(Photo by Gautam Shah)
Today we have a meeting in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. A dense rainy jungle surrounds you, but you and your team members remain dry. Putting everyone in a different environment freed up thinking and created lively discussions. This is temporarily interrupted when Jaguar Atiaia and her two new Cubs take a walk without paying attention to you. The entire team pauses to admire them.
After a long day at work, you go out for a drink with some friends. Opposite the floor-to-ceiling window behind the bar, you can see the Bornean orangutan Fio hanging from a fig tree. She looks a little thinner than when you last met her. While waiting for a friend, Malaysia’s world-famous orangutan researcher Squid sits down and begins a conversation about the state of the rainforests of Fio and Borneo.
Later that night, you’ll be attending a concert with another 30 million people. When music plays, everyone is surrounded by ice and glaciers. I found the Gentoo Penguin Sasha I saw at another event and wanted to be there.
This all happens, but you never leave the city you live in, St. Louis, Missouri.
Metaverse
Not only this, but more can be done, but it can be taken for granted. Whether Metaverse sounds like a refreshing dream or a dystopian nightmare, it’s undeniable that it’s getting people’s attention.Economist and Technology Advisor Mark Purdy envisions the Metaverse As “a network of 3D virtual worlds where people can interact, do business and build social connections through virtual avatars”. Disney welcomes it As “the next frontier of storytelling”. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (now Meta), describes Facebook as “the future of how we socialize, work, and play.”When JP Morgan is calling it “Comprehensive” platform and “$ 1 trillion industry”.
While these comments focus on Metaverse business opportunities, there are endless other potential applications, such as unexpected ways that can have a positive impact on the environment. I think it’s worth asking, as the two people are passionate about how data and technology can help the planet. Can nature and wildlife benefit from this potential future? Surprisingly, its greatest impact could be to build rich relationships between humans and other species and ecosystems around the world.
Relationship with other species
In 2013 Audubon Association Report, The author writes: “Individual choices and actions form the center of social and environmental change.” They say they are changing consumer markets, public policy and financing, all to achieve long-term environmental change. (Necessary) claims that public involvement is needed. Many other individuals and groups have pointed out the same for years, but we agree. But we take it one step further and say that public involvement is a prerequisite for long-term environmental change.
In fact, nature maintenance advocates, for example, sincerely hope that Albert of St. Louis will act, vote, and donate to support orangutans in Borneo, but he has thousands of people and them. There is no way to form a meaningful connection with the habitat of. Miles away. How can he expect to sympathize with their protection? For most people, the plight of endangered wildlife is an abstraction. It’s not part of their daily life.
What if Albert had the tools to foster a strong emotional connection with the orangutan Fio? What if he had regular opportunities to see, learn, and learn from Fio in real time to understand what threatened his survival and helped him prosper? Can millions of connections between individual people and individual animals completely change the way we support conservation?
Perhaps protecting all life on earth means building relationships with all life on earth.
Unique digital identity for wildlife
Creating relationships starts with the name. As Steven Messenger Dodo, Described in the article“The name is like a passkey that unleashes our empathy and can instantly turn a stranger into a person who deserves our dignity.” In the context of wildlife, Lion Cecil, Its death at the hands of hunters infuriated millions of people, or how Mountain Lion P22 Daily movements have captivated the citizens of Los Angeles.
The story, which focuses on the loss of 30,000 elephants each year, is similar to the story of Mweitria, a 30-year-old male elephant living in Kenya who likes to attack corn harvests. It does not stimulate understanding. Teach young men to do the same.
We have the data to create unique digital IDs for thousands of animals. Currently, scientists and researchers are tracking more than 200,000 individual animals by GPS, ICARUS Initiative We are tracking more than 800 species via satellite.There is also a technique to collect eDNA Samples from rivers, soil and dung.Develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) Analysis “Camera trap” image; And use Acoustic technology To identify individual animals. Developing the digital identities of these animals may provide the basis for a greater connection: names.
Wildlife avatars and sharing platforms
Of course, creating these IDs is not enough. They need to come back to life where humans can find them. As with data, there are now the types of digital platforms and channels needed to bring wildlife and nature into our daily lives. Microsoft Flight SimulatorFor example, it already contains 2 trillion renderings of the trees of the world, Adidas Fitness App Five real GPS tracking animals, including the Pangolined Pamoha and the Snow Leopard Uriin, are included as athletes to whom users can compare their physical activity.
Just like humans The avatar will be placed in the metaverse, Game environment, virtual conference space, etc., Fio, Sasha, Atiaia avatars as well. You can digitally recreate the events of their lives, such as migration, health and behavioral changes, to create moments that connect people and create emotional bonds over time. And these events occur, for example, where Albert is already spending his time, making it easier to make wildlife and nature a part of his daily life.
People can attend these events in different ways. Witnessing the disappearance of a tree avatar in a video game may lead to deforestation in the real world. Daily monitoring of elephant movements may help others identify new trends in elephant movements. Some of us attended the convocation of whale shark researchers in Djibouti to understand how policy changes affect their eating behavior. No matter how you work, you can start to see stories of distant animals and ecosystems as part of our own life story. And this affects what we buy, how we vote, and where we donate over time. These virtual worlds do not remain separated from the physical world, but can enrich the physical world and bring direct benefits.
Potential drawbacks
Some may be confused by the idea of playing video games or joining an online community to repair the Borneo rainforest. It’s like stretching.But hundreds of video games such as Mojang’s Minecraft, Created communities around the world among people who have nothing else in common. Jane McGonigal, one of the most influential game designers in the world explained How can the power of billions of gamers be used for social gain? This is because gamers often devote themselves to solving seemingly unsolvable problems in bulk.
Others fear that technology can create even greater gaps between people and nature by distracting or completely replacing people. But two years after experiencing virtually many lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, people are swarming with physical experience. As one proxy for this, US National Park System Sees Unprecedented Visitors.. Virtual experiences do not have to replace physical experiences. Like a travel show, it can inspire exploration in the real world. Anthony Bourdin’s “Unknown Parts” For example, you want to go to a place he visited directly. I’ve already seen it on TV, so I don’t feel like I need to go.
Finally, when the tech giant manipulates the content displayed on the platform, anyone who controls the expression of wildlife and nature in the Metaverse misrepresents or adapts it for their own purposes. There is a possibility that it will happen. This has always been a threat, but it is becoming increasingly important for gaming, tech companies, media, NGOs, and others to actively influence the position of nature and wildlife in virtual environments.
How to get there
Here are some specific ways to incorporate wildlife and natural data into your existing virtual products and experiences to ensure that the physical world penetrates. Web3 And the evolving Metaverse:
- The Green game jamAdjusted by Play for the Planet Alliance Create competition for game companies to incorporate environmental actions, themes, or donation mechanisms into their games. The next step is to think beyond the annual campaign and move towards a more lasting representation of nature and wildlife. Mechanisms that connect gameplay to real results..
- Technology platforms that catalog global environmental data in the cloud, such as Microsoft Azure’s Planetary Computer and Google’s Earth Engine, combine biodiversity, climate, and natural resource data.Digital twinWith all natural resources, you can visualize the health of the earth in real time.
- Conservation media and entertainment storytellers can go beyond traditional channels such as movies and television and instead start investing in games and metaverses as a future storytelling platform.
- Large nature maintenance NGOs can prioritize consumer engagement as a project or outcome, as well as other field interventions that fund it. They can harness the power of the brand to experiment and measure new ways to reach and influence motivations and maintain a connection between viewers and nature.
- Wildlife scientists and small NGOs can think about the data they collect and the value it represents beyond science. They can think of a data story that the world needs to know and how to fund operations by licensing it.
Connection for maintenance
If we can all travel to Borneo, Brazil and Antarctica and spend hours with animals in an environment far from where we live, we don’t need another way to connect with them. However, many species disappear faster than we know and disappear away from our heads. Expanding tents and making it easier for everyone to participate in nature maintenance can help counter the effects of bad business, bad policies, and lack of funding over time. It begins with a major shift in the way we build relationships with other species and ecosystems.
In a recent article Parents, Tony Juniper, Chair of Government Advisory Group Natural England, Is written. “We humans are as many natural creatures as birds and bees. In our daily lives, we restore heavily broken relationships with other creatures, not only to animals but also to us. Remember that it brings benefits. ”Technology and metaverses can and should play an important role in incorporating wildlife into our daily lives. The most compelling and effective way to protect the worlds of Fio, Sasha and Atiaia is to effectively invite them into our world.
Read more stories by Gortamshire & Ryan Boudy Knot..
