What about Plants: The Metaverse

Whether they're fads or world-changing technologies, there's an abundance of innovative concepts proliferating through the media lately. There are enough new buzzwords to keep your head in a constant rotation. What does it all mean? Will it really do what they say it'll do? I'll leave that speculation to those at the forefront of the technology industry. However, I do believe that the effect will be widespread and affect all industries and ways of life. My way of life revolves around plants and the natural world. Plants are how my family makes a living. My role managing technology for the business got me thinking about how these technologies will affect the plant world. Today, I ask, what about plants in the Metaverse?

The Metaverse

A book released a decade ago called "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline portrays the world in 2044 where everyone escapes the real world by logging into a virtual reality universe called The Oasis (photo below). It gave us a glimpse of what the future could look like. Naturally, the future could unfold in many different ways. One could argue the true inspirations for Facebook's announcement of the Metaverse, but Cline and Zuckerberg's worlds don't seem all that different.

I recommend watching the videos on Facebook's About Page to paint a better picture in your head, but what is the metaverse? It connects people in a virtual world where homes, stores, bars, vacation destinations and pretty much a full blown economy exists (depending on your definition of existence). Doubters will say all this stuff isn't "real" and kids are crazy for spending their money on fake, virtual goods. But, to this generation who is increasingly comfortable interacting digitally - and more so since COVID - what's real is a matter of perspective.

Whether in the physical world or the virtual world, people are social animals and communicate their values and styles to others through the things they buy, whether it be clothes, cars or home decor. If you're in a situation where you're interacting with people digitally in this virtual world, why not virtually dress yourself or decorate your home to communicate those same values?

Gardening in The Metaverse

Imagine I'm a gardener in the physical world. I cultivate plants that I think look good in my yard. I enjoy designing the landscape into a cohesive form of art. Would I want to do that in the virtual world? That certainly depends on how I derived my value in my gardening hobby. Those who are keeping up with the Joneses would be prime examples of those who would enjoy gardening in the metaverse, especially if the Joneses already have a beautiful front yard garden in their virtual home.

On the contrary, I'm someone who enjoys the feel of digging my hands in the dirt and planting annual plants in my garden each spring. It really connects me to nature directly. Only time will tell whether you can get that same tactile experience virtually. In The Oasis, you could pay a premium for a haptic suit that was able to recreate that feeling onto your body. Certainly, this will be a ways away, so these gardeners would seem to be late adopters of the metaverse. Now, imagine I'm a novice gardener with the proverbial black thumb in the year 2044. You can walk down to Chalet's virtual garden center and we'll sell you some plants that will never die! That's quite the proposition to those exasperated with cultivating plants in the real world.

Plant Design

Artists are set to thrive in the virtual world. While artists can only paint pictures or make sculptures of plants in the real world, now they can design virtual plants for gardens and homes in the metaverse. What shape will these plants take? Which colors? What even is a plant anymore people may ask? While hard to imagine from where we stand today, Chalet, as a landscape design company, may enter this world not only designing virtual landscape designs, but designing the plants themselves.

Currently, like almost every other industry, the garden center and landscape industries have been hit by supply shortages and delivery delays. As a business person that deals with these issues, it's nice to think about a day where you can wave your hand and make a plant appear. That brings to mind the real-world concept that scarcity is what drives value. Stay tuned for a post on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) which creates a limited supply for unique designs in the digital world. This is how artists protect their work from being copied. These exist already today!

Our Connection to the Natural World: An Optimist's Take

I wrote last year about how our happiness is correlated with time in nature (Reflections During Quarantine: Correlating Happiness with Time in Nature). We spend about 93% of our time indoors. I'll make the case and continue to make it that we need to spend more time outside. Read the Biophilia Hypothesis if you need some scientific and anecdotal evidence. I would say I'm nervous/excited about what the Metaverse will do to our connection withto the natural world.

The negative take is that we could all be sitting on our couches while logging into the virtual world and never go outside. Unfortunately, that's what seems to happen in “Ready Player One”. Even the real world is a sea of steel and concrete. The slightly more positive take is that we'll realize, we don't need to sit in front of the TV inside. We can put on our VR Headset and go out on our porch at least. We just can't move around too much because we won't see where we're going in the real world.

The most optimistic case I can see for our connection to nature in this version of the future is with Smart Glasses, a partnership between Facebook and Ray Bans. Let's look at this product in the context of the world we live in today. In fact, you can buy this today if you want! It's worth mentioning that this is more Augmented Reality (AR) than Virtual Reality (VR). That means that you can walk around seeing the real world while overlaying the virtual pieces onto your field of vision. I think this could be a huge boon to the attention we pay to our surroundings compared to the status quo of constantly looking down at our phones. Even if we're strolling through the park while scrolling through instagram, we're not noticing that bird fly over the top of us or that beautiful hydrangea that's in bloom.

With VR tech like Smart Glasses, we can keep our head up and notice those natural sights. Not only will we gain more of an appreciation for them, but VR functionality can overlay information about those plants. If you have the Chalet Smart Glasses App (estimated launch 2027), you can point your index finger at the hydrangea and up pops the plant's profile in order to learn more about it. You can even buy one from Chalet and have it planted in your yard this week!