This October, Hino City, Tokyo, began a trial run of a new government initiative geared toward the information society. This service allows citizens to access an information space built within the internet called “IBASHO META Space” from their computers, mobile phones, or other devices. Specialized staff members can assist them, and they can also converse with other citizens participating at the same time.

The emergence of such human relationships in the information society was first predicted by American science fiction author N. Stevens in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash.” He coined the term “metaverse” to describe the virtual space created by the emerging internet, and “avatars” to describe the virtual humans created there as human surrogates. These terms have since become established in the information society.
The “metaverse” created by Stevens emerged as a real-world information space in the late 1990s, when the internet began to spread. A famous example is the game “Second Life,” released by the American company Linden Lab in 2003. In this game, players can send their avatars into a virtual city and interact with the avatars of others who are also participating at the same time.
The emergence of this “metaverse” has dramatically changed our information society. First, it has reversed the positions of television, a mass medium, and the internet, a personal medium. In Japan, weekday television viewing time fell from 170 minutes in 2014 to 135 minutes in 2023, while internet usage time rose from 84 minutes to 194 minutes, a complete reversal.
Second, the internet, which had been a personal medium, has begun to evolve into mass media. At the end of 2024, the virtual concert “Remix: The Finale,” streamed by the online game “Fortnite,” was viewed by 14.3 million people worldwide via internet connections. Games have begun to create heterogeneous information spaces.
In the 1990s, British cultural anthropologist Richard Dunbar proposed the “Danvers Number,” which states that the upper limit for the number of people a group can maintain stable relationships is around 150. This figure was estimated by the anthropologist based on his observations of hunter-gatherer societies, but as we’ve seen, information and communication technology is rapidly surpassing this limit.

The transportation and communication technologies invented by humanity have had the effect of expanding this “Danvers Number.”

Horse-drawn carriages and railroads provided opportunities for people living in distant lands to connect with each other, sailing ships provided opportunities to meet people on unknown continents, and telecommunications such as broadcasting and telephones have provided opportunities for people who would never meet in the real world to meet through sound and image.

The “metaverse” is a space that has emerged as an extension of this, and it has an important characteristic. While previous communication methods such as letters and telephones allowed for the exchange of information between one person and another, and newspapers and broadcasting allowed for the exchange of information between one and many, the “metaverse” enables the exchange of information between many and many. An urgent task is to imagine the effects that this new means of information will have on human society.

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