The Spatial Web

by Gabriel René

  In AR or VR, the device is merely a window into a world where multiple layers of content can be overlayed on top of one another. Reality itself then becomes both the actual experience and also simultaneously, the interface for interacting. For example, you may be able to see messages from friends, entertainment published by favorite artists, instructions for a work assignment, all viewable at the same time by any filter or query, similar to tabs on a browser.

  As the value of these new digital layers of content and data increases, the quantity will grow exponentially, especially in high traffic and complex areas such as city centers, industrial areas, and transportation hubs. In order for people to interact naturally and seamlessly in the digital world, the relevant content needs to be made available at the right time for the right purpose, and in the proper context. Managing, filtering, and securing these layers of content poses one of the biggest challenges to the Spatial Web—we address the problem with what we call Channels .

  Channels are worldwide layers of content or interaction from a specific source or organization. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat can all have worldwide channels that can be seen simultaneously, enabling users to see the content posted, based on where it was published rather than a list of posts in the feed based on the time published. Any person, organization, or municipality can publish content into the world, and so technically there could be an unlimited number of potential channels. The right to access the channel is up to the publisher who sets the conditions for who can view, interact, post, edit, and transact. Similar to web browsers, channels may come with plugins that enable new engagement possibilities, allowing the platform to naturally evolve and innovate.

  When a user enters a space, the AR/VR browser searches for all available channels and then, based on that user’s preferences, permissions, and privacy settings around what they want to see proceeds to render the relevant content across the correct channels simultaneously. For example, a user might specify “only show me social posts from friends” or “only show me work-related content between 9am-5pm or while I’m at work” or “show me all fire hydrants.”

  As time goes on and the number of channels increases, the filtering of content will become critical. Imagine walking into Times Square in the year 2040. The layers of content, built up over years of posts and content publishing, will be impossible to view all at once and overwhelming even if you could. As the amount of available content grows over time, manually managing preferences will become more daunting and will likely result in missing relevant chunks of information. A Personal AI Agent will easily be able to manage this and tailor the user’s experience as it learns what kinds of information and content they like. And especially critical, the Personal AI Agent will handle data in a manner that does not require explicitly sharing any personal information with any other party.

  As a market for personal AI agents develops, each promising to deliver the perfect custom experience for the user, users may choose to frequently adjust or swap AI assistants based on mood or situation. As these AIs become more advanced, curated AIs will offer a whole new media type created by magazines, cable channels, thought leaders, or tastemakers. Imagine having VICE Magazine , The History Channel, and Malcolm Gladwell curating AIs all running at the same time, providing a completely new and immersive way to learn, share, and express. While walking through Tokyo, you may be pointed to an obscure Bansky piece, while viewing the world through a seventeenth-century historical Japan lens, all while receiving an audio-visual social commentary from Malcolm Gladwell.

  Spatial Domain management will protect businesses and private property from becoming virtual billboards for would-be advertisers by enabling their owners to select what if any content can be posted in their location and what rental fees may apply.

  Some social channels may find new ways to “prune” spatial content that would otherwise be permanent. For example, imagine the future Snapchat of the Spatial Web; the channel may quickly become filled with an overload of creative content and cute AR creatures. By making the content ephemeral but likable by viewers, content that gets “likes” from passersby gains additional life, perhaps even becoming immortal if enough people like it, while less admired work fades away and is only viewable to the poster and perhaps their closest friends.

  Such a rich and immersive world may not be ideal for all situations and environments, however. Some places such as the workplace may become “digitally hygienic” environments, allowing only work-related content to appear, or a school may not allow commercial game experiences during classes. Furthermore, depending on who you are, certain channels may or may not be available to you. For example, doctors could have access to channel information that medical students might not, while the building maintenance crew could have their own dedicated channels. The conditions for these restrictions will be set by the relevant authorities.

  Channels don’t necessarily need to be worldwide. Often they may only be useful in specific domains. For example, a restaurant may only provide content within the walls of its business or a hospital may only publish sensitive information within the property. Certain domains may require people entering into their space to view a certain channel, overriding their preferences, such as when you walk into an airport, they may force you to view a public message, or a restaurant may automatically present their menu channel (which could then be opted out perhaps for their next visit), or the hospital may force patients to view the hospital channel with no option to opt-out.

  With this new world of virtual content, channels and spatial rights, no doubt abuses will occur and people’s rights may be infringed upon. The Spatial Web architecture is designed to support that fight.

  Security on the Spatial Web

  Smart Spaces are a unique invention in part due to the security capabilities that are built into them. Because Web 3.0 presents many new challenges to security, privacy, and verifiability, new innovations are required. The Spatial Index uses various security mechanisms to control the usage, transfer of Assets, and interactions with a Space and its contents. Spatial Domains are registered on a Distributed Ledger that uses multi-factor authentication and validation. All interactions via the Spatial Browser use multiple layers of encryption backed by Self Sovereign Identity ledgers and multi-factor biometrics. Every Smart Space gets its own Channel by default. Registering content and Assets to a secure channel enables the system to control which users and Spatial Browsers are able to detect them.

  All transactions in and across the Spatial Web occur via encrypted protocols, and sensitive data can be stored on private ledgers or encrypted on a public ledger. Spatial Contracts allow additional security for Spaces and Assets, controlling when, how, and by whom transactions can be made across the Space or against individual assets.

  The nature of decentralized digital identity automatically protects users of a Space from data mining, preventing the correlation by outside parties of activity within the space to any other activity.

  Spatial Browser

  The Spatial Browser is the universal window of the Spatial Web. It allows Spatial applications to be installed like browser extensions; they can self-install and self-execute as users enter spaces based on the permissions set out in Spatial Contracts. Although developers can design their own independent Spatial Applications for use across any VR- or AR-enabled operating system, the Spatial Browser will be the primary interface for the Spatial Web, displaying both 3D and 2D objects, environments, and animations. Using “Channels,” an infinite number of views can be presented and yet be filtered and permissioned by AI to be shared by a group or personalized for an individual. Think of Channels as layers of digital tracing paper that allow any application or service provider on the Spatial Web, whether large like Snap or Yelp or small developers, to function like browser tabs that can be overlayed simultaneously in the world.

  The Spatial Browser can have a default public data channel, which automatically renders local street and business data, from maps an
d directions to parking space information, names and information on stores or restaurants, and even local events. The addition of custom plugins would enable all kinds of custom skins, filters, audio, gesture, voice, and thought-based interactions.

  The Spatial Browser is intended to be released as an open-source project for anyone to build on and extend. The Spatial Protocol specification is designed to become the universal standard able to be adopted by any spatial browser, just as the various web browsers of today all share the same underlying web protocol and programming standards. The global developer community and standards organizations must be engaged in the ongoing development of standards for all Spatial Browser implementations with a special focus on standards for privacy, security, interoperability, and digital payments.

  THREATS TO THE SPATIAL WEB

  A Spatial Web that is open to all and fully integrated into a single global network of networks—just like the current World Wide Web—would be the ideal. However, tremendous obstacles to realizing that vision will arise.

  Although this book attempts to make a strong case that the Spatial Web is an effect of evolutionary trends that make it appear as inevitable, it is, in fact, far from being a certainty. If anything, it will take a significant amount of dialogue, development, and commitment from engineers, creators, thought leaders, non-profits, standards groups, and governments. To assist in creating awareness, advocacy, and adoption of Spatial Web standards, we the authors and our associates have established the VERSES Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to delivering the protocols and specifications needed for an open, free, and secure Spatial Web.

  Corporate Interests

  Many factors can threaten the realization of the Spatial Web. If powerful corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook, Samsung, Baidu, and others believe that they must maintain closed hardware and software ecosystems with respect to emerging technologies like AR, VR, IoT, and AI, and if they are unwilling to participate in adopting open standards that enable interoperability, then this will slow the adoption of new open standards. They may choose this position because they fail to see the benefit, or fear it may threaten their profitability, or they simply are not interested in the idea or the implementation approach. This would result in a series of balkanized spatial webs that are not interoperable. If this happens then huge numbers of the users will not be able to participate in an open Spatial Web.

  Even worse, if each of these providers attempts to create their own version of a spatial protocol and spatial browser to make their own siloed spatial web, then users will be forced to choose between them, as the likelihood of any one of them developing their own proprietary commercial standards that their competitors will adopt is effectively zero.

  The Historical Failure of Walled Gardens

  History has seen previous attempts to wall in open services, usually with poor results for all involved. A “walled garden” is a network or service that either restricts or makes it difficult for users to access applications or content from external sources. Standard TV and radio are open—anyone with a television or radio can access them; cable TV and satellite radio are walled gardens, requiring users to subscribe to view channels and programs. In the early days of the World Wide Web, companies like America Online (AOL), Prodigy, and CompuServe functioned as closed and curated versions of the Web. They only made available the websites of affiliate partners for their paid subscribers. Although these companies drove meaningful early Web adoption, users were eventually driven to climb over the walls and make their way into the open Web itself.

  The Music Industry offers a cautionary tale about the long-term effectiveness of walled gardens and closed systems. In the year 2000, annual worldwide music revenues peaked at about $50 billion. This was due in large part to the digitization of music and the introduction and growth of the compact disc (CD) format in the 1980s and ’90s. In 2000, Napster emerged from the shadows and allowed anyone with an Internet connection and little concern for copyright laws to download unlimited amounts of music for free. The record labels freaked out, sued everybody, and lobbied Congress to stop the piracy. Apple finally stepped in to offer a solution in the form of the 99-cent song, protected by Apple’s closed ecosystem and a security protocol called Digital Rights Management (DRM) that locked in their proprietary audio format on Apple’s iPod music player.

  Between 2004 and 2009 when DRM was being enforced, Music Industry revenue in the US dropped by nearly half. Market research company NPD reported that same year that only 37 percent of music acquired by US consumers was paid for. Piracy had actually increased during this time, and in the end, the labels were forced to open up the content and adopt an open audio format.

  Ultimately, this mattered little, as the era of streaming music would force the industry through another format change and down a new path. Music streaming aggregators like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer were able to license nearly all of the music available for users to access via paid subscriptions. At least with music, the vast majority of these services have a similar music catalog, opting to compete with various filters and personalization features as the differentiators for users to choose between. This is, at least, an honest approach to the industry that respects the user and their desire to access a broad catalog. In the rare cases where certain artists restricted their music to a single service that they were more aligned with politically or monetarily, the fan blowback was so severe that they eventually gave in and released the material across the rest of the services.

  According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) 2018 Global Music Report, the greatest irony in the case of the music industry may be that the largest music streaming service for the last decade, with more than double the amount of listens than the rest of the other music services, has been a VIDEO streaming service…YouTube. The open and unrestricted access to music, even via a video service with ads, remains preferable to users over content-specific services. One has to wonder if it is because users today are multi-content, multi-mode, and multi-device. Switching between YouTube videos and music seamlessly is probably preferable to opening another app. Furthermore, a Youtube link is a standard web url and therefore a universal sharing format that works for everyone. The Music Industry still makes it extremely difficult to share a song file. Think about it. How many Youtube links have you shared versus the number of song links from an app? Walled gardens crumble when network effects hit them.

  The paid streaming video apps of today like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go and Amazon Prime are also walled gardens that restrict their original branded content to their own apps. This is causing further fragmentation in the on-demand video streaming market. In 2018, Disney announced its plan to pull its content from the others to exclusively offer it via their own Disney Plus subscription app. So, what began as a new open format to view premium movies and television shows over the Internet is quickly becoming a series of separate islands that restrict consumer choice and force users to adopt multiple apps and services to access the content that they want. While companies have the right to license and monetize their content in whatever ways that they see fit, it is easy to see why consumers eventually retaliate and start scaling the walls.

  The IOS and Android development environments and app stores are also types of walled gardens. These separate platforms require developers to build and maintain two different versions of their apps if they hope to reach the largest number of users. This is not an insignificant challenge and adds additional development costs that small developers may not be able to manage. This can have a chilling effect on innovation which can limit user choice to larger app developers able to bear the costs. And it becomes a nightmare for consumers when they need to switch between devices, as the process of locating, downloading, and logging in to their apps on a new operating system is an exceedingly frustrating experience. But, these are Web 2.0 problems. In the Web 3.0 era, walled gardens become a big threat to an open Spatial Web with the arrival of AR or Smart G
lasses.

  An Un-Interoperable World

  In many ways, practical requirements for the Smart Cities of tomorrow make them the ideal showcase for emphasizing the need for the Spatial Web.

  Imagine yourself navigating through a retail district in a decade or so in your city. You are wearing a pair of Amazon smart glasses, PrimeLens. Everywhere you look you can see the content and holograms of the partners and applications that are part of Amazon’s spatial web. As you make your way into a Whole Foods (owned by Amazon), your glasses identify you and “check you in” to that location. Personalized offers appear for you with special discounts. Your grocery list appears and you simply follow the arrows to each item. You grab the items that you want and you’re automatically charged as you exit. However, if you go next door to Foot Locker, an Apple partner, you’ll need Apple’s iGlasses to access their spatial content, special offers, and auto-checkout.

  Here’s another example: a husband is at Macy’s, shopping for his wife but he can’t get access to his wife’s body size digital avatar because he uses Microsoft’s Hololens for work, and she can’t send the avatar to him without checking into Macy’s location first. Beyond this type of “bad mall” shopping experience, how exactly will Smart City content created for all citizens be accessed? How will municipal content such as street signs, parking places, and other information placed by the city work? Will it be stuck in spatial municipal or corporate siloes too? Without agreed upon standards, this is a recipe for chaos for civilian uses and an administrative nightmare for the Smart City staff and workers.

  Even worse, how exactly will multiple parties view and interact with the same content at the office, at home, in a park? Will companies need to standardize on a single device for every employee? Will everyone need to download the same app in order to look at an architectural history of the historical buildings, play a shootout game in the living room with family, or chase and collect new virtual characters in the park?