[Opinion] Urgent Need to Train Convergence Talent for the Metaverse

Human life has been moving into the digital world since the 1990s. The digitalization of our lives has been ongoing for a long time and continues to this day.

Lineage, Cyworld, and other platforms where many people can communicate and live online can all be considered forms of the metaverse (expanded virtual world).

Humanity was slowly moving toward the metaverse when the unprecedented event of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. This accelerated the pace of that movement, and at some point, we began to accept life online as completely natural.

The shift to the digital world is not simply about transferring our lives into digital form. Life online can also change our life in the real world, so the impact of moving to the digital world is bidirectional. Although this sounds plausible, it may not be easy to grasp.

For example, in the real world, frequently visiting the house of an ex-lover to see how they are doing would be considered very abnormal and inappropriate. Depending on the severity, it could even be a crime, so caution is necessary. On Cyworld, however, people often visited the homepage of an ex-lover without leaving any visit records, so such behavior was common. Many may recall making such mistakes. On Cyworld, one could find themselves frequently doing things that would be impossible in real life.

Life in the metaverse is highly likely to be completely different from the life we understand. Therefore, much consideration must be given to the infrastructure, living environment, and direction of life in the metaverse, and social consensus must be reached. It is obvious that understanding the metaverse must precede such social consensus.

Thus, workforce development is urgent. Currently, most metaverse education is technology-focused. When technically skilled personnel who lack understanding of society lead social changes, unintended social problems arise. The author believes that while it is important to use technology to create digital worlds, it is even more important to socially plan these new worlds. Social planning requires understanding all aspects of our society.

For this reason, education that fosters integrative thinking about society as a whole within the metaverse is necessary. Only when talents who encompass not just technology but also economics, business, society, humanities, arts, and architecture plan and create the metaverse world will we be truly prepared to live a proper life in the metaverse.

Ki-Hoon Hong, Professor, Department of Business Administration, Hongik University