Big Brother is not only watching but, if the metaverse is left unregulated, tech companies will soon also track your gaze and emotions. This warning has been issued not by an anti-technology crank but by the former Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (2013-2017) Tom Wheeler, who is currently a senior fellow at Harvard University. Mr Wheeler, in a recent article in Time magazine, makes a compelling case for urgently putting in place rules of the digital game before it is too late. He points to the warning signs for those not blind to the excesses of Big Tech. A symposium was held earlier this month in Seattle, USA, which was attended by the world’s leading neurologists to discuss Eye Tracking Research and Applications.

The sponsors of the event included Google and Reality Labs, a division of Meta Platforms, Inc., the company formerly known as Facebook. If that doesn’t ring alarm bells among policymakers, perhaps nothing will. As Mr Wheeler puts it: “Poets say the eyes are the window into a person’s soul. Neurologists are less romantic, finding that eye movements can reveal our thought processes. The companies that once harnessed psychological research to design products that would hold the user’s attention are now probing how to build a new business ~ the metaverse ~ around neurological science.” The issue at the core of the debate is the putative transition from the internet to the metaverse, which is described by experts as a move from observation to participation.

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In the 2-D internet experience, the user observes what is on the screen, while the 3-D metaverse utilises optical tools to connect the user to algorithms that place him/her “inside” a pseudo-world, adds Mr Wheeler. Meta Systems, Inc., has already invested $10 billion in developing metaverse products and services. Its critics, however, argue that the metaverse is essentially an entire self-contained world of surveillance which one enters at one’s peril. The danger of being a metaverse maven is akin to putting oneself in the predicament of Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata ~ Arjun’s son knew how to get into the chakravyuh but couldn’t get out of it.

Meta seems busy constructing a chakravyuh of its own as it has already patented technology to build eye tracking and facial expression tracking into the optical equipment worn to access the metaverse. With such increasingly sophisticated tracking technology in play, experts say accessing the metaverse using its devices could be more revealing than being plugged into a lie-detector. Privacy, which in recent times has been affirmed as a fundamental right in India, will be the first casualty. Policymakers across the world must begin thinking about what the rules, regulations, and standards for metaverse company behaviour should be. There’s no sign of it yet.