Is the metaverse a tool for sustainable development?

My interest in the meta­verse is two­fold. As an engin­eer, I am always curi­ous to dis­cov­er the new pos­sib­il­it­ies offered to human beings, soci­et­ies, and com­pan­ies by emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies. On the oth­er side, as a digit­al man­ager, I am con­cerned with mov­ing towards a sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion and with increased vigil­ance about the eth­ic­al and envir­on­ment­al impacts of these innov­a­tions in the mak­ing – the meta­verse is one of those.

My defin­i­tion of the meta­verse is that of a con­tinuum of exper­i­ences cre­ated from the con­ver­gence of new and old tech­no­lo­gies, a kind of evol­u­tion of the Inter­net. After the clas­sic inter­net, then the inter­net of things, here is the inter­net of exper­i­ences with this notion of a con­tinuum from which unknown oppor­tun­it­ies will emerge. The Inter­net, in whatever form, has enabled us to con­sume, learn, enter­tain ourselves and be much more effi­cient in our work­ing lives. Its impact on life is real, tangible. 

There is a real dif­fi­culty in under­stand­ing the meta­verse because it cov­ers a such a wide range of var­ied real­it­ies and experiences.

But there is a real dif­fi­culty in under­stand­ing the meta­verse, because it cov­ers a wide range of real­it­ies and exper­i­ences, all of which are very var­ied. Indeed, it can be exper­i­enced through exten­ded real­ity or not. To move in these vir­tu­al spaces, one can use a vir­tu­al real­ity head­set, but one can also do without one. You may be using digit­al cur­ren­cies, but you don’t have to. And it can also work with the 3G, 4G or 5G net­works depend­ing on the options. All these tech­no­lo­gic­al choices will be made at a very early stage, once the use case is estab­lished – all of which will have com­pletely dif­fer­ent eth­ic­al and envir­on­ment­al impacts. 

My view of the meta­verse, and of the digit­al trans­form­a­tion in gen­er­al, is that it is of cru­cial interest to eco-design the ser­vices we ima­gine for the future. What does this mean? That we must con­sider the con­sequences of these digit­al trans­form­a­tions very early on in the devel­op­ment of new applic­a­tions. And to do this, we must ask ourselves the ques­tion of the envir­on­ment­al, social, and eth­ic­al bal­ance of the user exper­i­ence that we want to put in place in rela­tion to their eco­nom­ic value, in rela­tion to their fin­an­cial prof­it­ab­il­ity. What is the net dif­fer­en­tial when all these dimen­sions are taken into account? Is the bal­ance sheet pos­it­ive or not? Should we shape a dehu­man­ising world with eth­ic­al risks caused by the lack of pro­tec­tion of per­son­al data, fake news, viol­ence between avatars, etc.? Should we allow the use of online data – syn­onym­ous with increased energy con­sump­tion – to con­tin­ue relentlessly?

If the bal­ance sheet is neg­at­ive, then the pro­ject is not desir­able. On the oth­er hand, why say no to an object­ive that makes a real pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion? At Accen­ture, we recently car­ried out a study entitled Digital4Climate with Agor­ia in Bel­gi­um, and we showed that digit­al tech­no­logy in the smart build­ing, smart man­u­fac­tur­ing or smart mobil­ity sec­tors could have a pos­it­ive impact on the car­bon bal­ance. Digit­isa­tion could res­ult in lower green­house gas emis­sions by a ratio of one to five, i.e. one emis­sion gen­er­ated against five emis­sions avoided. I believe that we can achieve this same ratio with the meta­verse in cer­tain well-chosen use cases, by integ­rat­ing eco-design. 

Some time ago, I con­duc­ted an aware­ness ses­sion on the impacts of digit­al bey­ond the meta­verse for a group of CIOs from a large com­pany with a world­wide pres­ence. Many of them were not aware, for example, that 2 kg of com­puter requires 800 kg of mater­i­als, espe­cially to col­lect metals, some of which are rare. The elec­tri­city con­sump­tion of digit­al tech­no­logy must also be con­trolled, at a time when oth­er sec­tors, such as trans­port, are going elec­tric. And I’m only talk­ing about envir­on­ment­al issues here, but we know that there are also issues of inclu­sion and access­ib­il­ity to digit­al tech­no­logy, not to men­tion the pro­tec­tion of per­son­al data and the trans­par­ency of algorithms. 

I think that this aware­ness-rais­ing work is still largely to be done at the level of large French com­pan­ies and the pub­lic. But how can this mes­sage be amp­li­fied? Firstly, I think that there is an over­all move­ment of large com­pan­ies which, for the most part, have set them­selves very clear envir­on­ment­al, social and gov­ernance object­ives. And these com­mit­ments will be mon­itored by fin­an­cial ana­lysts who love to hold the lead­ers of large com­pan­ies to their prom­ises, espe­cially when they are not kept. 

Secondly, if there is pres­sure from fin­ance and busi­ness lead­ers, there is also pres­sure from con­sumers. There are more and more pub­lic fig­ures in the media who are mak­ing us aware of the link between our envir­on­ment­al impact and our use of digit­al tech­no­logy. Thirdly, and this is some­thing I see every day at Accen­ture, the can­did­ates who come to take part in our recruit­ment pro­cesses are increas­ingly aware of the company’s actions in rela­tion to the Par­is Agree­ment, the reduc­tion of plastic or the pro­tec­tion of biod­iversity, etc. This is a real require­ment that we must meet. This is a real require­ment that must be taken into account.

Finally, there is the gov­ernance aspect. There are now com­pan­ies that include sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in all their pro­jects, but also at all levels of the company’s hier­archy. In fact, respons­ible digit­al or sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion is becom­ing the pivot of the entire pro­duc­tion chain. At Accen­ture, for example, we have a “sus­tain­ab­il­ity man­ager” who is present in all the company’s stra­tegic sectors. 

It is on this con­di­tion that the meta­verse can become the good pupil of digit­al. To give an image that will speak to every­one, the meta­verse could be a child of today who enters primary school. More sens­it­ive and much bet­ter edu­cated than we are regard­ing envir­on­ment­al, social and eth­ic­al respons­ib­il­ity, the meta­verse can like­wise show us the way if, from the out­set, it is fed eco-design and envir­on­ment­al and eth­ic­al respons­ib­il­ity. And then, the gamble will be won, on the sole con­di­tion that we do not give in to the hype.