[Kim Byung-min's Science Village] Two Masks

Algorithm Recognition through Smartphone Personalization... IT Companies' Thought Limitations
Main and Sub Characters Coexist in Real and Online Lives
Metaverse Eliminates Real-World Anxieties, Reflects Limited Emotional Expression and True Faces
Reconsidering Ourselves Who Hate Interference and Control but Choose Safety and Convenience

On the 15th, visitors are experiencing Microsoft HoloLens 2 at the 2022 Metaverse Expo held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

I only searched the internet and visited shopping malls to look at fountain pens. After that, most of the sites I visited displayed stationery ads related to fountain pens. Most people have probably experienced this these days. In the past, IT companies utilized a system called Customer Relationship Management (CRM), created by IBM, for marketing. As the name suggests, it expanded the concept of customers from being transient to being subjects of continuous management. At that time, the importance of personal information was not a sensitive issue for either companies or users. Now, privacy is important, and crossing the line is considered a crime. Wherever you go, you are asked to consent to personal information usage. Ironically, if you do not accept this consent, you cannot enjoy the conveniences of daily life that you have been accustomed to. It feels like being trapped in an inescapable swamp. Most people probably now agree to terms without even reading them.

For some time now, our lives have depended on a personalized device called the ‘smartphone.’ This device absorbs even the faint memories of its owner. It also serves as a gateway to the cloud, which refers to the clouds in the sky near the boundary between the universe and the terrestrial world, accessible to anyone. Although smartphones look the same, IT companies have started to view them as entities with personalities. Like a bank account, they have an account. They use filters under the pretext of ‘customized information for that account.’ This method is called the ‘personalization algorithm.’ We do not know to what extent platform companies segment and adjust these filters, but through various channels including general searches, they classify and control us.

When you use social media, you get friend recommendations, and sometimes it feels like you are being connected only with people of similar tendencies. Although the world is vast and diverse with many opinions, we are forced to see only a limited part of it, not the whole. Even if the great beginning of personalization algorithms was user convenience, the result has been a distortion of human civilization and society. This phenomenon is called the ‘Filter Bubble.’ Ultimately, we only see what we want to see. Such optical filters that distort our vision can be abused. So-called fake news is an example, and it reportedly influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Until now, our real life and online life have coexisted. Of course, the two are not separate but deeply embedded in reality. A new term has emerged: ‘bonkae’ (original character) and a kind of ‘bukae’ (additional character), forming our identity. Even I, who have quite a few online friends, found that only people similar to my thoughts remained around me. The reason was not just the algorithm. I myself was moving that way. I was doing the very division I hated so much. In the world where we exist as bukae, we not only see only what we want to see but also show only the image we want to show. With fragments of information, we judge others, envy their lives, and hate the opposite side. Perhaps we have always lived wearing masks of hypocrisy.

Everland Metaverse offers three activities to enjoy in the virtual space: T-Express, Shooting Water Fun Parade Car Water Gun Fight, and Firefly Catching Experience. The photo shows models promoting the Everland Metaverse service. Photo by Everland [Image source=Yonhap News]

However, wearing that mask as a bukae has become easier. It seems we hide our true selves behind that mask. I felt ashamed of myself, who had been shouting for empathy and consideration through writing and speech. Like the title of a certain book, ‘I am only righteous when I write,’ I stood on the other side of a cracked land. True compassion and empathy mean accepting others' differences. But we have become trapped in a huge system we created ourselves and have lost this ability at some point. It is said that humans did not originally have the ability to be kind to others within a group. This ability was acquired through evolution as a species with compassion and empathy. It seems that we have lost the abilities accumulated through evolution in a short time trapped in the filter bubble. Perhaps because we know we are standing at a strange and awkward point now, people are increasingly feeling fatigued in these two worlds.

Meanwhile, a new fictional or virtual world is being created around us. This world is not something we can actually see or even touch. It is the so-called metaverse. Currently, this world is weakly connected to the real world. However, recent metaverse content often replaces reality rather than extending or coexisting with it. The term ‘virtuality’ is weak to express this, making it feel like an illusion through a lens, but it is certainly a real world we must face. Virtual does not mean fake. The bukae avatar there may have to live as an entity assigned an identifier, like a legal human being today. I imagine that substances composed not of the 118 elements we know but of imaginary materials could exist. As a chemical engineer, the idea of synthesizing imaginary substances is quite interesting.

Recently, the term ‘fairness’ has become an issue. It is because fairness cannot be found in the current civilization structure achieved by humanity. However, in the metaverse world, we might encounter opportunities for fairness that we have not achieved. If anyone can attend open lectures from prestigious universities and earn degrees, it could be a new opportunity for humanity tired of uniform fairness discourse. Especially, the reason why many young participants are involved is probably because there are opportunities and satisfaction in a world free from inequality and unfairness of the real world. The reason metaverse fits this era is probably because it can eliminate the anxiety factors existing in the real world. But I ponder this for a moment. We have lived wearing masks, but if we wear one more mask, could the true nature of humans be revealed? Perhaps we will finally see the truth that can only be met by wearing two masks. We might even become more equal, fair, and honest. But the true nature of humans is not only good.

Utopia and Dystopia. Photo by Getty Images

Although the initial birth may be utopian, there is considerable concern that a dystopian world will arise where problems in the real world are reflected or transformed in another form. Worse things could happen by exploiting the gaps in an imperfect world. Even now, behind the mask of anonymity, malicious comments and incidents like the Nth Room are openly occurring. The new world is one where human civilization, which used all five senses, must live with limited senses. Rather, suppressed and restricted emotions may be expressed, reflecting the raw human face with various discriminations and violence.

We have communicated by facing people, looking into their eyes, feeling the warmth of their voice and body movements, and exchanging emotions. So-called empathy is more than simple communication; it has contributed decisively to human evolution by passing down knowledge and emotions like a heritage. However, in a world using only some sensory organs, that ability will drastically decrease. You may have experienced misunderstandings caused by unintended sentences when communicating by text. The current representative social evil, hierarchy, may be replaced by life scores, making it even clearer to see one's position in the whole. The identification of the self in the narrow, uncomfortable, and painful reality and in the whole of the virtual world will pose philosophical questions to us. But it seems that the overall average of self-esteem has lowered at some point. Since when did we start to perceive the self as a position within the whole? The claim that individuals only have value within the whole may be leading us into a totalitarian system that strongly interferes with and controls our lives, the very totalitarianism we ourselves have hated.

George Orwell’s <1984> introduces the term ‘Big Brother.’ This term refers to the power that monopolizes information to manage society and first appeared in this novel. Orwell predicted that the starting point of a surveillance society is when safety is prioritized over freedom in times of war and disease. Recently, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the new Cold War between the U.S. and China, and infectious diseases, we long for the freedom of the past, but most experts talk about the new normal. They say we can never return to those days. They also talk about post-human. We ourselves are choosing safety and convenience. In the meantime, artificial intelligence and the metaverse emerge like Big Brother, so it is not entirely welcome. Isn’t it time to question the new world we must accept?

Byungmin Kim, Adjunct Professor, Nano Convergence School, Hallym University

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.