Is Utopia Something Worth Investing In?

Investment in New Technologies can actually be investments in Utopia.

Utopia: (the idea of) a perfect society in which everyone works well with each other and is happy - Cambridge University Dictionary.

Declaration of interest: This story is a Collaboration / Funding appeal for the VRENAR project.

The nature of Investing

An investment is something we give in the hope that a benefit will be returned in the future.

Most financial investments are made in the hope of making profit.

What we ultimately seek with any investment is financial security.

The more money we have, the more we might feel we have financial security.

And yet, still, a nagging doubt exists. No matter how much money one might have stashed away, there is still no real guarantee of financial security.

This was illustrated to me most vividly in a recent conversation with a good friend, who has a relatively modest amount of money put aside for his retirement. He is five years younger than me, and thinks he might only have another ten or so left to live. Of course I disagreed intensely. He could easily live another thirty or more with good fortune.

He believes he might just have enough to last those ten years he expects, but still he works in a job he dislikes to add a little more. He lives in a trailer caravan, and is considering buying a small flat. He confided that he would love to know for certain the exact date he will die, so that he can know exactly when to cease working, with just enough money to budget for each remaining day, one by one.

I would extrapolate that basic wish to any living person. No matter how rich, or how poor. If we live to save money, this is the real reason at the root of it. We seek certainty of financial security, for us and our children, if we have any.

So the ultimate investment, is the one that would deliver to us certainty of financial security.

As such, certainty of financial security is literally priceless. Or is it?

The Nature of Utopia

As a baby boomer myself, the word “Utopia” has a certain stigma attached to it. It still instantly conjures up images of pot smoking hippies wearing flowers in their long hair, arms linked, dancing, smiling, in the park to the tune of “Let’s go to San Francisco”. That vision can kill any further thought on the matter. It can just seem like some silly pie in the sky dream that some folks used to have when they got stoned.

I’ve always been a practical person. Historically, if I could not immediately see a practical solution to a problem, I would tend to dismiss it as something not worth thinking any further about.

Even after 30 years as an Engineer, with 20 of those at senior Systems Engineering levels in all manner of multi-billion aerospace, space, and underwater systems, becoming expert at finding practical solutions to all manner of problems, I would still never have considered trying to find a solution for Utopia.

But it happened. By total accident, in an academic research context.

Even then, it took a good six months for me to recognise it, and confirm what it actually was.

Certainty of financial security, for all, leading to Utopia.

But indeed it does have a price.

Industrial Research

I’d carried out industrial research in the past, most recently with Cobham on the ASTRAEA UAV research project. Where each problem existed, we worked in teams to chip away at them, proposing and trying out different solutions, to eventually come up with one that worked, and could be refined to something practical. If the budget ran out first, we would chalk up the effort and expenditure to that point as useful, finding out what wouldn’t work, then no further outlay would be put on it.

In that sense, industrial research outlay is a little like gambling. Instinctively you know that there is a solution. All you need is a big enough bucket of money and time to throw at it, and eventually you will get a win. If the bucket of money is not big enough, you could lose.

Win some, lose some.

Remote-me

So in 2014, I started another of my own such gambles, with another new company, specifically to develop and bring to market a capability of flying a remote quadcopter type UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) in real time, in first person view, via the internet, using a VR type headset. I called this the “Remote-me” scenario.

The company was named Remmi Ltd; a multi-lingual anagram of “Remote-me”.

Granted, there were still many problems to be solved, but I was confident that if I kept chipping at it, whilst funding those efforts from consulting income, by continuing my usual full time Engineering work as a contracting consultant, eventually the solutions would become apparent. I also knew there would be plenty of possibilities for profit in the outcome, with many practical Use Cases, and I would be in a good position to switch my full time effort towards this immediately, to begin profiting from them.

Fast forward to almost two years later, and a fundamental physical limitation had become apparent. Data from the UAV to the controlling user in general, via the internet, took at least 100 ms. This implied a minimum round trip delay of 200 ms. Obviously such a laggy connection was of no practical use in trying to control a UAV, which could be moving quite fast, at several metres per second.

A work-around became apparent. VR users could obviously interact with virtual world type internet connected games with no apparent lag. So a user could interact with a virtual UAV avatar with no apparent lag. The real UAV could in theory; create a virtual replica of its real surrounding scenery, around a UAV avatar in a virtual world. Then all it would have to do is track the position of the UAV avatar, which in turn could be controlled by the user, navigating the UAV avatar with VR equipment around the auto-generated scenery in the virtual world.

Easier said than done, as the technology to dynamically create the virtual scenery around the UAV; real time Structure from Motion (SfM), from video footage, did not yet exist. But I knew it was a subject of intense academic research, so a solution for that would most likely appear very soon.

It was time to move the Remote-me project to an academic research environment.

Academic Research

Remote-me

The Remote-me project was proposed as a PhD candidate research topic to the Open University in the UK at the end of 2015. I began working on it in that capacity after acceptance of the project in February 2016.

The main research question of the topic, is whether or not it is practically possible to fly a UAV using such a scheme, with some other technical and ethical questions.

A year later, in 2017, in a project called Bundlefusion, UC Stanford finally demonstrated something similar to the SfM capability I needed to complete the Remote-me scenario.

Since then I’ve been working on a prototype, to demonstrate Remote-me, based on an adaptation of Bundlefusion, which is an open source project.

But the main discovery during the academic research to date, turned out to be much, much bigger than just the solution to Remote-me.

Associated Abstract Research

In academic research, unlike industrial research, we are invited, even encouraged, to follow lines of enquiry which may not be directly relevant to the success of the main object. A little like jumping down rabbit holes, to see what might be down there.

That activity, extending from the concepts of the Remote-me project, elicits a series of concepts, which progress naturally to a surprising result when the collective outcome is considered as a whole.

Continuity of Shared Experience

A new concept, relevant to both the technology of AR equipments, and VR equipments became apparent, from various literatures.

A long standing problem, resulting in much AR equipment industrial research, is how to deliver continuity of shared experience.

A manufacturer of a particular AR equipment, say a wearable visor, can easily create an environment which is shared amongst a collective of users of the same type of visor within a limited physical environment, for example, all users in a particular room.

To extend that shared experience across several rooms, and maybe even outside to a street scene, requires significantly more software sophistication, and significantly higher computing power in the visors of each user, which between them must store all of the details of all of the environment in scope. This can be extended by the addition of commonly accessible central servers to hold extended scenery data, but even then there will still be limits as to how much data can be practically accommodated on those servers.

This limitation, together with incompatibilities between each visor manufacturer implementing their own solution, results in the users of different equipments in the same geographical area not sharing the same experiences.

The end result is limited utility, and a subsequent lack of public adoption of AR technology. It is still very much a niche enthusiast / specialist domain.

The V-world

The solution, delivering full continuity of shared experience, is an idea which I’ve called a V-world. This is is an exhaustive geographically mapped virtual equivalent of the whole real world. It can be created by some simple modifications to existing virtual world type game environments, with an architectural requirement that it must be infinitely scaleable, thus distributed, rather than centralised.

I am not the only one to have had this vision (Links to be supplied).

If all visors have common access to something like this, giving complete continuity of shared experience, then a whole new world of possibilities becomes apparent.

This video produced by QLBeans of Belgrade, is a good illustration of how the V-world would underlay the real world, seen through AR wearables: http://www.qlbeans.com/matchmove-showreel-2017/

The relevance of Structure from Motion (SfM)

By equipping AR visors with SfM, or similar scanning capability, then a dynamically updated V-world becomes possible in theory, updated “On the fly”, from the scenery captured around all visor users.

Add also the related VR technologies of automatic avatar creation, and motion capture (Mo-cap), and we see that even live people and animals can appear in the V-world moving in real time.

Whoa. Now we can see the capability of visor users being able to visit all others, anywhere else in the world in virtual form.

In fact, we see a whole new form of immersive social media.

Privacy and Data Hosting Concerns

With this new form of immersive social media, we see also see a multitude of ethical concerns, with many new possibilities for privacy violation and data abuse, in addition to those we are already painfully aware of in current forms of social media. And, just how could all of that data be hosted?

We look at the existing possibilities and see that the only practical architecture that could possibly host the potentially unlimited data requirements of a complete V-world, is some form of distributed peer-to-peer network.

We note that this also happens to resemble the architectures of trustless crypto-currency technologies, i.e. distributed ledger technology (DLT), such as that offered by IOTA.

So we consider the possibilities of crypto-currency technology applied to the data of AR visor users with access to a V-world, and we see solutions to the ethical concerns of privacy and data protection. Additionally, we also see possibilities of financial transactions which could be associated with exchanges of that data.

With all of those observations made, we then consider the societal effects of such capabilities.

Societal Effects

We compare with the problems of existing social media

We look firstly at the problems which exist with our current system of networking, mainly social media.

Wisdom of the Crowd

We consider the phenomenon of the Wisdom of the Crowd, and we see that the basic requirements for this are not being met by current forms of social media. We see that users do not in fact have a direct shared view of their environment, only a view which is relayed to them by others, most often by a chain of others.

We note that this results in the generation, propagation, and sustainment of all manner of dangerous, divisive, and inflammatory misinformation. Because most users do not have a direct view of the environment discussed, they understandably cannot distinguish truth from fiction.

Network Effect

We look secondly at the phenomenon of the network effect, and we see that the basic requirements for this also are not being met by current forms of social media, in that connectivity between users is only selectively given, depending on who they choose themselves, and on various algorithms and mechanisms used within the platform, usually profit driven, which offers further users to connect to.

We compare this with with the case of V-world connected visor users, and we see that any can choose to visit any part of their environment. All have an easily accessible shared view of that environment, and all have visibility of all other users in that environment.

Thus with our new form of social media, both the Wisdom of the Crowd, and the network effect are fully maximised, in comparison to the effects of current social media.

Profit and Value

We note that existing social media profits are made solely on the data of human activity, and we observe that this activity is valuable.

We look at how value is created endogenously within existing crypto-currency networks, and observe that value itself is wholly defined by the human activity within, and that this results from the network effect, and the Wisdom of the Crowd. We conclude that by maximising those things, the value of people in such communities is maximised.

Democracy and Monetisation

We go on to speculate what the mechanisms of democratic software could be used for in our new form of social media network. We see that users could be paid for expressing their likes and dislikes, of what they see in their environment, via eye tracking, expressions, and gestures, and that these are in fact a form of votes. Voting issues could not only be effortlessly voted on by users, and rewards created for all in return, but users themselves could also create those voting issues, and all again be rewarded in return. Further, the environment, both in the real world, and in the V-world, could be adjusted according to the outcomes of those voting issues, with rewards paid to those carrying out the adjustments.

In such a scenario, significant real value would be added to the V-world, but more importantly, also to the real world, by those users, and in so doing, they would be enhancing the value of the world, as well as their own value as a community. Such a community would rapidly become very attractive to be a member of. The network effect would be far greater than any seen before.

Crypto-Community Value

We compare again with the value enhancement properties seen in general crypto-communities, where the majority of the community itself actively does little other than hoard wealth, with a relatively small number working on software, and we see that even non working individuals effectively receive income from this. We conclude that with a much higher proportion of people actively contributing to the community, the rate of community value growth, and thus the benefits to each community member, would be much higher than any seen before.

We note models of enhanced endogenous value growth further reinforce that view.

We conclude that the network itself could reward each member of the community accordingly, by monetising the value adding activity of each, and paying it to them individually.

Corollary

The following is apparent:

The more members added to the network, the more powerful it would become.

All members would effectively have an unlimited income, generated at the very least by their presence on the network, expressing their likes and dislikes of what they see in the world. That income would increase both as a function of the number of members in the network, and of their activity on the network.

At some point in the network expansion, specific to each particular member depending on their activity on the network, they would become fully self sufficient. Beyond that point, further expansion of the network would result in increased disposable income for those particular members. At some further point, all members, including even all newly joining members, could become fully self sufficient. Further expansion beyond that point would result in an expansion of disposable income for all members, including new.

The world itself would be changed for the better by such a network, with outcomes shaped by popular vote, by members with a balanced, full view of their environment, and of their peers, all over the world.

New modes of direct member-to-member trading would appear, with creators, performers, and professionals of all manner being able to do business directly with others.

Privacy mechanisms allowing users to select what data they wished to present to the network, could be easily implemented using the inherent trustless security mechanisms of the network, allowing users to select between no data and no income, full data, full income, or anything in between, adjustable in real time according to their personal needs.

The network itself would present a large number of consumers with large quantities of spare income to the profit making world, who could continue competing to manufacture desirable products for that new free market, (For example, visors) thus complementing the conventional profit-making business world. Each individual could be empowered both as a V-world user, and as a member of profit seeking business, if they so chose.

There would be far less inclination in such a world to covet the wealth of others, as each member would already have certainty of financial security.

People would have no need for, and be less inclined to hoard wealth, recognising the benefits instead of allowing hoarded wealth to circulate.

With no real reason to always seek wealth from others, there would be far less inclination to violate privacy, as the vast majority of privacy violating behaviour that we see to date is ultimately to pursue, or to protect financial interests. So privacy would become far less of an issue.

The benefits of the network would be offered to even the poorest of people, with subsidies voted for, and contributed to by the majority of people already in the network, with a clear view of the predicaments of those lesser privileged, with nothing to lose, but everything to gain by adding those extra members to the network.

Environmental impacts to the world would be reduced by the activities of the people in the network, with a clear view of the damages caused, solutions offered, and disposable funds to finance.

Similarly, there would be less tendency towards war, more towards collaboration.

Research Summary

We look at the points above, and could continue listing, but already we have a set of characteristics that unmistakably look like a basis for everyone working well with each other in a near-perfect society. This is something very close to the Cambridge English definition of Utopia given earlier.

The key point is this; No further need to compete with one another for profit, comes hand in hand with a much higher tendency towards agreement and collaboration, especially with everyone having the same clear view of their environment.

All of the technologies mentioned above exist. None are pie in the sky. We already have this capability within reach. All we need to do is make that ultimate investment, to integrate those technologies, to make it happen. Utopia really is within our reach.

My own role, and my own ultimate investment, is to dedicate my thirty years of Systems Engineering experience, to faithfully carrying out the integration of those technologies as above as needed. This has already been at the cost of my former career in “defence” aerospace Engineering consulting.

History

I created a project named VRENAR (VR enabled AR) early in 2017 to identify this activity. I also set up a UK Non-profit named “Remmi Research CIC” to legally encapsulate the project. This company could be used as such, or the project could be otherwise encapsulated, or even absorbed. All is open to discussion.

An unsuccessful ICO attempt was made to obtain project funding at that time, but this was for the best, as it turns out the project would probably have failed, if the ICO had raised funds, due to being tied to the wrong form of token (ERC-20, which has scaling issues, from dependence on Ethereum scaleability).

Analysis

The only fully scaleable token solution now appears to be IOTA, which also happens to be highly suited to interfacing VRENAR wearables (visors), with the IOTA datamarketplace. VRENAR proposes to be both producer and consumer of the data from a population of users with visor wearables, using the datamarketplace as (a) a protection mechanism for users, and (b) an interface for paying users for their data generated.

The final link is to a virtual world which can be used as the basis for the V-world. The best possibility for this remains High Fidelity. It happens to also have a built-in crypto-currency called HFC, which as yet is unreleased for sale, though that could change soon. I hope to be able to talk to them again soon.

Current State

There are comprehensive models of VRENAR in SysML/UML, and Simulink Form. These models are variously executable and capable of generating code. My plan is to create a working prototype of the system, so as to obtain funds for the refinement by a small team of open source developers.

Another question which often comes up, is what happens if we get beaten to the post by another project? My answer is; we would celebrate, as our mission would be accomplished. Why would it come as a disappointment if someone else does all the hard work to give us Utopia? Towards that common goal, collaboration with other projects is highly desirable.

On timescale, this is limited mainly by the time it will take for manufacturers to produce reasonable wearables. Meantime, there are many sources of funding who can be approached, including the IOTA foundation, which I am already working on, but those things take longer than my own finances have lasted already.

Plan

I propose to complete and raise funds from the Remote-me component of VRENAR, by funding from IOTA-ISO. This is a scheme within the IOTA community to raise funds from intermediate services. I propose to offer the Remote-me service on this basis. A physical demo of the service in action will be available, in the form of a prototype Remote-me UAV.

I propose to equip VRENAR network members initially with the ability to connect with other forms of hardware, to enable endogenous growth, and thus an income for members of the network at the earliest opportunity, prior to the availability of fully capable wearables.

I suspect that the development time will be much less, due to the unprecedented scale of the network effects we will see, and the resulting endogenous value growth which will be seen on the project, and thus the funds which will be available for development.

So my conservative long term estimate is 10 years, to deliver a V-world network, in which at least 70% of a minimum of 250,000 members will have become self sufficient, achieving certainty of financial security. But it could be as little as five years to that kind of figure. This would be the point I would define as having delivered something close to Utopia to those members. Beyond that point, and possibly even before that point, network expansion would be very rapid due network effect.

To do this, VRENAR needs to begin immediately building a community.

It needs another founding champion, apart from just me.

Someone with means, equipped, and willing to join as a co-founder, with funds to cover at least our joint immediate needs for income.

To that someone, and to anyone else expecting to live 10 years or more, or with children, my answer is unwaveringly;

Yes. Utopia is very much something worth investing in.

join@vrenar.io

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Updates 17/01/2019:

The IOTA-ISO project mentioned in this article has since been discontinued for reasons internal to their business, unconnected with VRENAR, which continues to seek funding from other sources.

A VRENAR CEO Specification now exists, linked to “Founding Champion” above.

Updates 22/01/2020: