The History and Manifestations of the Metaverse in Contemporary Literature

Marlon Semuel Contantin Kansil, University of IndonesiaFollow
Wanting Sun, University of IndonesiaFollow

Abstract

The metaverse, an interactive and immersive virtual world, has emerged as a critical theme in contemporary literature, significantly impacting narratives and character development. This paper explores the history and literary manifestations of the metaverse, investigating its influence on identity, space, and social interactions. We find that the metaverse supports flexible and individualistic identities, reshaping how characters and readers understand themselves. The digital space of the metaverse provides a dynamic setting for moral and emotional conflicts, enriching the literary aesthetics of space. Furthermore, literature plays a crucial role in both shaping and reflecting the concept of the metaverse, employing symbolism and analogy to address the cultural and social transformations driven by technology. Our findings indicate that the metaverse is not merely a virtual realm but also a catalyst for literary innovation, offering detailed and nuanced perspectives on digital society. This paper enhances the understanding of the metaverse's impact on modern life and sheds light on the ways technology is reshaping contemporary literary narratives.

Bahasa Abstract

Metaverse, sebuah dunia virtual interaktif dan imersif, telah muncul sebagai tema kritis dalam sastra kontemporer, secara signifikan memengaruhi narasi dan pengembangan karakter. Makalah ini mengeksplorasi sejarah dan manifestasi sastra dari metaverse, menginvestigasi pengaruhnya terhadap identitas, ruang, dan interaksi sosial. Kami menemukan bahwa metaverse mendukung identitas yang fleksibel dan individualistis, membentuk ulang cara karakter dan pembaca memahami diri mereka sendiri. Ruang digital metaverse menyediakan latar yang dinamis untuk konflik moral dan emosional, memperkaya estetika sastra tentang ruang. Lebih lanjut, sastra memainkan peran krusial dalam membentuk dan merefleksikan konsep metaverse, menggunakan simbolisme dan analogi untuk membahas transformasi budaya dan sosial yang didorong oleh teknologi. Temuan kami mengindikasikan bahwa metaverse bukan sekadar alam virtual, tetapi juga katalis untuk inovasi sastra, menawarkan perspektif yang terperinci dan bernuansa tentang masyarakat digital. Makalah ini meningkatkan pemahaman tentang dampak metaverse terhadap kehidupan modern dan menyoroti cara-cara teknologi membentuk ulang narasi sastra kontemporer.

References

Adamopoulou, E., & Moussiades, L. (2020). Chatbots: History, technology, and applications. Machine Learning with Applications, 2(November), 100006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mlwa.2020.100006

Alpala, L. O., Quiroga-Parra, D. J., Torres, J. C., & Peluffo-Ordóñez, D. H. (2022). Smart Factory Using Virtual Reality and Online Multi-User: Towards a Metaverse for Experimental Frameworks. Applied Sciences (Switzerland), 12(12). https://doi.org/10.3390/app12126258

Ayiter, E. (2019). Spatial poetics, place, non-place and storyworlds: Intimate spaces for metaverse avatars. Technoetic Arts, 17(1–2). https://doi.org/10.1386/TEAR_00013_1

Belk, R., Humayun, M., & Brouard, M. (2022). Money, possessions, and ownership in the Metaverse: NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Web3 and Wild Markets. Journal of Business Research, 153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.08.031

Bibri, S. E. (2022). The Social Shaping of the Metaverse as an Alternative to the Imaginaries of Data-Driven Smart Cities: A Study in Science, Technology, and Society. Smart Cities, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities5030043

Bimber, B. (2003). Information and American democracy: Technology in the evolution of political power. In Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615573

Brüske, A., & Wellner, I. M. (2021). Space, poetics and corporality in borderlands/la frontera by gloria anzaldúa. border dynamics between literary genres and modes of perception. In Mitologias Hoy (Vol. 23). https://doi.org/10.5565/REV/MITOLOGIAS.789

Buhalis, D., Lin, M. S., & Leung, D. (2023). Metaverse as a driver for customer experience and value co-creation: implications for hospitality and tourism management and marketing. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-05-2022-0631

Díaz, J. E. M. (2020). Virtual World as a Complement to Hybrid and Mobile Learning. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 15(22). https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v15i22.14393

Donets, P., & Krynytska, N. (2022). Here Be Dragons: The Evolution of Cyberspace from William Gibson to Neal Stephenson. American, British and Canadian Studies, 38(1). https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2022-0005

Dulina, A. V. (2020). In the center of a circle: poetics of space in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and H. Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick, or The Whale.” Litera, 8. https://doi.org/10.25136/2409-8698.2020.8.33584

Dutilleux, M., & Chang, M. (2022). Metaverse Future Addiction Concerned for Human-Being. International Multilingual Journal of Science and Technology (IMJST), 7.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Baabdullah, A. M., Ribeiro-Navarrete, S., Giannakis, M., Al-Debei, M. M., Dennehy, D., Metri, B., Buhalis, D., Cheung, C. M. K., Conboy, K., Doyle, R., Dubey, R., Dutot, V., Felix, R., Goyal, D. P., Gustafsson, A., Hinsch, C., Jebabli, I., … Wamba, S. F. (2022). Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 66(July), 102542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.102542

Egliston, B., & Carter, M. (2021). Critical questions for Facebook’s virtual reality: data, power and the metaverse. Internet Policy Review, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.4.1610

Elem, E. (2022). Metaverse Framework : A Case Study on E-Learning. 1–13.

Fox, J. J. (2006). The Poetic Power of Space (J. Fox (ed.); 2nd ed.). Australian National University.

Gadalla, E., Keeling, K., & Abosag, I. (2013a). Metaverse-retail service quality: A future framework for retail service quality in the 3D internet. Journal of Marketing Management, 29(13–14), 1493–1517. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2013.835742

Gersdorf, C. (2008). America/deserta: Postmodernism and the poetics of space. Anglia, 126(2). https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2008.043

Golf-Papez, M., Heller, J., Hilken, T., Chylinski, M., de Ruyter, K., Keeling, D. I., & Mahr, D. (2022). Embracing falsity through the metaverse: The case of synthetic customer experiences. Business Horizons, 65(6), 739–749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2022.07.007

Guo, H., & Gao, W. (2022). Metaverse-Powered Experiential Situational English-Teaching Design: An Emotion-Based Analysis Method. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.859159

Han, D. I. D., Bergs, Y., & Moorhouse, N. (2022). Virtual reality consumer experience escapes: preparing for the metaverse. Virtual Reality, 26(4), 1443–1458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-022-00641-7

Hirsch, M. (2008). The generation of postmemory. In Poetics Today (Vol. 29, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2007-019

Huang, X. (2023). What is the Metaverse?—In the view of philosophical perspective. Metaverse, 4(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.54517/m.v4i1.2157

kadry, amira. (2022). The Metaverse Revolution and Its Impact on the Future of Advertising Industry. Journal of Design Sciences and Applied Arts, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.21608/jdsaa.2022.129876.1171

Kempna-Pieniążek, M. (2022). Confined in an Infinite Abyss: Outer Space (and Its Poetics) in Werner Herzog’s Documentaries. Bialostockie Studia Literaturoznawcze, 2022(21). https://doi.org/10.15290/bsl.2022.21.07

Kraus, S., Kanbach, D. K., Krysta, P. M., Steinhoff, M. M., & Tomini, N. (2022). Facebook and the creation of the metaverse: radical business model innovation or incremental transformation? International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 28(9), 52–77. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-12-2021-0984

Le, Q. H. (2021). The Poetics of Mythological Spaces in Contemporary Vietnamese Prose from 1986 to Present. International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. https://doi.org/10.53333/ijicc2013/15905

López Cambronero, M. (2023). Metaverse, Religions and Metahumans: A Window to a Hypercontrolled Post-pandemic World. Scientia et Fides, 11(1), 121–135. https://doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2023.010

Ma, J. (2022). Movies in the Metaverse Perspective. Advances in Education, Humanities and Social Science Research, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.56028/aehssr.1.2.433

Pan, Y. (2016). Heading toward Artificial Intelligence 2.0. Engineering, 2(4), 409–413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.ENG.2016.04.018

Park, S. M., & Kim, Y. G. (2022). A Metaverse: Taxonomy, Components, Applications, and Open Challenges. IEEE Access, 10. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3140175

Raičević, A., & Stevanović, V. (2020). Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of space: Inverse dreambook for interpretation of thinking by means of building. Arhitektura i Urbanizam, 51. https://doi.org/10.5937/a-u0-28495

Rauschnabel, P. A., Felix, R., Hinsch, C., Shahab, H., & Alt, F. (2022). What is XR? Towards a Framework for Augmented and Virtual Reality. Computers in Human Behavior, 133(March), 107289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107289

Ritterbusch, G. D., & Teichmann, M. R. (2023). Defining the Metaverse: A Systematic Literature Review. IEEE Access, 11. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3241809

Seo, S. M., & Kimm, M. J. (2023). Analysis of Virtual Reality Movies: Focusing on the Effect of Virtual Reality Movie’s Distinction on User Experience. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 1836 CCIS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36004-6_42

Sloterdijk, P. (2019). Spheres theory: Talking to myself about the poetics of space. Harvard Design Magazine, 2019-January(47).

Szuba, M., & Wolfreys, J. (2019). The Poetics of Space and Place in Scottish Literature. In The Poetics of Space and Place in Scottish Literature.

Thaller, M. (2019). INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION AND HISTORY. Perm University Herald - History, 2019(3). https://doi.org/10.17072/2219-3111-2019-3-159-174

Troudart, M. (2016). The poetics of space: A dialogue between Gaston Bachelard and sandplay therapy. Journal of Sandplay Therapy, 25(1).

Wang, F. Y., Qin, R., Wang, X., & Hu, B. (2022). MetaSocieties in Metaverse: MetaEconomics and MetaManagement for MetaEnterprises and MetaCities. In IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems (Vol. 9, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSS.2022.3145165

Wang, Q., Li, R., Wang, Q., & Chen, S. (2021). Non-Fungible Token (NFT): Overview, Evaluation, Opportunities and Challenges. http://arxiv.org/abs/2105.07447

Wang, Y., Su, Z., Zhang, N., Xing, R., Liu, D., Luan, T. H., & Shen, X. (2023). A Survey on Metaverse: Fundamentals, Security, and Privacy. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 25(1), 319–352. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2022.3202047

YURTTAŞ, M. K. (2023). POSTHUMAN INTERVENTIONS TO ARCHITECTURAL SPACE BY FOOD IN PERFORMANCE ART. Yıldız Journal of Art and Design, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.47481/yjad.1247126

Zarkadakis, G. (2016). In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence. Publishers Weekly, 263(4), 195. http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=e5bb4b88-4f60-48e7-a09f-64c1b64f6055%40sessionmgr4006

Zhou, M., Leenders, M. A. A. M., & Cong, L. M. (2018). Ownership in the virtual world and the implications for long-term user innovation success. Technovation, 78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2018.06.002

Zuiderwijk, A., Chen, Y.-C., & Salem, F. (2021). Implications of the use of artificial intelligence in public governance: A systematic literature review and a research agenda. Government Information Quarterly, 38(3), 101577. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101577

Zyda, M. (2022). Let’s Rename Everything “the Metaverse!” Computer, 55(3), 124–129. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2021.3130480

Recommended Citation

Kansil, Marlon Semuel Contantin and Sun, Wanting (2025) "The History and Manifestations of the Metaverse in Contemporary Literature," Journal of Strategic and Global Studies: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 2.
DOI: 10.7454/jsgs.v8i1.1159
Available at: https://scholarhub.ui.ac.id/jsgs/vol8/iss1/2

Download