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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | A p r i l 2 0 2 2 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 11 was building the first dog park — the Get Joy Dog Zone — in the metaverse. e park, where VR headset users can interact with virtual dogs, is not only a marketing opportunity, but a chance to draw attention to the limited recreational space dogs have in many real-world communities, according to the company. e site will also host virtual and nonprofit activities to support dog wellness. Business needs Over the past two years, the global pandemic has accelerated the shi to the metaverse and increased consumer adoption of virtual reality tools, as workers became remote and consumers increased online activities, including record-setting e-commerce. According to Statista, more than 70 percent of survey respondents said they increased their VR use in 2020 and only 5 percent used it less. A 2020 PwC report predicted that nearly 23.5 million jobs worldwide would be using AR and VR by 2030 for training, work meetings and customer service. "We're [in the process] of taking all the stuff we do on a personal computer today in two dimensions and through mixed reality making that a three-dimensional experience that [people] can interact with better," said Ted Dinsmore, president of New Haven- based soware development and consulting company SphereGen. SphereGen helps clients maximize virtual, augmented and mixed reality to address business needs across the healthcare, manufacturing, education, construction and financial sectors. Dinsmore said the metaverse goes beyond immersive headsets and virtual worlds. "We're talking about extended reality that is augmented or mixed reality, which overlays onto the real world," he said. He points as an example to virtual headsets that one of his healthcare clients is using to view and guide surgeries in Uganda in real time. "It's helped train surgeons in Uganda who might see a particular [surgery] case once in a lifetime that [our client] sees in New York three times a week," he said. And metaverse technology is becoming a bigger component of educational systems as well, Dinsmore said. In 2020, Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine trained all its first- year students using the Microso Hololens and its mixed reality app, HoloAnatomy, which features a suite of 3D organs, vessels and systems that comprise human anatomy. Initial studies showed similar exam performance compared to medical students who learned using traditional anatomy methods. Big metaverse communities like Fortnight and Roblox are also driving advertising focus and dollars particularly targeting Gen Z and Millennial consumers, who each spend around 7 hours a week, on average, in virtual gaming, according to NewZoo survey data. Vans, the skateboarding brand, launched a virtual skate park in Roblox that lets players earn points to redeem in their virtual store to customize their avatar; the online park has seen more than 48 million visitors to date. e value of virtual viewers has also placed a premium on virtual real estate, which has seen its value spike. Virtual real estate sales topped $500 million in 2021 in the top four metaverse platforms, according to MetaMetric Solutions. Sales surged in October when Facebook rebranded as Meta to focus on the metaverse. "eoretically, there's an infinite amount of real estate [in the metaverse]," said Future Today Institute's Subin. "But somebody has to write the code and stand up the site and develop that virtual environment. I don't think many businesses will be developing their own virtual environments but will depend on virtual worlds already built." Privacy issues But it's not virtual real estate prices that concern Yale Anthropologist Lisa Messeri, who studies the production of technology and how it's used to build new worlds through research and innovation. "I think about the metaverse as a broad imaginary [environment] that includes any number of futures in which our physical and digital worlds are increasingly woven together…to create convenience," she said. "But it requires an extraordinary amount of data to deliver this convenience and [I think] that the metaverse might further entrench us into a surveillance society, where we are obligated to give up personal and identifying information for something as benign as getting directions." Privacy controls have major implications to both metaverse platforms and businesses advertising on them. In February, Meta suffered the largest one-day drop in its stock price – losing $230 billion in market cap – driven in part by privacy changes by Apple, which limited Facebook's ad targeting and measurement, a move expected to cost Meta nearly $10 billion in revenue this year. But as Meta develops its own metaverse ecosystem accessed by Meta- owned hardware like Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014, those same restrictions may not apply. Doukas said the company is committed to transparency in protecting data security. But that may vary across platforms — like Sandbox and Decentraland — and will likely increasingly include much more detailed information that can be tracked, including biometric data measured via wearable devices. n Ted Dinsmore Lisa Messeri BIG BANK RESOURCES small bank attention Switch to Berkshire Bank today! 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