Immersive tech expert optimistic about an inclusive Metaverse
By Jennifer Cloer
“You can be whomever you want to be in this space,” says AR/VR executive and artist Linda Ricci about the Metaverse.
Ricci was most recently responsible for brokering strategic partnerships for Meta’s Immersive Learning Fund.
“No one at the office knew I went home and did art. I had two different names, one for business and one in my art life. I don’t have to do that here (in the Metaverse).”
Ricci says she’s been an artist her entire life, which started with medieval manuscripts, then stained glass, metal smithing and much more. She sculpts (using Adobe Medium) a lot of her art today in VR and then transfers it to Blender. She says she prints it with her 3D printer and then puts AR on top of it. The result is what she calls a secret garden (one of many of her projects).
Linda Ricci
In parallel, Ricci has built a career as an emerging tech executive with a focus on the Metaverse with positions at FCB New York and Meta, among others, and today serves on the board of the Virtual World Society.
“You can be whomever you want to be in this space.”
We jumped at the opportunity to get her perspective on what we can expect about the emerging Metaverse.
Ricci confirms we’re in the baby stages of the Metaverse and describes it as a group of connected systems. “It’s a series of experiences that rely on an ecosystem of technology to create a spatial computing experience.”
She makes the case that the Metaverse is a better way to work and to socialize. “The 3D experience is a natural way to interact. It’s certainly more efficient than the Zoom thing we keep doing. You can achieve so much more when you can stand next to people and show them something. Come visit me in my house, sit in my chair and we can talk and chat.”
Even so, the skeptical side of me wanted to know what she thought about the Metaverse’s potential to create more disconnection among us, especially with those closest to us (you know, people living with us while we sit on the couch with a funny headset on).
Ricci admits, “It’s a big threat. Being immersed in an alternate reality can be much more powerful than the real world. It’s an emotional medium and has the opportunity for exponential good and exponential bad.”
Examples of the good she’s talking about comes from her TEDx talk Supercharging Grassroots Movements with Virtual Reality. In a moving UN documentary, a 12-year-old girl walks you through a day in her life in Syria. A Greenpeace VR educates and influences government to work together to protect the habitat by taking them on their ships and putting them up close and personal with the animals. And the popular Tom’s Shoes team uses their Giving Trip VR to take customers to Peru where they give away shoes to young children, thanks to your purchase.
“The 3D experience is a natural way to interact. It’s certainly more efficient than the Zoom thing we keep doing. You can achieve so much more when you can stand next to people and show them something. ”
Realistically, though, how many people are using VR/AR today and is it growing? That seems to me like a big deal for making the Metaverse a reality (or, er, virtual reality). Only about 15 percent of Americans are VR users (65.9m) today.
“I think the headset is a barrier. It’s reasonably clunky. Great strides have been made but it’s not affordable yet for most of the world. Phones are an extension of something we’ve already done, an extension of an existing behavior. Whereas this is completely new. The biggest barrier is that you have to experience it to understand it,” Ricci says.
I wondered if inclusion was also going to be a barrier in the Metaverse. As we’ve seen with AI, discrimination and bias in the real world is showing up in our AI models.
“This industry is full of strong capable women. I love the idea of making sure everyone has access. We waste so much intellectual capital by not giving people access to education,” says Ricci. “Making sure we help each other is a big component. We do better together when we all do well.”
As for how the Metaverse can open up new ways of telling stories, Ricci said we have to rethink the traditional, linear narratives. “The old storyboard with a narrative you can impose no longer applies. You can’t tell the viewer where to look, for example. You can use techniques to get their attention but you have to give up control. Consumers get to choose their own story in a way and that is very exciting.”