Solvitur ambulando¹

I’d suggest walking lies near the top of the list of things that represent the “human experience.” As someone currently in the midst of re-learning how to walk correctly, I have spent a lot of time on the Wikipedia page for ‘walking.’

A Walking Contradiction

Wikipedia describes it: Human walking uses the double pendulum strategy². The leg that leaves the ground swings forward from the hip during forward motion. This sweep is the first pendulum. Then the leg strikes the ground with the heel and rolls through to the toe in a motion described as an inverted pendulum. The motion of the two legs is coordinated so that one foot or the other is always in contact with the ground—the movement of the center of mass of the body. In walking, the body vaults over the leg on the ground raising the center of mass to its highest point as the leg passes the vertical and dropping it to the lowest as the legs are spread apart. The kinetic energy of forward motion is constantly being traded for a rise in potential energy. There is an absolute limit on walking speed due to the acceleration of the center of mass during a stride. If it is greater than the acceleration due to gravity, the person will become airborne as they vault over the leg on the ground. This whole intricately designed system trades off letting yourself fall and supporting yourself against gravity. Repeatedly.

Walking has been with us for a long time, and it took us a very long time to walk upright. Judging from footprints discovered on a former shore in Kenya, it is thought possible that ancestors of modern humans were walking in ways very similar to the present activity as many as 3 million years ago. Babies don’t need to be taught how to walk. Instead, they are stood up and are encouraged to let go of support. Trial and error could be involved, but the knowledge of walking is something we are born with, a technique honed by generations and passed on. As I am reminded periodically, you can’t think of walking to do it correctly. While we can describe the functional aspects of walking, we are all born with an innate ability to perform it.

I know this because I was thinking about walking while resisting seventeen years of practice walking incorrectly. The human body is composed of several processes that do not appreciate prying. The body actively resists our attempts to control any various functions it needs to continue existing. We all know overthinking is terrible, and we often associate it with abstract processes like thoughts and feelings. Thinking about doing things never really enters the realm of doing things required for us to exist. Try overthinking breathing. This, I believe, is why trying to make more human robots always feels human adjacent³.

Budgetary Contraints

King Kong and Godzilla might lay waste to any of Man’s creations, but they can never really walk right. The early iterations of Kong & Gojira were men in suits. The low-budget productions mainly focused on establishing the ‘otherness’ of these creatures through their appearances. In this respect, not walking or not walking like humans is a plus. Movie aliens in Star Trek were largely humanoid (again, budgetary constraints). Xenomorphs (literally strange forms) have their unique locomotory traits. In Doctor Who, Daleks are essentially trash cans on conveyor belts. The Daleks not having legs has been an effective strategy used to defeat them quite a few times (until they “evolved”). Cybermen, in some stories, are converted human beings with a stiff gait⁴. One of the reasons the aliens in Edge of Tomorrow are so compellingly “alien” is that they do not display any form of locomotion that humans do. There are various types of aliens, and they all exhibit a different degree of departure from “humanness.” Superman flies, but Clark Kent walks.

Legs Ground Us

Almost all VR technology needs to create a convincing facsimile of human legs⁵. The initial video of the “metaverse” envisioned by the menace formerly known as Facebook shows animated torsos of people minus legs. The videos by Microsoft and others that came soon after also featured legless torsos. The more likely explanation for the videos is that they just reused some existing meeting product video to get it out there quickly. Everyone seems to have an interest in the concept now. This could be the realization of two years of isolation in the form of new business opportunities. But it is more likely a mad rush to define the term, to stake a claim to the new frontier, by everyone. The only thing worse than putting out an inferior product in the attention arms race is putting out no product.

The “metaverse” is primarily an attempt by a mega-corporation to launder its image (complete with a new name and rebranding). Facebook’s attempts here are not new. Repositioning an old technology as new (IRC as Slack) is often successful. Doing this allows creators to reimagine instead of repair. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) presents a version of the “metaverse” which is less cutting-edge science fiction, more late-stage capitalist fiction. The Sims, Second Life, Minecraft, Roblox, and many others have presented ideas that Facebook is now attempting to repackage and distribute. The internet and decentralized technology, currently underway, have mainly been subsumed by corporate capitalist interests.

Technology does possess emancipatory powers. But technologists often forget that anything they create is not independent of the existing political structure. Facebook’s vision of the “metaverse” will merely be a version of the Metaverse. Technology is rarely an end in itself. Facebook’s version will undoubtedly be about mining our attention in more ways than possible. But it doesn’t have to be just that. The Metaverse, whatever it ends up being, should try to expand the notion of the human experience. This will mean being conscious of existing power structures and understanding the limitations of past efforts. The act of walking is a contradiction. People are made of contradictions, quite literally. A singular definition (Facebook’s) will not allow for contradictions; it only wants you to want.

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