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.

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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.