Hypothetical situation: You walk into a room with five or so people in it and say something like, “did you hear Facebook changed their name to Meta?”
Everyone looks up from their phones and says, “yea I don’t get it.”
You reply, “short for metaverse, like the digital world.”
They look up again from their phones, “so like VR? I’m never going to be into that. VR is cool but I’m not wearing those goggles all the time. And I don’t know a single person that would spend significant amounts of their real life free time with their faces strapped to a device that feeds them the digital world.” They all agree and look back down to their phones.
The metaverse has existed for me since the first time I played Metroid on the original Nintendo. For my unlces it was Zelda in ’87, maybe even a decade or so before that as they gathered around a table for the first time to play the Dungeons and Dragons inspired Dragon Quest. So many people have jumped to the conclusion that The Metaverse is web3 gaming, incorporating NFT’s and blockchain technology, where by shortly, we will be uploading our physical selves to the digital world and they want no part of it; not realizing that a.) that is not the point and b.) that process of uploading our physical world into the digital world started decades ago.
In one of his many interviews with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk makes the point that we are already crude cyborgs given the way we are attached to our various connected devices. Musk is of course developing Neural Link, a chip that will be hardwired into a persons brain. He claims that we will be able to communicate without words, and that Neural Link will first be used to correct neural based diseases like Parkinson’s and the effects of a stroke. This leads to several obvious questions about plugging our consciousness into some sort of network a la The Matrix, this is what people think when they hear “metaverse.” And they aren’t wrong, Musk talks about how we’ll essentially be connected to the internet, to which I thought, aren’t we already?
My bringing up those vintage games, video games and tabletop RPG’s; the metaverse exists, and will continue to advance, because it already exists in our minds and we participate in it already, and that is the point. The fact that its digital is a modern facet of human imagination. The metaverse is as much The Matrix as it is anything that captures our attention. Those early games contained enough story and world building for people to bridge the gap between the graphics they saw with their eyes and the world they allowed themselves to exist in in their minds. Much the same with the advent of social media, the relationships we build online with words, pics, and vids are enough to bridge the gap to what our relationships are in the physical world. The people we know online evoke just as much emotion and “value” as people we know in person. I feel like I know Joe Rogan. I feel like I was part of Casey Neistat’s life. I am very much a part of several online communities that people I’m very close to in real life know nothing about. And those communities speak as much to who I am as my relationship with my wife, whom they know nothing about.
This is what the metaverse is, and we’ve uploaded plenty, its just that we’ve been limited by our thumbs and the strain on our eyes instead of the speed of some port in the back of our skull. Everything you’ve ever put online is stored somewhere whether you’ve deleted it or not, yes, even your incognito browsing history and vanishing messages. This is how “Meta” knows when someone else posts a pic with you in it and asks you to tag yourself. And every time you do that you are functioning as a validator for that technology. Apple knows I get up around 5 a.m. and which 3 apps I check first. They know when you poop and if you or someone in your family is expecting, either a baby or a puppy. This is all The Metaverse and whether you know it or not, or even want to, you are participating.
So what does “Web3” promise about the metaverse? There’s so many ways to answer that. Ever spent money on skins in Fortnite only to be a little let down that they only exist in those games? Web3 promises that these digital assets are yours. Like a digital closet you can dress yourself in, yes, yourself, not your player character in the Epic Games ecosystem. There is digital real estate for sale along with digital currency, and digital art, and pets, and music, and its yours, freely yours, not like now where those skins stay in the game they came from, but yours like I’m wearing this shirt right now at work, and then I can wear it home, and at Walmart and at my daughters basketball game. Think of a fully implemented augmented reality where you can wear your Fortnite-like skins to these places as well. Think filters for the world, not just for IG. Think, you don’t just buy the slickest new Nikes, you also get a digital copy for your online avatar to wear.
Tinfoil D-Pad 