[Kim Byung-min's Science Village] Alpha, Delta, Omicron... Where Are We Heading Now?

Coronavirus from China to Our Country in One Month
Past Spatial Isolation Due to Lack of Transportation
Invention of Transportation Filled with Human Curiosity
European Microbes Reaching South America
Columbus's Great Voyage Devastates the New World

Byungmin Kim, Adjunct Professor at Hallym University Nano Convergence School

‘Columbus, Airbus, Metaverse…’ ‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo…’

During my military service, my duty was as an operations soldier using the phonetic alphabet for communications. In military operations, to avoid confusion in communication, the English alphabet is not used as is; instead, words containing the letters are used. Some alphabets used in specialized fields are from Greek. In mathematics and science, pi (π) and theta (θ), which represent the ratio of a circle’s circumference and angles, are widely used. Of course, there are somewhat unfamiliar ones to the general public like epsilon (ε), lambda (λ), and mu (μ), but there are also letters frequently used in daily life such as alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), delta (δ), and omega (ω).

However, an unfamiliar Greek alphabet has entered everyday life: Omicron. It appeared as the name to distinguish variants of the COVID-19 virus. Until recently, the dominant strain was the fourth variant, the Delta virus. Omicron is the 13th in order. There is no special meaning in the name or order; the alphabets were assigned in the order the variants were discovered. The important thing is that while we have been struggling through the pandemic, the virus has also become very industrious.

The COVID-19 virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China. Looking at the map, it is a distant place that requires going inland about the same distance as from Seoul to Shanghai. The infectious disease started in Wuhan in December 2019, and the first confirmed case in my city, Goyang, South Korea, appeared in January the following year. It took roughly about a month to arrive over that long distance. In the past, physical terrain and distance must have been harsh boundaries for human movement. For humans who originally had no wings, traveling far away must have been a dreadful and fearful thing. Without changes in transportation that eliminated harsh distances and terrain, most people would have feared leaving their homes. Perhaps they even thought that such boundaries and spatial isolation were safer.

Pangaea: All Continents Connected in the Paleozoic Era
Divided into Six but Emotionally Connected
Vertical Hierarchy Formed Through Civilizational Integration

Humans are creatures full of curiosity. Eventually, transportation took that curiosity out of the realm of imagination and brought it into the real world. In 1493, people crossed the rough Atlantic Ocean by ship. But it wasn’t just people who crossed from Europe; animals, plants, and microorganisms on their bodies crossed as well. There were living beings where they arrived too. So, native and foreign life forms encountered each other unexpectedly. They were moved to places without ecological predators. Starting with smallpox in 1518, diseases entered one after another like an airplane making a smooth landing on a runway, devastating South America until the 17th century. About 500 years ago, ecologically, the Atlantic Ocean was erased from maps, and the boundaries between the Americas, Europe, and Africa were joined by the event known as Columbus’s voyage. However, before the current six continents formed, there was a time when the continents were connected as one. In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener called this supercontinent Pangaea. The name derives from the Greek word pangaia, meaning ‘whole earth.’ This period was about 250 million years ago, and the current continental shapes began to form about 65 million years ago.

Today, six massive continents are separated by vast oceans, and within continents, countries are divided by numerous borders. But the skies have always been open. Before the pandemic, 225,000 Airbus planes flew daily over the Earth, transporting people, animals, plants, and the products of civilization. Sometimes we hear the phrase ‘without borders,’ referring to an era of hyperspace where the boundaries of continents and countries are meaningless, and the whole world is connected as one. Today’s transportation acts like threads sewing humanity’s home into a vast Pangaea. Recently, Omicron first appeared in Botswana, Africa, but seeing it become the dominant strain in our country shows that current borders and continents are just logical distinctions, and boundaries seem meaningless.

Not only the skies but also online platforms have made the Earth into a single emotional community. Modern humans believe they live in the same civilizational community. This is felt more strongly these days. People worldwide dance to Korean songs and make Dalgona candy. Although this continental fusion of civilization appears horizontal, another vertical hierarchy is formed. We compare and compete with people we have never met and may never meet. We line up the whole world and check our position daily. To climb even one step higher, we invoke keywords like growth and efficiency. We live busy and diligent lives, and although we seem to have enough to live on, the sense of deprivation grows proportionally with the expanded space. Still, we have believed this is right.

Metaverse as a New World in the Era of Infectious Diseases
New Discrimination for the Unfamiliar
Utilitarianism of Greatest Happiness Not Always the Answer
Need to Consider Coexistence and Compassion

But one day, it became an ecological chaos. How is it now? Was the phrase ‘without borders’ that we believed in really right? Suddenly, all real-world borders were closed. The boundaries and isolation that once seemed like they might cause backwardness or look like isolationism are now openly enforced. People feel safer because of this. Humanity, which once called for small government roles, is now fascinated by strong governments. The institutional and ethical values we believed in are now on trial. For example, if hospital beds are insufficient due to infectious diseases, we might have to choose who gets a bed between a hopeless elderly patient already occupying one and a newly confirmed young patient. Everything is chaotic. At the same time, we are doing another great fusion: the metaverse (extended virtual world). The real and virtual worlds are already being fused. For example, snow scooped up in Finland’s cold ‘Winter Wonderland Machine’ is sprinkled in a Raffles City store in hot Singapore. When two worlds combine, wonderful things happen. Perhaps the metaverse could be an outlet to resolve the widening gaps and inequalities intensified after neoliberalism. It might make possible things that cannot be achieved in the real world. But before this great fusion is completed, we should consider whether there are aspects we have not yet thought about.

Recently, I saw an elderly couple in front of an ordering kiosk installed in a restaurant. They touched the screen a few times and then turned away and left. One might ask why they didn’t just get help from an employee, but the helplessness of becoming dependent on others cannot be helped. Now, if you cannot adapt to the changed world, you become a target of discrimination. Those elderly people were digitally isolated and a concrete target of discrimination in the contactless era, where companies try to reduce costs. For services like social networking services (SNS), not using them might be fine, but basic means of livelihood are another matter. The body still exists in the physical world, but life must exist in the matrix to enjoy daily life.

Many recent metaverse projects are quite interesting. But I feel that all these blessings might only apply to those who accept change. It’s like a passport that only those vaccinated and carrying antibodies can enjoy. Whether intentional or not, some may feel that they must obey rather than participate in this huge machine-like world. I sometimes think that I might also become helpless in front of change like those elderly people. When that time comes, I might think that giving up most of my way of life and isolating myself is safer.

In mathematics, there is a logical symbol meaning ‘all’ (All). It is represented by an upside-down letter A, ‘∀’. And the symbol ‘?’ means ‘not an element’ of a group or set. So, it involves a kind of subtraction. What logical symbol was programmed into the huge machine called the future approaching us? Was the helplessness felt by the elderly an intentional subtraction calculated by utilitarian logic? Or should it be considered an unforeseen error? Someone must contemplate the whole (∀). It is not always right to apply a utilitarian standard that speaks only of the greatest good for the greatest number without any consideration. Are we now like Columbus, carrying diseases to the New World? Without an answer, I send my own signal to the night sky of the universe: Whiskey Hotel Echo Romeo Echo Alpha Romeo Echo Whiskey Echo Golf Oscar India November Golf?…Where are we going?