The Dark and Bright Sides of the Metaverse

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/107522

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    The Role of Head-Mounted Display (HMD)-Based Meta-Apps in Advancing Healthcare
    (2024-01-03) Dincelli, Ersin; Shekarian, Naser; Zhou, Xin; Ozkaynak, Mustafa
    The Metaverse is an envisioned shared virtual environment enabled by technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and blockchain. Head-mounted displays (HMDs) are a VR technology that provide users a more immersive and engaging experience. Consequently, there is a growing interest in exploring the applications of HMDs in healthcare. HMDs can revolutionize healthcare by providing interactive environments for medical training, remote consultations, and others. In addition, HMDs can facilitate the unobtrusive collection of health data, enabling objective measurement of emotions, activity, and other digital biomarkers that are indicators of human performance or well-being. This data can be used along with digital phenotyping to design real-time, personalized health interventions that can surpass conventional interventions. In this study, we synthesize literature review articles that examine the use of HMDs in healthcare to provide a holistic view of the current HMD-based research in healthcare and outline future research directions.
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    From Avatars to Allies: Exploring Team Collaboration in the Metaverse
    (2024-01-03) Olt, Christian; Hendriks, Patrick; Sturm, Timo; Moos, Clara C.
    This paper explores the application of virtual reality (VR) technologies in the metaverse for team collaboration, focusing on its advantages over traditional videoconferencing. We examine the opportunities the metaverse offers for virtual teams’ collaborative tasks and the factors that enable effective team collaboration. A lab experiment comparing Meta Horizon Workrooms (a VR platform for virtual meeting rooms) with Zoom demonstrated higher immersion, social presence, and collaboration scores for the virtual environment among the participants. Furthermore, we identify that the metaverse offers novel possibilities for virtual interaction and enables greater focus on tasks and team members compared to videoconferencing. We conclude that the metaverse successfully enhances virtual team collaboration, promoting innovative teamwork and knowledge sharing. However, further exploration of this technology, including attention to nonverbal communication and suitable usage scenarios, is suggested. These findings provide organizations with a foundation for considering the implementation of VR collaboration platforms in the metaverse.
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    Unveiling Stakeholder Perspectives on Privacy in the Metaverse: Case Study of a German Car Company
    (2024-01-03) Schulmeyer, Julia; Riethmüller, Sophie; Hess, Thomas
    Companies have turned their attention to becoming part of the metaverse, a persistent, multi-user, three-dimensional environment characterized by the fusion of virtual and physical elements. While the metaverse offers new ways to create value, related software and hardware components require massive amounts of user data, which can raise privacy concerns. In addition, privacy regulation is in its infancy, creating uncertainty about how to operate in a compliant manner. Building on the multi-stakeholder privacy framework, we explored the privacy stakeholders’ (user, management, policymakers) perspectives on the metaverse, analyzed their relationships, and identified measures to align their interests within a single case study of a German car company. The contribution is twofold. First, we demonstrate the importance of involving privacy stakeholders in the design of products and services in new online environments. Second, we propose privacy measures to reconcile the stakeholders’ interests in the metaverse, providing implications for managers and policymakers.
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    Unmasking Inequality in the Metaverse: A Study of Skin-Tone Bias in the CryptoPunks Market
    (2024-01-03) Han, Sungeun; Shi, Zhan
    While the metaverse offers opportunities to bridge the digital divide, it raises concerns regarding data privacy, ethical implications of avatar representation, and diversity and inclusion. This research investigates potential bias in CryptoPunks, one of the most valuable Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and performs multiple analyses to examine systematic differences between the light and dark skin-tone groups. Our results reveal the following: dark skin-tone punks are traded more frequently and valued based on the rarity relatively; the likelihood of owners having an Ethereum Name Service account is lower in the dark skin-tone group. These findings suggest that dark skin-tone punks are more likely to be treated as investment assets, while light skin-tone punks are often held for private values. Our research represents one of the first empirical investigations into various aspects of racial biases in NFTs. The findings provide valuable insights, highlighting the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the metaverse.
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    Introduction to the Minitrack on The Dark and Bright Sides of the Metaverse
    (2024-01-03) Yayla, Alper; Warkentin, Merrill; Dincelli, Ersin