Metaverse: between hype and hyper-reality
Technology innovation brings both excitement and concern, but investing in tech development is only half of the equation. We must harness our ability to develop alongside and meet the future.
What hasn't been said about the Internet?
We are entering another era of the Internet, the Metaverse. But the truth is, we are not ready for it because the Metaverse is not a phase; it is a paradigm shift.
For the past 20 years, we have witnessed the rise of digital networks that generated and distributed unprecedented levels of information at unfathomed speeds. The Internet made it possible for people to engage, connect, and work in completely new ways, blurring boundaries of distance and space. That's partly because we all wanted more or less the same thing: we wanted to experience life differently and have the freedom to become whoever we wanted.
But the reality turned out differently. Despite growing concerns, regulating content in a world that can "code" its way out of protocols wasn't feasible. And it was naive to expect that the Internet was a space for good people doing only good things (point in case: targeted disinformation campaigns, black markets, hacking raids, fake news).
The Internet has become so ingrained in our lives that we can hardly put the physical and the virtual apart or tell which world fuels which. We learned to traverse both mediums quite fluently. Now, we are entering another era of the Internet, the Metaverse. But the truth is, we are not ready for it because the Metaverse is not a phase; it is a paradigm shift.
Last week, I met with one of our partners, Jorrit Vezelboer – CTO of Beemup Metaverse Agency, to talk about the disruption that is already taking place and the Metaverse. We spoke about the future of the Internet through the lenses of Web History:
Web 1.0 had a limited transactional value to users and was mainly document-based. People had access to blogs, basic websites, text-based games, and some chatrooms.
Web 2.0 was all about social media, offering users ways to connect in different social networks. A layer of logic was added to increase the transactional value. The presence of intermediaries optimized the interface to mask technical complexity and ease user adoption. The Internet became a space to browse endlessly, get lost, find new friends or hobbies, or use it to launch new business models.
And now we are entering Web 3.0. While Web 2.0 was user-centric, Web 3.0 is going to be creator-centric. The Open Metaverse is likely to change how we interact with our peers and experience content. There are diverse views on what the Metaverse is all about, but all experts agree that it will be very immersive.
The conversation with Jorrit made me wonder what Web 3.0 meant. While the current conversation is very technology-focused, it is useful to consider the bigger picture. There is no doubt that a new economy, the economy of creators, is now emerging. But for it to work to everyone's advantage, it must be tested against two very powerful entities: "the consumer" and" the worker."
The disruption caused by a new framework, the Open Metaverse, will transform businesses and parts of our daily lives. We are no longer bound to improve the existing services that have roots in the traditional system. Now, we have the freedom to contribute to the bigger change we want to see:
The Metaverse can empower not a system of "total work" where everything revolves around it, but a world where we can live for the sake of living.
In Pursuit of Ethical AI: Bridging Principles & Practice, Martin Ryan offers a key insight into approaching AI and technology: we have to take responsibility for what we build. We can't blame the medium or the tool as if it acted of its own accord. The first step is to educate ourselves to integrate and not disassociate from the flaws of what we create (Web 2.0 or Web 3.0).
As long as we only consume what is available, without taking responsibility and thinking for ourselves, the future is going to be bleak.
Not because of AI getting out of control, but because people would be willing to justify the loss of rights, freedom, privacy through such stories. And this is a scary thought.
Therefore, we must envision better-informed and more responsive futures that do not normalize oppression of any kind, no matter how justified it might seem in the current context. It is an important leap we need to make to enter Web 3.0 prepared.
Step 1: from Consumer to Creator
A very large part of the economy right now revolves around consumerism. The mantra is simple: the purchase of goods and services improves our lives. That's what everyone wants, right?
Mass production and the Internet have a particularly fruitful relationship.
With delivery services and online purchasing, the perfect vicious circle is in place. The challenge is that only a few people benefit at the expense of the many. The passivity of the consumer is what allows oversaturated markets to thrive, resulting in so much waste.
The horizontal reach allows many people to afford certain goods, increasing the availability of jobs, household stability, and the chance to education. As the industry grows, automation improves the quality of products and offers low pricing. The mass production system is beneficial to a certain point. It doesn't know when too much is enough and when the goods don't serve anyone.
Outgrowing the consumer mindset will not happen overnight, and perhaps it will never go away. To see a lasting change, we need more creators in the economy who can steer the wheel of production and apply a vertical reach to the economy. The Internet can empower this shift because the creator economy relies on a wide pool of users to gain presence and capital fast and early on.
According to SignalFire's Creator Economy Market Map, there are three key trends in the creator economy:
Creators move their top fans off social networks onto their own websites, apps, and monetization tools.
Creators become founders, building out teams and tools to start businesses while focusing on their art.
Creators gain power in the media ecosystem as fans prefer to connect with individuals rather than faceless entities.
It is important to make the distinction that the creators are not mere influencers. Creators are creative thinkers who aren't bound to passive work. The creator economy is still in its early days, but it will not take long before it emerges as a powerful enabler of Web 3.0.
So what happens when the scale is tilted to creators? Do our problems disappear? No. But at least, we are dealing with some of them.
For instance, the crypto community is attempting to work with the complexity of economics, trade, currency, and value. The creators propose an alternative route that, according to Jorrit, "isn't going against the system but creating a new system that is so much better than the old one."
The next disruption wave isn't a fight against the system but a creative effort to build a way the world can transform without cramming it into rigid frames. The challenge is to decide on a level of regulation, so it doesn't lead to chaos. It is also likely to create thicker layers within the global network, not hierarchical but as distributed.
The DAO is meant to do exactly that:
1) According to Max Hempshire,
"Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) are organizations that are instantiated on a blockchain and are constituted of interacting Smart Contracts: computer programs that are also instantiated on a blockchain. Smart Contracts are able to hold their own cryptocurrency wallets; they can self-execute on the occurrence of a certain event or state and can be interacted with (somewhat) like traditional web applications.
What makes DAOs interesting is that they inherit the characteristics of blockchain technology that make it such an attractive technological substrate to build upon in the first place. Blockchain technology enables the creation of entire organizations which can be transparent and are decentralized, free of being rooted in (and thus accountable to the laws of) any particular nation-state …free of the needs of human intervention and management."
2) At Senselab, the horizon gives even more opportunity to build on:
The Distributed Autonomous Organization evolves toward the Distributed Programmable Organization. Post-blockchain architectures are already emerging that have even more flexible, lower-cost, rhizomatic architectures operating on the peer-to-peer model. These make it possible to design alternative models embodying an ethos of sustainable economic and social cooperation that is integrally built into the systems architecture at all levels.
These developments open new possibilities for collective projects to invent their own self-sustaining creative economies, operating not in competition with each other but in a shared, open-source environment based on notions of the "common."
If the creators are dedicated and aware of their power, the Metaverse can go in a more ethical direction. But it takes a great collective effort to support this new wave to shift towards quality and not just quantity.
The creators manage the content of what is possible and what is not possible." Jorrit Vezelboer
Step 2: from Worker to Creator
Before we purchase any goods and services from the Metaverse, we need to look at the complementing force of consumerism: the working-class mentality. It's interesting how much the meaning of work has changed during the past 200 years or so.
"There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake." Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness
Most work today is not a creative act but a productive one. We consider it a "good deal" when work doesn't cause too much stress and pays enough for security, comfort, and vacation. But very few people find work truly meaningful, and even fewer allow themselves to be "at leisure."
"…the original meaning of the concept of "leisure" has practically been forgotten in today's leisure-less culture of "total work"… For the Greeks, "not-leisure" was the word for the world of everyday work …The Greek language had only this negative term for it, as did Latin" Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture
Historically, leisure was a way to grow and experience human life outside the realm of extenuating effort. Ironically, work was not a virtue. Taking time to pause and be at ease, to contemplate life was more meaningful than hard labor. Nowadays, the idea of leisure is often mistaken for idleness or laziness. We feel guilty when we take too much time off from work because we are not doing anything "useful."
What happens is actually the effect of the inhumanity of the total world of work: the final binding of man to the process of production, which is itself understood and proclaimed to be the intrinsically meaningful realization of human existence. Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture
What triggered such a profound change? Perhaps it was the idea of scarcity. By extrapolating scarcity in every area of life, available resources became the limiting factor. Therefore, prioritizing activities was essential to a world governed by scarcity. What will happen when we enter the Metaverse, which is limitless, and in what way? Why is it important to address this matter ahead of time? Because we have an opportunity to steer the wheel of change for the better.
Do we still want to play the scarcity game?
The Metaverse empowers creators and performers alike. Inside, you have two choices:
1) You can wander in the endless possibilities: you can simulate current pressing problems, thinking that scarcity is not the only way, but one of the many ways, a challenge to embrace.
2) You can work within constraints: you can choose to play the scarcity game and become responsible for developing a world where you help others thrives. You can reframe your thinking about scarcity through creative processes without letting the fear of scarcity limit your thinking.
Of course, that is not to say scarcity, as we know it, doesn't exist. It is rather a change in attitude that is healthier and more informed. The DAO is about "give-and-receive," not mere supply and demand, which should be at the heart of the creator economy.
Can we recognize the beauty of complexity?
Jorrit recommended a very intriguing book, Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze, that touches on what gives psychological balance to humans. It is about learning how to live with complexity rather than treating it as a mental disorder symptom. In the past, our systems simplified and hid complexity away. Standardization and uniformity in mass-production powered a result-oriented culture. If something didn't lead to direct results, there was no apparent or urgent need to address it.
Now we live in a different world, where systems collide more often with each other, connecting everything. It is easy to be swept away, especially when, culturally, we hardly encourage people to deal with complexity. We have created a "cancel culture" and certain political correctness, and we struggle to distinguish between freedom of expression and offensive discourse. If the complexity of feelings, thoughts, identities, and pressing issues is constantly suppressed, it will inevitably backfire.
If we don't change our current approaches, there is a danger that the Metaverse will replicate the systems we already have. Centralized systems are sneaking in, trying to insert their presence on the future model and monopolize market share. The issue of token distribution is still heavily impacted by the wealth and influence already acquired outside any virtual world.
"The foundational idea of humanistic computing is that provenance is valuable. Information is people in disguise, and people ought to be paid for value they contribute that can be sent or stored on a digital network."(Jaron Lanier, VR Futurist, Outlier Ventures)
So, will the Metaverse be a Snow Crash version void of meaning and hope? Hard to say. Adding complexity to the Metaverse increases the possibilities and the dynamics, and it gives us a chance to see beyond the scope of the total work and consumerism. That's the shift we begin to see and hope to sustain:
"The brand, doesn't have to be content; the brand can be an ability, which creates a whole new dimension on its own." Jorrit Vezelboer
The conversations with Jorrit and the other members as Beemup opened a new horizon of possible worlds. We'll likely keep digging into the complexity of such futures and what it means to us as strategic designers. If we can't visualize the right elements and how they connect, we'll struggle to see them when their impact has swept us away.
Next time you browse, think about how it would be to operate via an AI agent that erases the need for search engines and website interfaces. Or how would your favorite 3D interactive world look like?
Bibliography:
Burke J. The Open Metaverse OS, Outlier Ventures
Hempshire, M. Bot Club Legal Bots: Conceptual Implications for Future Blockchain Infrastructure
Pieper J. Leisure, The Basis Of Culture ; [And] The Philosophical Act. New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books; 1952.
Russell B. In Praise Of Idleness And Other Essays. New York: Routledge; 2004.
Ryan, M. In Pursuit of Ethical AI: Bridging Principles & Practice, (YouTube Video)