“Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.”
—Isaac Asimov, American writer, professor of biochemistry
When scientists seek to understand the truth and the laws that govern the universe we live in, they study the world as it is but do not try to change the world. Can we design a universe that takes the best that exists and make it better? Can we engineer a universe that eliminates the boundaries that restrict us and we live with every day? Can we imagine totally new capabilities and possibilities that do not even exist today in our universe?
In this blog post let us shift to an engineering approach: Build on digital physics but change fundamental boundaries and at the same introduce new possibilities and boundaries to start reconstructing reality by shifting to an engineering approach. Before coming up with a high-level blueprint design, we need to start with defining the requirements for an advanced simulated reality.
Our goal here is not to be fully complete or correct, such a claim would be impossible and unbelievable, but start thinking like engineers and define what agile software developers would call a minimum viable product [Lean Startup, Erik Ries] that allows us to collect the maximum amount of learning with the least effort. SpaceX, the space transportation company by Elon Musk, is adopting the same approach to the development of new technologies. From the start, Elon Musk wanted the SpaceX launch vehicles to be reusable to make space travel economical as a stepping stone to reach Mars [The Elon Musk Post Series — Wait But Why]. As the vertical landing technology did not exist, experimental prototypes were built and flown during 2012 and 2014 to test the idea of propulsive landings and gain experience. After many iterations and failures, the Falcon 9 Flight 20 successfully landed for the first time on a ground pad in Cape Canaveral on 22 December 2015 [Rocket Launch as Cultural Event – The Atlantic]. Since January 2017, SpaceX stopped naming these experimental, indicating they have become a routine procedure. We argue for a similar agile approach to building advanced simulated reality and this book should be seen as a first flight (that will not give such a nice explosion).
1. Run universe
We begin to describe the core simulated reality requirements inspired by digital physics that will define the foundation on which we will build other requirements.
1.1 Everything is information.
Particles, molecules, air, water, land, plants, animals, artificial and human intelligence represented by avatars, cities and civilizations, galaxies, everything the simulation is, is digital and ultimately represented by bits of information.
1.2. Everything is computed and computation is universal.
All that exists in the simulation is computed and the computation itself is computed from previous computations. The simulation is the result of countless iterations or calculations. The simulation must be able run any program, it is a universal computing machine.
1.3 Computation must preserve causality
The computation of the simulated reality must preserve causality to ensure there is an order in events. If cause and effect would not be maintained, the simulation would act irrational and unreal.
1.4 Complexity is an emergent property
Complex behavior is emerging from simple rules that spark variety and mutation. These rules can be at any level in the simulation ranging from the sub-atomic virtual particles to the formation of virtual galaxies or any combination between these levels
1.5 State at any time is a hypergraph
The state of the simulation at any calculation cycle is a hypergraph. Each vertex is a bit of information or a hypergraph in itself. The edges describe how the vertices are interrelated and indicate their properties. Parts of the hypergraph are entangled to give rise to complex atoms, molecules, living entities, and social webs. Present is a hypergraph at different levels of detail. The hypergraph completely and accurately describes the state of the virtual universe.
1.6 Experience is a holographic projection
The full spatial, temporal and multi-modal experience of the simulated universe is a hologram of a lower dimensional model. Our senses, sight, hear, touch, smell and taste are projected from the discrete, dynamic hypergraph and appears to us a continous experience in space and time.
1.7 Observation renders the universe in existence
The simulation does not exist when it is not observed by some entity. The act of observation collapses the possible states the simulation can be in and so it is only when there is consciousness that the universe is rendered into being. Observation is any type of interaction that is allowed in the simulation. This includes the virtual movements of fingers, hands, arms, legs, body or head to press buttons, open doors, walk, move, swim and later also entirely new ways to interact with the simulation.
1.8 Multiple observations can happen simulatenously.
In single player games there is one human player that interacts with the game world and observes the universe. As in multiplayer games, the simulation must support multiple observers that can interact with the simulation at the same time and thereby influence the calculation and next state of the universe.
1.9 All simulated life is an observer
The simulation does not only consists of real people represented by avatars. Any type of artificial or human intelligence can be an observer that affects the future state.
2. Modify universe
As kids we dream of superpowers and imagine the world of our dreams but as adults we have come to terms that we cannot change the laws of nature. Scientist study the world as it is, engineers create the world that has never been [quote: “Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been.” —Theodore von Karman, Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist] so let us examine next which boundaries we want to remove in the universe.
2.1 No speed limit
Observers can move faster than light to travel to distant galaxies like in Star Trek. There might be hope that a so-called Alcumbiere drive may be theoretically not inpossible ( A NASA Warp Drive Could Be a Reality in the Distant Future (interestingengineering.com) ) but we don’t need to wait for such a warp drive to become reality. We can remove the speed limit. We can build virtual houses with rooms on different parts of the world or planets like in the science fiction novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Messages arrives with no delays across the simulated galaxy if we want to.
2.2 Endless space
Observers can create space out of nowhere. We can build rooms that are bigger on the inside than on the outside as the Tardis spaceship and time machine in the British TV series Doctor Who [The TARDIS – The Doctor Who Site ]. There is always sufficient storage space. Quantum fields that create space out of nowhere do not stop at the sub-atomic level but can be extrapolated to the world we experience.
2.3 Zero mass.
The laws of gravity can be controlled by observers. When objects have zero mass, architecture is no longer constrained to the laws of gravity. Buildings and entire cities can be placed in the sky. We can walk in any direction which opens up entirely new ways to think about houses, offices and entertainment.
2.4 Tweaking constants
The universe we live in has parameters that are just right to sustain life. If we can control the speed of light (c) and gravity (G), can we also adjust other physical constants to change the weak or strong nuclear forces or the Planck constant that changes the energy of a photon? By tweaking constants and the laws of the simulation, we can see what happens to the simulated universe and improve our understanding of reality. Physics, biology, chemistry, the simulation allows us to test models and hypotheses that do not require the high energies required by particle accelerators to recreate the earliest moments of the universe. [link]
2.5 Travel in time
One observer or a group of observers may move backward in the simulation to relive a moment, like a TV show you missed and want to watch later, or move forward in the simulation to explore different scenarios and outcomes of a decision you want to make. To preserve causality, a parallel universe must be created for the observer(s) and destroyed, we return to this discussion later in this chapter (section 4)
2.6 Live die repeat
In computer games we can save and load game states. Observers can save and load universe states to return to a specific moment in the universe. Changing the simulation state is a form of time travel and subject to the same causality restrictions as R2.5.
2.7 Super powers
What if we could move objects in the simulation without touching them (telekinese), move the molecules in a room to change the temperature or move the atoms to create a thermonuclear reaction in our simulation (we may want to reinstate this particular boundary)? We can extend observation of the simulation far beyond the virtual movements we discussed in R1.7.
3. Change self
One of the major benefits of virtual reality environments is the ability to feels what it is like to be someone else. VR is the ultimate empathy machine (Chris Milk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine | TED Talk). We can derive the following requirements to fully use this ability:
3.1 Switch person
In games we can choose our persona or avatar and change gender, race and age. In Social media platforms such Snapchat and TikTok we can apply filters to tweak how we look. In true virtual reality environments these abilities will be brought to such a level that we can really experience what it feels like to have a disability or have a different background. This will also force us to introduce new constraints to avoid abuse.
3.2 Switch life
If you ever thought what your cat or dog thinks or what it would be like to fly as a bird, the simulation would give you the ability to see and experience the world through a different lifeform.
3.3 Switch scale
In documentaries about how life emerged on earth or what life on other planets would be like, we often see life is humanized. The aliens in Star Trek looks like humans, life on other exo-planets follows behavior of what we know from our own Earth. In the simulated universe we could experience what it would be like to exist on the chaotic level of sub-atomic particles or experience the slow cosmic changes over long periods on galaxy level, or anything level in between. We could play with different planes of reality, as life as computation may not be where we expect to find it.
3.4. Switch group
Next to switching scale, we could also choose to be multiple observers at the same time so we can experience what it is like to have hive mind intelligence, as a virtual swarm of birds, a network of robots, drones or autonomous vehicles or any other type of distributed intelligence.
4. Control multiverse
The universe in which we live is the only universe we know. If we reconstruct reality we can open up the possibility to live in the multiverse. Strange as this may seem, this is what happens when play games and open the Minecraft of No Man’s Sky universe.
4.1 Switch parallel universe
At any time any observer will participate in a set of universes and human observers must be able to switch between these universes.
4.2 Multiverse presence
Observers can be present in 0 or more universes at the same time. For example, you could be in a simulated universe and at the same time see the events in the real universe in a corner of your field of view or on a virtual device you wear with you.
4.3 Only one master universe
There must be only one objective universe which mirrors our own universe which cannot be deleted and which rules are fixed. This universe protects us from environmental disasters, it is life outside the simulation as seen in the simulation. This universe is the single source of truth that protects observers from fake news, a topic we return to later in this chapter.
4.4 Create and destroy parallel universes.
Observers must be able to create and destroy universes in order to move through time (2.5) and save or load a previous state of the universe (2.6). When the last observes leaves the universe, there is nothing left to observe and the calculation halts.
4.5 Universe boundaries are fixed after creation
To avoid that the laws of a universe and boundaries are constantly changed and lead to irrational situations, the rules and restrictions introduced in sections 2 to the end of this chapter are fixed at the moment when the universe is created.
5. Augment reality
The master universe (4.3) is a representation of what happens in the real world. Reality can be represented, augmented in different ways:
5.1 Virtual input, virtual output
A universe may exist entirely in virtual reality and enable us to interact with the real world through virtual objects. Similarly events received from real world sensors and data sources can be represented in virtual objects that we observe.
5.2 Real input, virtual output
Pilots of modern airplanes rely on digital information that is collected from sensors and computers and presented to them in the cockpit. Today Apple and Google Maps help millions of people daily by combining real traffic input to show traffic jams on the map towards their destination – supporting us to find a better route. When we drive to work in our car, the simulation could even change the natural surroundings to make the daily commute more exciting or change the appearance of your car’s interior or exterior. Augmented reality will extend from the screen of our smartphones and hololenses to fully immersive, multi-sensory experiences.
5.3 Virtual input, real output
Unlike airline pilots, army drone pilots use a virtual representation and remote view of the drone camera to control the direction and speed of (a fleet of) unmanned air vehicles. In a similar way, ASML customer service engineers remotely service lithography machines (Augmented reality to the rescue in the coronavirus – Stories | ASML) using augmented reality saving travel time and cost. The simulation will extend this to rich, multi-sensorial interaction and feedback more like in the Matrix or Avatar but without having your brain plugged in.
6. Personal safety
Sofar we discussed requirements that elimated boundaries and created new possibilities, in the remainder of this chapter I will introduce new restrictions. The first category of limitations is that human observers are not hurt in real life while being in the simulation. Your avantar may be killed in action, but you as observer can never be killed or get seriously injured.
6.1 Prevent physical injuries from simulated experiences
During the siulation observers may feel some level of sensation or even some pain by jumping from a window or being hit by an arrow, but the simulation must prevent experiences to create permanent, irreversible damage to physical health or injuries that require medical attention at any time
6.2 Prevent physical injuries from using input devices
Experiencing virtual reality today for more than 20 minutes leads to eye fatigue and discomfort from wearing a head mounted display in most people. The advanced simulation may use contact lenses and other wearables that are much more comfortable to wear and use for longer periods of times but the advanced simulation must monitor use, warn users when they reach the safety threshold set by indepedent health agencies and actively disconnect users that remain connected.
6.3 Prevent mental injuries from simulated experiences
Physical evidence shows that playing violent games increases arousal and anger of players and increases their skill level. None of this should come as a shock, military has used flight and combat simulations for a long time. Making an avatar perfom violent acts is different in virtual reality than in a computer games due to the higher level of agency and immersion, players reportedly feel bad and negative towards the experience [book: Experience on demand P52.]. The simulation must prevent human observers to experience horrific, violent scenes that may cause or trigger long-term mental damage leading to physical injury or harm.
6.4 Configurable safety parameters
Extra care should be taken for children and teenagers, people with an addication or psychological diseases, and individuals who prefer more safety. The simulation should have configurable safety parameters, especialyl to prevent psychological damage. We return to this topic in section 10.
7. User privacy
The second set of personal boundaries relates to your data and privacy. If you want to experience what it is like to be a soccer player, a rock star, or play out more dark and secret fantasies alone or with your loved ones, the simulation should give you those rich experiences. The greater the expressive freedom provided, the stricter the privacy and data rules need to be in order to prevent abuse of recorded simulated experience. Users should be given the right to be forgotten.
7.1 Protect personal data
The European General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) in place since May 2016 protects personal information within the European Union but also free traffic of information with the European market. The simulation must adhere to the current and future versions of the GDPR standard (7.2 to 7.8).
7.2 Data transparency
The simulation must give transparency about the data it is using or collecting and users must have given permission prior to this and knows what their rights are. At any time the simulation must be able to give an accurate overview of what data is used and collected in an easy to understand and efficient way for the user.
7.3 Data purpose
The simulation must only collect and store data for the clear and lawful purpose agreed by the user. The data purpose can be retracted by the user at any time without any cost or obligation.
7.4 Data collection
The simulation must only collect data that is necessary for the authorized purpose. The simulation should err on the side of not collecting data when there is doubt.
7.5 Data correctness
The personal data must be correct and remain correct. The simulation must not change personal data without the consent of the user.
7.6 Data storage
The personal data must not be stored longer than is necessary for the data purpose. The simulation may keep some data for years or even decades as memories that can be recalled and relived but most data purposes will be short lived like the future VR variants of TikTok movies.
7.7 Data integrity
The personal data must be protected against usage by unauthorized parties, loss or protection. The simulation must ensure personal data remains its confidentiality and integrity. Data maybe distributed to avoid tampering with or unauthorized use.
Powerful metaphors like locks on doors, signs or fences in the real world, must have their virtual conceptual counterparts in the simulation to show other users that certain data or experiences are restricted.
7.8 Data accountability
The governance of the simulation (section 12) must be able to prove that the privacy rules are satisfied at all times.
8. Usability
To ensure equal access and give everybody, young and old, computer literate or not, the possibility to optimally experience the reconstructed reality in the best possible way, the simulation must be easy to learn and use. The best technology become some interweaved in our society that we forget them and have take them for granted because they are effortless to use.
8.1 Natural universe interaction
The simulation becomes natural by copying affordances and social scripts that we know from our everyday lives in the real world. When we see a wooden door, we expect a handle to open it. When we see a lock, we know we need to find a key to open it. When we see a model workshop, we expect to see tools to design and build things. We spent our entire life to learn about these routines and the simulation must refrain from introducing new modes of interaction unless there is no suitable natural alternative. [Norman, Design affordances, Erving Goffman, social scripts]
8.2 Consistent multiverse navigation
The simulation allows observers to switch between parallel universes (section 4) which introduces the requirement for an easy to learn and understand user interface to control this multiverse and its configuration settings. This interface should be consistent in appearance so the user does not have to search to find the controls and learn different user interfaces. To satisfy the natural universe interaction requirement, the appearance could be a personal assistant in the 19th century or a smartphone in the 21st century.
8.3 Exit simulation
The simulation must enable observers to pause or stop the simulation at any given time through a simple exit command. In case of an outside emergency (e.g. fire alarm is triggered) or event (e.g. door bell rings) , the simulation will automatically pause and immediately exit the observer to the real world.
9. Performance
We all have experienced that the quality of video streaming or browsing the web depends on a good internet connection and strong consistent WiFi signal. The demands placed on the performance of the advanced simulation are much higher: Is it Real? Measuring the Effect of Resolution, Latency, Frame rate and Jitter on the Presence of Virtual Entities | Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces .
9.1 Consistent performance at heavy loads
Several thousands to millions of observers need to be able to interact with the simulation at the same time so that popular concerts, e-sports and social media universes can operate consistently at high respond time and resolution (quality), even under heavy loads.
9.2 Low latency
The response time, the time it takes for the simulation to respond to an input event generated by the user, should be under 20 ms to ensure no lag is noticeable when moving in the universe .(PDF) Measuring Latency in Virtual Reality Systems (researchgate.net)
9.3 Low jitter
Aside fast response time, the variation in response time, resolution and frame rate should be well under 20 ms, especially for direct two-way communication. GSMA | Cloud AR/VR Whitepaper – Future Networks
9.3. True immersion resolution
To achieve true immersion for the 5 senses, the simulation needs to operate at the true immersion resolution outlined in chapter 2 at any time for each individual observer.
9.4. True immersion frame rate
Next to the true immersion resolution, the frame rate or how many times per second the experience is updated is important. Perceptual findings have been incorporated into international standards for display ergonomics and there is a belief that a frame rate of 72 Hz for computer displays is sufficient to avoid flicker completely. In a study of Nature, scientists discovered that viewers can distinguish between modulated light and a stable field at up to 500 Hz, much higher than the widely reported rate. [Humans perceive flicker artifacts at 500 Hz | Scientific Reports (nature.com)]. The frame rate of true immersion should therefore also be set at 500 Hz.
9.5 Mean time to repair (MTTR)
Robustness is a second important quality attribute that is related to performance. One measure that is often used is the mean time to repair. For a reconstructed reality in which billions of people participate and conduct their day to day business and spent most of their time,the mean time to repair must be 0. As soon as one universe starts to experience performance drops or memory problems, a target universe must take over the source universe state, similarly as e-commerce and cloud infrastructure companies balance load dynamically over thousands of servers.
10. Social network
In section 7 and 8 we touched upon personal safety and security, but we already saw that different restrictions should be in place for our children, our parents, family and friends and the social networks we are part of.
10.1 Right of sanctuary (home)
A critical requirement is that every person should have the right to a home. When I say home I don’t mean only physical shelter, but also a virtual place where I can feel at home, a sanctuary to exclude myself from the world around me and that cannot be entered, scanned or searched by anyone unless myself or the circle of people I give access to.
When ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence emerged in the late 20th century, early smart home research projects such Georgia Tech ContextAware Home designed and experimented with systems where data never left the home [cobuild99_final.doc (gatech.edu) ]. This is in stark contrast with the smart assistants of Google and Amazon that open up your home to enter into your sanctuary.
10.2 Maintain social circles
The simulation must enable individual people to set-up social circles, invite other people and join other social circles in a similar way as they do in the real world. The social circles and networks themselves are viewed as highly sensitive private data. GDPR privacy rules apply to the social circles and within social circles people can share data freely (10.3)
10.3. Circle sharing & approval
Data sharing within social circles must be easy, secure, transparent and equal to all people invited. The decision to share information outside the social circle is based upon rules that can be changed (see 10.2)
10.4 Parental control
The simulation must ensure safety, security and time spent in universes can be set by parents to protect their children from physical or mental injury. The government must play an active role to support parents in educating their children to live life in an engineered reality, we return to this topic in section 12 in more detail.
10.5 Monitor experiences
The simulation must allow parents to monitor what their children experience and at the same time ensure that a child’s privacy is protected. Children must be able to ‘hide’ themselves, they have the right of sanctuary (10.1)
11. Sustainability
The next set of requirements are related to the environmental footprint of the simulated reality.
11.1 Efficient energy use
Computation is not free of environmental impact. In a research conduct by Northwestern University, it was estimated that global data centers consumeed around 205 terrawatt-hours in 2018, or 1 percent of global energy use [How Much Energy Do Data Centers Really Use? – Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology]. With the rapid increase of cloud computing this number will grow to double digits and overtake many industries. Machine learning algorithms that are used to search through images on the web, support autonomous driving in electrical cars or analyse protein folding to select suitable vacine candidates for medicine trails are incredible greedy and need many computation cycles and huge sets of data for training the model before they can be used. Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes. Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes | MIT Technology Review
The simulation must make efficient use of energy by applying miniaturization to perform more calculations per watt hour, less greedy machine learning algorithms and avoid unnecessary computation.
10.2 Carbon negative emission
Many companies and households are switching to renewable energy sources to reduce their carbon footprint but to really address climate change, this is not sufficient. 51 billion ton of CO2 is emitted each year in the atmosphere. By 2050 we need to reduce this number to 0. According to Bill Gates [How To Solve Climate Change: Bill Gates Wants You To Know Two Numbers (forbes.com) – refer to book instead], no single technology or policy alone will be sufficient, we need to many paradigm shifts and breakthroughs to both reduce our emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Microsoft, co-founded by Bill Gates, said it would be carbon negative by 2030 and hopes by 2050 to have sequestrated enough carbon to account for all the direct emissions the company has ever made [Factbox: Big Tech and their carbon pledges | Reuters]/.
The simulation must have a similar negative carbon emission on Earth to reduce the total environmental footprint
10.3 Circular economy
In the past centuries we had an extractive economy. Raw materials were mined, pumped up, chopped down or otherwise extracted to become commodities used to produce goods and deliver services. The consumption society in which we live today recycles and reuses these materials only to a limited extent.
The simulation must reduce waste to a minimum by recycling hardware to run the simulation and digitize the economy to transform the extractive material consumption society into an inclusive material preservering experience society.
10.4 Multiple backups
The reason to build an interplanetary society and start a human colony on Mars according to Elon Musk is to store life on another harddisk [How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars — Page 2 of 5 — Wait But Why | Page 2 ], have a backup that we can restore when disaster happen. An advanced simulation will run our collective experience and store our memories as humankind and we would bre wise to create a backup.
The simulation must create backups outside Earth that can be restored in case of environmental disasters. See also 9.5
10.5 Multiple configurations
The true simulation needs to able to support a wide variety of input and output devices and configurations to ensure that legacy systems remain supported and receive a good quality of service. If certain devices are no longer supported, they must be easily replaceable with newer versions.
12. Law and politics
Big Tech is increasingly becoming a dominant force in the global economy. Companies like Apple are worth more on the stock market in 2021 than Belgium’s total wealth. Both EU and US governments are have been taking on companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft over issues such as privacy, liability and also increasingly market dominance. Is big tech now just too big to stomach? | Business | The Guardian. In an advanced simulated reality it will be impossible to hide for Big Tech or Big Government as the influence over all lived experience would be almost unimaginable. This section therefore describes requirements on the government of a reconstructed reality.
12.1 Simulation is a democracy
The first and foremost requirement is a strong democratic government in which power and responsibility can be exercised by all adult citizens directly or through a representative. A single person or entity should never have the power to change the core functionality as described by the requirements in this chapter or otherwise comprimise the intent stated in these requirements.
12.1 Freedom of speech
Government of the simulation should enable the universal human right of freedom of speech and self-expression. Within the laws and constraints of the universe and metaverse citizens are free to say and do what they want, citizens may even choose to switch self (section 3). In specific universes, the citizens may choose to experience what it is to be in a totaliarian regime or lawless society. In the master universe which is a reflection of reality however the same laws apply as in reality.
12.2 Single source of truth
Government of the simulation must ensure there is at least one authentic, real master universe that provides a single source of truth that is accessable by every citizen. Companies must give transparency in how their algorithms filter and present news events so citizens can determine for themselves what is real and what is fake. Laws must be in place to track down the use of deep fake technology to exert power and control over victims, protecting for example women for deepfake revenge porn [Deepfake porn is ruining women’s lives. Now the law may finally ban it. | MIT Technology Review]. Government of the simulation must remove misinformation and prevent echo chambers from becoming alternative versions of a single source of truth. As stated in 12.1 in specific universes there may be multiple versions of the truth so people can experience what alternative facts do for education or entertainment purpose.
12.3 Free access
Similar as the original vision of the World Wide Web [weaving the web], the government of the simulation should provide everybody, rich or poor, all ages, races and religions or world views free and full access. The only reason to prevent access is when people commited serious crimes in one or more universes. .
12.3 Equal rights
There should be no pay to win schemes or other constructs where people with deep financial reserves can exercise more control over the simulation than those who don’t. All citizens should have equal access rights. This does not imply that citizens cannot own digital assets in the simulation, it means that people should have free equal rights, see also 12.8.
12.4 Open market places
The simulation’s government must enable an open market place to support the development of a rich and varied experience economy that offers work for billions of people. We turn to the topic of a virtual economy in section 13.
12.5 Open source code
The core simulation source code must be made inspectable and readable by the simulation’s government for citizens. In her book Surveillance capitalism [bol.com | The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Professor Shoshana Zuboff | 9781781256855 | Boeken], professor Zuboff describes an economic system that commodifies personal data by advertising companies for profit-making. This profit-making motive presents a danger to human liberty, autonomy and wellbeing because it transfers power and responsibility and undermines democracy. To protect ourselves against surveillance capitalism in a true simulated reality, citizens must be able to not only get to the personal data that has been collected on them but also the data the simulation government has been able to pull from our data that we don’t know about.
12.6 Distributed ownership
The government of the simulation must ensure that ownership of the simulation hardware and software development and infrastructure is distributed over multiple mutual indepedent organizations to avoid a totalitarian state or surveillance capitalist society. No single organization should be able to acquire sufficient ownership off-set the power balance.
12.7 Cyberlaw and enforcement
The simulation’s government must protect digital information assets, access, transactions and identity and ensure law enforcement to create a safe, secure environment. Information security technology like blockchain may be used to ensure information integrity in digital transactions and by distributing authority preventing misuse by a single central organization.
12.8 Simulation education
Young children and teenagers must be educated by the simulation government on both the threats and opportunities the reconstructred reality brings so they can become independent, resilient, empowered citizens that know how to use the simulation in a constructive positive way.
12.9 Financial stability and taxation
With most economic activity inside the simulated reality, taxes on income and wealth accumulated in the virtual reality will have to pay for maintance of the simulation hardware and other services such as healthcare, agriculture and law enforcement outside the simulation. The simulation government should provide financial stability to ensure investments are not wiped out when there is an upgrade or new release.
12.10 Non-simulation services
The government of the simulation should provide basic services that are required to ensure the simulated reality remains operational and citizens feel safe, secure, healthy and included. This includes maintenance to the hardware infrastructure of the simulation and providing energy to run the simulation but also healthcare, education and other services to take care of individual citizens’ health and wellbeing and other. Particular attention is required to avoid social isolation and mental wellbeing.
13. Economy
Today’s services economy is gradually shifting towards an experience economy where people no longer pay for time saved but about time well spent [experience economy]. A true immersive virtual experience economy is inevitable. It has been forged by technological capacity, creative curiosity, and the opportunity to design worlds that allow for new and greater forms of self-expression.[https://medium.com/hackernoon/creating-virtual-economies-the-ultimate-guide-dd39482fb67c]] It is the answer to the paradox of unbounded economic growth on a resource bounded planet. In their book Bold, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler [https://www.amazon.nl/Bold-Create-Wealth-Impact-World/dp/1476709580] describe the growth cycle of digital technologies which consists of 6 steps, called the Six Ds of Exponentials. The first step is Digitization through which anything that becomes digital enters the same exponential growth curve we see in computing. Once something is digitized progress first seems Deceptive because changes are small and slow but soon start to become Disruptive as digital technologies outperform in effectiveness and cost. Today we don’t buy CDs but stream music from our smartphones. But what happens to business travel by plane if we can be present without travelling? Why own and maintain a large house if you can experience places that cannot even be bought by money? As the technology gets cheaper and more abundant, money is removed from the equation. The economy Demonitizes as virtual experiences are virtually of zero cost. Seperated physical products such as agendas, clocks, notebooks, taperecorders, post-its, photo and video cameras are Dematerialized, they all fit in your smartphone. Once something is dematerialized more people can have access to it, the technology is Democratized.
To ensure the simulated reality economy becomes and remains a democracy, we list the following requirements:
13.1 Secure transactions
The simulation economy must enable secure payment and exchange of digital assets in open marketplaces so that buyers and sellers of virtual experiences or products can share digital goods. Early virtual markets often lacked trusted, secure and transparent infrastructure to facilitate the exchange of virtuals goods and were vulnerable to exploitation [https://atelier.net/virtual-economy/], making these sites risky for accumulated valuable items.
13.2 Asset integrity
The simulation economy must preserve the integrity of digital assets and built up digital capital. Digital scarcity may be created by non-fungible cryptographic tokens that cannot be replicated [https://medium.com/hackernoon/creating-virtual-economies-the-ultimate-guide-dd39482fb67c]. Digital assets may never be wiped out in case of data loss or when the owners of the simulated reality decide to upgrade to a newer version of the simulation which is incompatible with the old.
13.3 Money transfer
Investors must be able to trust the stability of the simulation and its government so they can safely transfer money into the simulation but also out of the simulation whenever they desire to do so.
14.4 New jobs and companies
The simulation economy must provide people the opportunity to start new enterprises or find work and develop their careers inside the simulation or on the engine that powers the simulation. In chapter 3 we saw how some people made a living by desiging or organizing new virtual experiences and others used the possibility of the simulation to improve their jobs.
14.5 Universal basic income
Through the process of digitization, demonitization and democratization, there will be much less work and we will have to get to redefine what a job means. In the Second Machine Age [https://www.bol.com/nl/f/the-second-machine/9200000014958627/], Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe how the future jobs of millions of people and social inequality is at stake due to digital transformation. One of the ways to adapt is through education and they describe how a valuable knowledge worker in the future improves the skills of ideation, large-frame pattern recognition and complex communication instead of reading, writing and arithmetic. In chapter 3, we saw new jobs emerge but also discovered that professional consumers outnumber designers, engineers, and teachers who work directly or indirectly on the simulation.To give everybody a chance to live a good life, we need universal basic income is needed to cover food, healthcare, living and access to the simulation.
14.6 No borders
The simulation economy should have no borders because it no longer means anything where you work, as where has lost meaning. What and when you do becomes more important as where you work. The simulation economy is a global economy without borders.
14. Culture & ethics
We conclude this chapter by looking at cultural and ethical demands on the simulation.
14.1 Digital arts
An advanced simulation will give artists ever more possibilities to express themselves in many different forms and formats, exploiting the interactivity, multi-sensorial, participatory, algorithmic and dynamic nature of the medium. Existing art can also be enhanced. Nachtwacht in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam can be seen in hyperresolution, better than the real [‘Hyper-resolution’ image of Rembrandt painting aids restoration restart | Art and design | The Guardian]. The simulation must allow both existing art and new forms of art and expression.
14.2 Cultural diversity
The simulation must avoid that one language or culture replaces other cultures and enable different views and perspectives to exist side by side.
14.3 Cultural history
In the early days of digital media, many pieces of arts were lost because the medium to run these works no longer exists or does not work. The Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive enables web users to see how the Web was 10 years ago [Wayback Machine (archive.org) ]. The simulation must preserve digital cultural hertitage over decades and centuries.
14.4 Human rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights has since 1948 been a general moral standard and basis of consitutional law. The simulation must comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
14.5. Shared values
The simulation participants must agree on shared universal norms and values on how the simulation is used in cases where there is no precedent to ensure the right intent. The golden rule of reciprocity, treat others as you would have them treat you, is a primary principle common to many religions and ethical systems.
14.6. Ethical design
The simulation must ensure that its authors apply ethical design thinking and the simulation government should provide education to design experiences that satisfy the shared values and human rights.
15. Simulation requirement management
The requirements stated in the previous section are never complete and the last requirement that ends this chapter is about requirement management
15.1 Requirement management
The simulation government must manage these requirements to ensure new requirements are added and obsolete requirements are removed in a transparent, democratic, clearly defined requirement change management process so all citizens know what the simulation is and can trace how they are implemented.
