At the beginning of November, the local government of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, announced that the city will soon have its own metaverse, that is a virtual 3D space in which it will be possible to interact with other people, work and play, and that according to various tech savvy represents the future evolution of the internet. There are several startups and technology companies that are planning their own metaverse, in particular Meta, the company that controls Facebook and Instagram among other platforms: the one in Seoul, however, will be the first experiment of this type created by the local government of a large metropolis, with the precise idea of offering a series of services to its citizens.
The goal of the Seoul administration for the next few years is to become one of the first governments to offer services entirely in a virtual world, in which it will be possible to interact with other connected people simultaneously through avatars and through glasses and viewers for the virtual reality. In the Seoul metaverse it will be possible to do sightseeing on virtual buses, visit reconstructed ancient sites but also access various administrative procedures, connecting via telephone or computer and wearing special headsets and viewers similar to this one.
For now there are few concrete details on how the Seoul metaverse will work, but it is known that some of its features will be available as early as January 1, 2022, when the traditional ceremony of the Bosingak bell, which indicates the beginning of the new year, it will also be reproduced in virtual space. In 2023 a virtual platform will open dedicated to the consultation and provision of documents or services that can now only be requested from the Municipality and from the same year all the main cultural events of the city will also be held in the metaverse, which will be completed and operational by 2026.
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Seoul is already famous for its technology companies and video game culture, but in recent times the local government has attracted great attention for the desire to further develop the digital tools available to citizens. The administration has invested the equivalent of approximately 2.8 billion euros in a project that is known as “Seoul Vision 2030” and aims to make the city a global hub of new technologies, and which in turn it is part of a broader central government plan for industry growth and the development of artificial intelligence, among other things.
For the metaverse project alone, however, one of the several in which some young South Korean developers had already tried their hand, it will instead invest the equivalent of about 30 million euros over the next 5 years.
In Seoul, some exhibitions or lessons have been organized in virtual reality for some time, and to give the idea in October the mayor of the city Oh Se-hoon – or rather, his avatar – had attended a virtual conference to talk about the related projects to the future “smart city”. In a September presentation, in which he anticipated the announcement of the Seoul metaverse, Oh himself said that “the fourth industrial revolution and the explosion of 'contactless' culture during the coronavirus pandemic necessitated a change” in the way to which the local government provided its services.
As the Washington Post noted, South Koreans' reactions to the metaverse are understandably very mixed. Some seem enthusiastic about the idea of having the new virtual space available, while others have strong doubts that it will be a useful tool for the elderly population or that it is accessible to all, since the viewers needed to use it are less easily found. compared to smartphones and computers and in any case they cost several hundred euros. In addition, some technology experts heard by the Washington Post have pointed out that there are also security and privacy issues, elements that have been given the greatest attention in the development phase of the project, according to the Seoul government officials.
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