"Didn't the last 30 years be the most peaceful and happiest time for us humans?" [SDF Diary]

When do you think the beginning of the 21st century?

Some people may think that January 1, 2000, when the leading digit of the year changes from 1 to 2, may be the day, and it is said that "January 1, 2001 is usually the beginning of the 21st century", which is divided into thousands of years according to academic standards. Some of you will do it.

There are scholars who claim that "

the

Kim Dae-sik, a professor of electrical and electronic engineering at KAIST, is a 'brain scientist' who is famous for convergence thinking across science and the humanities.

We heard directly from Professor Daesik Kim about why we think so and what we should think and live differently if it is '

', which is different from the past 30 years as he argued .

"Now we are experiencing the point of creating the '21st century' world order"

Q. In your new book, 'Metaverse Sapiens', you see the beginning of the 21st century as 'the year Corona started 2020'. Why do you see it that way?

When the pandemic first began in early 2020, what I was curious about was the identity of this pandemic, how long it would take, and how the world before it would be different from the world after it.

So, at the beginning of 2020, we had a study meeting with close professors who majored in history, economics, and social studies, for three months.

I studied how the world before and after the pandemic was different from a

But what is interesting is that,

that

From this point of view, we may have experienced the end of the 20th century world order by 2019, and from 2020, when the pandemic began, is the "Hey, the 21st century was such a world" that our descendants will remember.

Then, I was most curious about what the 21st century will be like for our descendants to remember, and what

I thought it might be this.

If the pandemic ends someday, I think we will be able to experience the 21st century in the true sense from then on.

You cannot predict the future.

However, it is possible to hypothesize that the next 30 years will be a world with much more uncertainty and greater crises compared to at least the last 30 years.

The reason is that 'the 30 years from 1990 to 2019 were the most peaceful and happiest time in human history'.

In the early 1990s, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed, and the world experienced the 'age of globalization'.

We were able to go to all countries we wanted, most of them with time and money, and it was an experience that everyone around the world participated in the same market regardless of ideology. can.

The last 30 years have been an unusual world.

Human history has not always been this peaceful.

Normalization is good and abnormal is bad.

However

and it is a gloomy forecast, but recent experts say

.

Moreover, new technologies are being introduced.

, and for the past 300,000 years, humans have only lived in analog reality, but suddenly

to lose.

And on top of all those problems, a bigger problem awaits us.

' climate change',

you're saying that solving all other problems has no meaning, right?

From this point of view, we can at least guess, "

" It starts there.

'Hyperacceleration' (2020) and 'Metaverse Sapiens' (2022) / East Asia published by Professor Daesik Kim after Corona'

"The beginning of a huge derealization!"

Q. Could you elaborate a little bit more?

How do we humans react when we experience a big problem that humans have never experienced before?

It's also a pattern of behavior that's very deeply ingrained in our human instincts.

'Fight or Flight (fight-or-flight response[1])', a pattern of fighting or running away.

We humans run away (instinctively) rather than fight when we feel this problem is bigger than we do.

From this point of view

When I thought of escaping from reality, it was timely that 'the technology was also starting to be prepared'.

For example, someone like Elon Musk [2] says, "It's time for us to leave Earth."

"Let's go to Mars and migrate." I don't know if this is technically possible.

And if you go, how many people can go?

0.1%?

Fewer numbers could go to Mars.

Then, “Where will the rest of us, 99.9%, escape?”

I wonder if the stance of 'Let's escape to digital reality' rather than analog reality will become the biggest trend in most societies, including Korea, within 5, 10, or 20 years.

The important thing here is that since I wrote a book about 'Metaverse', Professor Dae-Sik Kim may be mistaken for wanting humanity to escape, but I also don't want it.

never.

What I predict is '

[1] The 'fight-flight response' is a physiological arousal response that occurs automatically in situations where stress is severe or threatened. The theory is that stress stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to cause the body to fight or run away.

Recently, in addition to fighting or escaping, a phenomenon has been added that stiffens the body when it looks hopeless due to fear, such as a deer stopping at the headlights, resulting in a fight-flight or freeze response to stress. is called

[2] Tesla CEO, SpaceX CEO

Photos published in May 2020 on one of the social websites, Reddit (click 'here' to go to the relevant original site).

This is a picture I recently saw on the Internet, where a homeless man was sitting on the street in what appeared to be America, wearing goggles and doing something.

I don't know what he is experiencing, but the future of the 'metaverse dystopia' that the picture shows is in reality a person who has no home, no job, and has to go out on the street. You have to improve it yourself or solve the problem analogously, but you don't.

Since the problem is so big, we avoid it by entering the metaverse.

You might be homeless on the street, but you could be an emperor in the metaverse, right?

You could have a huge house, and how addictive it would be.

I think there are a few topics that we should be interested in.

First

, we have to think about

Many people say that the metaverse is the next version of the mobile internet.

That's the part I agree with.

If the metaverse is the next version of the mobile internet, it will truly change the course of human history.

Before 1990, there was no such thing as the Internet.

We humans lived a 100% analog life.

Then, in the 1990s, with the advent of the World Wide Web (www) and the advent of the desktop Internet, new possibilities were given to us.

As you are well aware, in analog reality there are several conditions.

In analog reality, for example, humans cannot be in two places at the same time.

Also, in analog reality, all experiences are possible only where my body is.

Thirdly, in analog reality, the body is one.

But with the advent of the desktop Internet, we had a shocking experience: the body and the experience were suddenly separated.

Although my body is in Korea, I was able to experience content from Europe, Brazil, and the United States through my computer screen.

But still the body was tied.

Then, 15 years later, with the advent of the mobile internet, my body became free.

So we can have this experience while we're on the go.

And now 15 years have passed and it is known that the Internet is evolving once more, and we have decided to call this 'Metaverse'.

What is characteristic of the metaverse is that my body is now beginning to be included in the digital reality.

And another important thing is that my body can be 'multiple' in digital reality.

We could try making a boo

Evolution of the Internet 'Metaverse' with a body ('Metaverse Sapiens' - East Asian Publications, cited on p. 129)

But, importantly, the early Internet had no owners.

The Internet was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

It was developed by Darpa [3] and later developed without an owner because the technology was transferred to the university research institute, and Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web (www) in the 1990s and then opened it to the public domain [4]. .

If he had patented it, he would be richer than Zuckerberg now, but he kept it open.

[3] The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is an agency in charge of the R&D department of the US Department of Defense, often referred to as DARPA.

He is famous for developing ARPAnet, the prototype of the Internet.

[4] The public domain refers to a work whose copyright (author's right) has expired or whose copyright (author's right) has been abandoned by the author.

In this case, copyright is not claimed.

[5] Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook, Meta's CEO

Tim Berners-Lee, who first visited Korea as a keynote speaker for SDF2013

(Click the image to hear why Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web (www).)

But the problem is that the metaverse is being made by companies.

It is no longer a social infrastructure.

So, the important question we have to ask is,

The question must be asked now.

The second thing we need to consider is that one of the characteristics of the metaverse is that it should be able to be connected to each other when digital reality is created as a result.

However, in the current metaverse, if we change apps or software, our identity will change.

Because there is no connection between them.

So, it is of course important to create a connected worldview within the metaverse, and if that is the case, then the important question seems to be this.

What Internet companies have discovered is that if you can collect data about where consumers click on the square screen on the Internet, you can determine the preferences of these consumers.

And we are already living in an age where we know our preferences.

However, the preference that Internet companies have identified so far is a measure of this level of preference with a square screen or a finger tap on the screen of a mobile phone.

If fake news or political bias can be created even at this level, imagine that the metaverse will be created in 10 or 20 years, and most people will live in the metaverse.

Advertisements will be hundreds or thousands of times more accurate than what is currently possible on the mobile internet, and similarly we will be surrounded by a reality bubble that is much stronger than the 'filter bubble' we have been concerned about.

And since this reality bubble will be surrounded by a filter bubble not only for product consumption and content tendency, but also for political, ideological, and news dispositions, the

The metaverse doesn't exist yet.

But there was one discussion we missed when the mobile internet came along.

Who can collect the data created there, to what extent, to what extent, and how much?

We are living in this kind of world because we started without a discussion about whether it is possible to collect and use it.

There are a lot more possibilities because it hasn't been made yet, but there are also a lot more risks.

In a sense, another 'surveillance capitalism[7]', a larger concept of surveillance capitalism, is possible within the metaverse.

I'm not against the metaverse itself.

I think there are a lot of possibilities, but the benefits of the metaverse should go to most people.

Since the metaverse is being created now, there is an opportunity for us to decide from the beginning how individuals protect their data and how they use their data, and I think this opportunity should be used.

[6] A phenomenon in which Internet information providers provide customized information to users and users only encounter filtered information is called a 'filter bubble'.

[7] ‘Surveillance capitalism’ is a term first mentioned by Harvard Business School professor Shaw Shana Zhubof in her 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, in which companies collect user behavioral data to generate revenue. the word capitalism.

In <The Age of Surveillance Capitalism>, Zubov said, 'In the past, humans were active subjects who directly produced and consumed goods and services. reduced,' he points out.

I said it was a little scary to say that the metaverse could become a window to collect all information, including my actions and conversations, but Professor Kim Dae-sik said that the most frightening thing is that 'phishing' that deceives me by texting, phone, or e-mail is in the metaverse. Think about it.

In the metaverse, I met a friend who is very similar to me and who I like very much, and I believed and said everything, and it turned out that that friend could be an AI avatar of a specific company.

Knowing my preferences, creating the most optimized character to make me believe it, and at some point recommending a specific product or supporting a specific politician. I warned you it wouldn't.

At the same time, it was said that the actual metaverse is now absorbing all of the AI ​​technology, so the situation in the movie 'The Matrix' and the like, "I thought it was real, but I found out that it wasn't" could be a situation that will come to us.

'The Matrix Resurrection' Movie Official Site ©2021 WARNER BROS --> Click 'here' to go to the related site!

I think that something that seems to happen only in science fiction can really become our reality now, so I am reminded of the need to wake up and ask the necessary questions at the right time.

As I was writing this newsletter, I also looked back at the movie "The Matrix 4 - Resurrection," which was released a few months ago.

If you had a choice, would you like to take the 'red pill' that can be painful but makes you live in reality?

Or would you like to take the 'blue pill' of 'derealization' that settles in an orderly world?

From a scientist's point of view, why did Professor Dae-Sik Kim look into this situation and start writing a book about 'Metaverse'... Professor Dae-Sik Kim's interview continues next week.

(Writing: Lee Jeong-ae, staff reporter, sdf@sbs.co.kr, calee@sbs.co.kr)