical thinking and the debate between opposing viewpoints, real learning cannot take place.
There’s Still Hope
Being alert and aware of our thinking, of our dashboards, and of our personal responsibility for metaliteracy is essential. If we can embrace that personal responsibility, we have hope for our well-being, for empathy toward others, for valuing the need to listen to other perspectives and for the (dare I say) need for compromise. Social media has the tendency to promote emotionally charged shares, tweets and posts. When we are emotionally involved with viewpoints (often viewpoints we know little about), our chosen ideologies become more important than listening to others. Hope for our future and for the generations to follow us may rest on metaliteracy and the willingness to listen, to agree to disagree and to give our dashboards some real thought. Perhaps hope for the future may even rest on deliberately choosing to pause and reflect, to resist the share button, and even learn how to keep silent.
I was a school librarian when the information hierarchy toppled and print was no longer at the top! Suddenly, my school principal and colleagues looked to me to answer the question “What is happening to information?” And, I became the voice of the school on social media. It was simply dropped in my lap. What kind of information professional would I be if I was not aware of the information channels being used as digital culture emerged?
Often, I have told people how it felt at the turn of the 21st century, when it seemed the floor beneath my feet in the library was shaking! I knew there was no going back and that digital culture would change everything. But, I embraced it and said “Bring it on!” even though I had a distaste for social media and the narcissism of everyone yelling “Look at me!” Much of the content we scroll through is self-serving, unimportant, and rather meaningless. User-generated content sometimes makes me long for the gatekeepers who made authors jump through hoops to get published. Entering a library with stacks of high quality materials gave me a sense of trust in authority and quality that one never finds online. (Sure, there may never have been a “perfect 100% truth” of information, but at least we didn’t have to dig through a pile of nonsense to find a truthful nugget.)
Once Facebook took off, every field seemed to adopt social media as a way to connect us all: business people, educators, long-lost family and special interest groups, for example. And take off it did! Within a decade, Facebook and Twitter impacted the fabric of society and others began to join me in the feeling that it is inherently wrong. Yet, everyone seemed to justify using it because… well, everybody was doing it. Yes, it feels mandated.
A colleague recently told me she deleted all her social media except for LinkedIn and that it feels great. I felt a pang of envy at her bravery to cut it off. But the libraries and groups I work with insist on using social media as the best way to reach out to patrons and provide information easily. Again, it feels mandated.
We’re in a Dilemma
The ME! ME! ME! oversharing of personal information is not the only problem with social media. Data mining uses our information to manipulate our behavior, as pointed out in the Nexflix documentary THE SOCIAL DILEMMA. Our incoming dashboards, unique to each of us, compel us toward personalized ads and a tendency for confirmation bias (following those whose ideas align to our own).
Rather than live in fear, for the past 20 years I have been researching information literacy (and the term metaliteracy which I feel describes it perfectly) with the goal of helping the next generation remain human. I joke that we are all cyborgs and it may be pretty close to the truth. Many young people are aware of the problems encountered on social media and organizations like the Center for Humane Technology are striving to find ways to tackle them. For me, my faith keeps fear away and, without faith, my view of the future would appear dark and dismal. Awareness of the social dilemma which has swept across our planet awakens us to our personal responsibility for metaliteracy.
My recent article in College and Research Libraries News shares the importance of embedding metaliteracy in higher education but, if you really think about it, metaliteracy is for all of us from tiny tots to the elderly. Have you seen little ones accessing fun games and videos (hopefully somewhat educational) on their parents mobile devices? My four year old grandson recently picked up a wrapper from a kids’ treat and said, “Look there’s a QR code. Let’s see what it does on your phone!” His parents are aware of the importance of limiting screen time and provide him with lots of outdoor activities, but there is no escaping digital culture. Yes, literacy has changed and even the youngest among us juggles multiple formats of information as he becomes a prosumer– both consuming and producing digital content.
Augmented Reality apps are available now for toddlers!
Working with elderly people in the library, I am reminded that we all have personal literacy needs. An 85 year old grandmother may want to learn ZOOM or Facetime to connect with family. Choosing which application and which device for communication is part of metaliteracy and the apps keep changing. One elderly woman asked for help setting up her new smart phone and it was her first time using a touch screen device. “Is it me or is this phone really confusing and difficult?” she asked. Learning to swipe up, down and side to side or to gently tap instead of push the screen frustrated her but her phone company told her that the flip phone she had was obsolete and sent her a new model. We have met several times in the library to help her get more comfortable. Metaliteracy includes constant changes in the way we communicate and adapting to changes in digital tools can be uniquely personal for each of us.
Metamodern Students “walk through” Instructional Design
Metaliteracy can be taught in any setting including a virtual world! To help a class of students in Dublin understand their own need for metaliteracy, I “sat on top” of my slides as the students walked through them (which is way less boring than listening to a lecture). Utilizing new digital tools may be fascinating but it requires understanding that metaliteracy is a personal responsibility. Parents, educators, and people of all ages need to think about their changing literacy skills and having conversations about it makes for a good start on becoming metaliterate.
A group of us (librarians and educators at the Community Virtual Library) visited the virtual world of 3rdRock to experience Alice in Wonderland in a 3D immersive environment. Wow! This was not only reading but entering the book!
A librarian at the University of Hawaii created this immersive storybook complete with various scenes from the story with passages of text. Thinking about how children (as well as readers/learners of all ages) will experience literature in the future was a fascinating topic during our tour. Talk about metaliteracy! We enjoyed conversing at the Mad Hatter’s tea party!
While we were fully immersed in the 3D storytelling, we were not wearing virtual reality headsets. Virtual worlds are viewed on a desktop and we believe they are part of virtual reality. Desktop VR allows for many productive tools built into the interface and is less uncomfortable than the “trapped feeling” I get with my VR headset. Of course, as VR evolves, it may become more comfortable. Who knows what the future holds for VR but it may not be ready for young people since research has not been done on how it impacts developing minds. In a virtual world, students could create their own storybook content or develop 3D objects on various subjects. Building in VR currently requires additional programs like Unity or Unreal Engine.
Watching a machinima of our Wonderland virtual field trip does not do is justice! You really need to “be there” inside the story, but this video is meant to archive the event. The group started out in Kitely at the CVL Hypergrid Resource Library and then jumped over to 3rdRock to visit Wonderland as part of the ACRL Virtual World Interest Group which is part of the American Library Association.
This week I presented an overview of my new book Metamodernism and Changing Literacy: Emerging Research and Opportunities for the Virtual World Education Round Table. Educators (and those interested in virtual learning environments) attended as I walked through the 9 book chapters to share an overview.
Walking through the presentation (as avatars) demonstrated new literacy in action! The book merges our philosophical moment with the need for critical thinking about our own literacy. Participants brought thoughtful discussion about the changes in digital culture and how we need to address them at a personal as well as global level.
