This is session eight of the course.
We're going to talk about what is the metaverse, what is a metaverse, what are metaverses,
and I can give you the exciting conclusion from now we're not going to know the answer.
I don't know the answer, I don't think anyone else knows the answer.
So what we are going to do today is, I think ask the questions more than conclude on the
answers.
I also want to say something about scheduling which George and I agreed on earlier today,
but we need to announce it online.
We have a lot of guests and it's been hard to get the sessions out and get all the guests
here so we're going to extend the course and particularly the time for the guests into
January.
We'll do the sessions on time and we'll do the guest, some of them now and some of them
in January so we can fit everyone in because it's just to get everyone's schedules
coordinated but we will go through as planned.
And so as with other sessions, this is a session where we will get some concepts in
place and we are then going to talk about then we're going to talk about some of these topics
with some of the guests.
So let me, I only have two titles for this session, Metaverse frameworks and Metaverses
with a question mark and we'll talk about what these might be.
So, it's clear that there is now much more interest in Metaverse than there has been
historically.
This is the Google Trends data from 2004 and basically it's a flat line on the floor
until basically last year.
And some interest picked up, then Facebook announced changing their name, etc.
interest shot up and has now pulled off a little bit, but at hugely higher levels than
we were before.
And so I think it is fair to say that it is a topic that has now attracted a lot of interest.
It is a topic that has attracted interest from civilians.
I mean, it's interesting because I think some of us, you know, people with a more sci-fi
type orientation have considered the Metaverse to be kind of an obvious thing for forever.
I mean, decades.
But you can see from the Google Search data that this has absolutely not been the case
in general.
You know, civilian interest in the Metaverse is maybe 12 to 18 months old.
It's a great,
so we're going to have a Metaverse and the interesting thing is, I think as many people
as have written or spoken about the Metaverse as many people have written as one of those,
that's how many definitions are the Metaverse
and it's very interesting because I mean, I don't think any of them are right, but also
I don't think any of them are wrong.
And I want to go through these aren't you going to read these
because I think these are very interesting because they give you a sense of the different
ways people are thinking about.
Some people are just hugely aspirational, very non-specific,
it's not a big shock that McKinsey's in that bucket.
But you know, the Metaverse seems to be whatever people's imaginations dream it to
be. The verge,
it's partially a dream for the future of the Internet.
JPMorgan, the seamless conversion of our physical and digital lives
and I mean, I think all of these are true, but they don't really give you much to, you
know, hang your hat on.
Then there's folks who get much more specific
so we'll see you on that bit.
In a time 3D social medium where people can create and engage in shared experiences as
equal participants in an economy of societal impact.
Matthew Ball, who has written a lot about the Metaverse, a massively scaled and interoperable
network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds, which can be experienced synchronously and
persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence
and with continuity of data.
I think a definition like this is actually what most people, most civilians think of
here.
I think most civilians, when you tell the Metaverse, they're like, it's a 3D world and I probably
have to put VR goggles and I'm not sure how interesting this is
and anyway, it's not something I want to do
and a lot of people are like that.
And then there's these, I'd say more conceptual definitions where I'd put these conceptual
definitions of like the Metaverse is already kind of here.
You know, the Metaverse is not 3D or 2D or even necessarily graphical,
It's about the inexorable dematerialization of physical space, distance and objects, John
Radoffin.
I like this one, to be honest.
This is probably closer to my view,
we'll come to that in a moment.
And then, Sean Purney, "The Metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth
more than our physical life."
I have to admit, if I was an outsider and I read all these things, it sounds like a word
salad, to be honest.
It doesn't sound very practical, it doesn't sound very real, it doesn't sound very here.
We'll see how we think about this in a few more slides.
Now in this section, I'm going to present three different Metaverse frameworks, how
do I figure out a Metaverse?
Two of which I stole from UNIC and one of which is my own.
And so I'll do the UNIC ones that honor first and then I'll share mine.
As usual, I don't think any of them are right and I don't think any of them are wrong.
So, the Unichroto reported about the Metaverse for the European Union Blockchain Observatory
and formed, and the team came up with a three-part framework.
The first part is that it has universal impact.
That a Metaverse, like other broadly adopted technologies and the internet, mobile phones
and what have you, are universal in nature.
They go across norms, disciplines, cultures, barriers.
Some things you might think about is that some more specialized games, Metaverse, et cetera,
might fail this first test of universality.
The second test is persistence.
I actually think this is important.
So, here there's a you know, a cohesive and shared experience is created in your world.
I think the mental model here is you leave and you come back and it's still there.
It's not a firm rule.
And the fire is adaptability, here defined as users can immerse themselves in a limited
or significant way according to their individual needs.
It's a reasonable framework to be honest.
It's simple, it's straightforward, it's fairly conceptual.
Let's put it as one mental model.
Then we have a second framework that I call the "Giaglis Framework",
George came up with it,
he doesn't actually call it the Giaglis Framework.
So, he's probably going to yell at me that I called it that in the presentation,
but since he's the one who told it to me, I have put his name on it.
And here is has six characteristics across two dimensions.
And the dimensions one is technological in nature, one is governance in nature,
and I think this is really interesting too.
This is kind of more specific and more future looking, I think.
And here the technology properties are photorealism, immersive as in persistence and what I call
is the governance property, data ownership, openness and censorship resistance.
And his view of this is not that more photorealism is good and less photorealism is bad or more
photorealism is more Metaverse and less photorealism is less Metaverse and this applies for all of these variables or all these parameters,
it's just a way to classify them.
It's a way to say this Metaverse is photorealistic,
this Metaverse is
not photorealistic.
And so, you start thinking about these as sliders or spectrums.
So one spectrum is a photorealism,
are we trying to replicate the visual model of the real world?
Or as many games or social media or other possible universes don't look like the real
world, at all?
The second is immersiveness.
How much are you in this world versus not in?
What's the degree?
You know, email is partially immersive.
I sit at my laptop,
I do things,
I have my email client open, I go in and out,
it pings me,
This harasses a little bit.
I'm never totally out,
I'm never totally in.
If you're playing some first person shooter VR game with VR goggles, I'm only pretty
immersed.
You're not.
You're not also.
I can reply to emails and cook pasta.
I can't play a VR game and cook pasta, right?
So it's a level of immersiveness.
Again, not that immersive is good or bad.
It's just a slider.
Persistence and here,
George has a different definition of persistence than my earlier definition of persistence,
which may end up right or
wrong.
Is it always on?
Does it follow you?
Things to imagine.
I'd say you had a virtual pet, right?
It comes with you.
It's there,
it's persistent, which is somehow similar to, you can leave and come back and it's still
there, that version of persistent, but it's a little bit different framework on.
And then the governance properties are interesting.
These are the types of topics that are exciting to me,
we'll talk about them a few slides down as well.
You know, data ownership, can users own the assets in the virtual world and can they
take them out of the metaverse to another virtual world?
It's interesting even hearing this definition.
Someone might ask, what's the metaverse and what's the virtual world and why are they
different?
We'll come to this question of is metaverse singular and metaverse plural.
Openness can developers or in my view, I think individuals, it doesn't have to be developers,
Minecraft is, you don't need to be a developer to build things in Minecraft.
And is the virtual world open to developers to create spaces, experiences, objects, applications?
Is it customizable?
And then the censorship resistance, so the degree to which users can be prohibited from
accessing the virtual world restricted in their experiences or kicked off the metaverse
by some centralized authority who owns or controls the world.
Yeah, this is my personal obsession,
arguably, I think today basically no metaverse is censorship resistant, and
there's always a counterparty that is controlling it.
I think this is an interesting and more practical framework for classifying metaverses or potential
metaverses.
And I think it's something that I don't assign work to anyone, but it could be, you could have this
grid and put different metaverses in this grid and see where they fall out.
Because I'm not advanced, I have a simpler definition of the metaverse, which is my framework
on it, which is just one sentence.
And my definition is, it is the internet with better visualization and persistent digital
objects.
And this is a quite different approach because I've kind of defined my way out of the singular
or plural metaverse question and there's a reason for this.
And I think my framework is going to be more relevant in the longer term.
I think the other framework is great for today, but I think it's more relevant in the longer
term.
Why do I think that?
Imagine any type of world where we have all these, let's call them "metaverse experiences".
They're persistent, they're immersive, they may be photo realistic.
They follow us around.
They're probably AI enabled in many ways.
There'll be multiple things, it won't just be one thing, I don't think it'll just be
one metaverse and that metaverse is going to be Minecraft, right?
Well, imagine that's the case and it's not today, it's 10 years from now or 15 years from
now, or 20 years from now, it doesn't really matter when you pick.
I don't think in that world we will have the metaverse and separately, the internet.
I don't think you'll say, "oh, today I'm going to go use the internet and then later today
I'm going to go use the metaverse".
I think they're going to become the same thing, just like there was a time, maybe still true
today, that like, mobile apps was a different thing, mobile was a different thing than desktop.
I'm sure the phone factor is different, but I basically use more or less all the same
applications on the desktop and on my phone and, I don't know if that's like some separate
ecosystem.
Or here's another way to think about it.
Let's say you're in one of these, for argument's sake, three dimensional spaces.
It isn't going to be the case that if you want to have extended conversations or chats
with people in those spaces, you're going to leave them and go to some other chats
offer.
My guess is no, today the user experience, the user interface for having chats in these
three spaces is kind of wonky.
That's why I was still use Twitter and Discord and WhatsApp and Telegram and all these other
things, right?
But the idea that again, a decade from now, we have this kind of persistent immersive
environment and yet in order to chat to someone, in order to chat to someone, you have to
leave it, and go somewhere else,
makes no sense to me.
If you're still, if it's a decade from now and you still have to leave the quote/unquote
"metaverse" for me to send a DM to George, well, I mean, I don't think that metaverse will
be very effective.
Is that okay?
Well, okay, fine.
We'll have you.
What about other things?
Email?
You know, I'm sure we'll have email a decade from now
but why can't I answer my email in that environment?
It's just a form factor, a UX UI for reading my email,
why can't I read my email in a private room?
Why do I have to read it in the interface that it has now?
Well, sure,
Okay,
but what about an old studio computer?
I watch a movie,
Okay,
You can watch a movie in a three-year environment.
I want to work on Excel.
And in fact, you know, you could have, I assume by that point, you'll have much more screen
space to work with,
you might have many Excels out there.
So I just, I will be surprised if in the long run you go and spend a lot of time and some
type of immersive environment and then you leave it to do all the other stuff you do
now that's less immersive.
To put it differently, I think the immersive environment can subsume the non-emersive environment.
But I don't think the other way around works.
You can have a 2D chat box in a 3D space.
It's kind of hard to have a 3D space with a 2D chat box.
And so if you believe in this, I just don't see any way it's not going to be like this
then, the internet goes away.
Now it doesn't go away,
it's all right there.
It's been the plumbing of how we communicate in a distance for many decades.
But the idea that the internet and the metaverse are separate spaces, I think eventually ends.
It's an open question I'm willing to concede,
but I don't know when; is it in 10 years?
Is it in 7?
Is it in 23?
But pick any arbitrary, arbitrary future point, 100 years from now.
We have human brain interfaces.
We don't even have physical devices.
You're thinking about something and you're seeing it in front of you directly through
your neurons.
Are you really going to separately go use the internet somewhere else?
I don't think so.
I think they merge.
And then they merge.
It's just the internet that they merge.
The metaverse is anyway running today on the internet.
The metaverse space we're talking about is running on the internet.
But what's the second pillar with better visualization?
And this concept of better visualization is one that is a consistent theme in the internet
since the day it started.
It used to be touch-based.
Then we got some pictures.
Then we got really lousy video.
An old enough term for when video was lousy on the internet.
And today you can watch an HD movie on the internet.
You can do a zoom and you have free global video conferencing on your laptop or even
on your phone.
Global video teleconference used to be a big company feature 15 years ago.
You went to a special conference room to do that.
And that's showing no sign of stopping.
What I think is going to be the transition now is 3D visualization, the browser, the
probably what is on the next side,
and then augmented and virtual reality belong to them where they'll be together.
I think once the devices get sufficiently functional, you'll have something like a pair
of sunglasses.
Those pair of sunglasses will be mostly an awkward to reality.
You'll also see the world around you, but also have digital objects there.
See your fiddens on your wall or you'll have your Phoenix all spreadsheets floating around,
but they'll have the ability to pop into virtual reality and hide the world around you.
And that's going to come.
It's not there yet.
I know of no specific person,
I'm sure there's some of the world's lessons, but I don't know any of them who wears a virtual
reality headset all day.
And there's a lot of excitement about the upcoming Apple augmented reality.
I'd say maybe this will be a step forward and this is not going to work right every
day.
Every year we'll have a step forward where the devices will get more functional, more practical,
and we will see this level of forwardness.
I don't think we're there yet.
I don't think it's like next year we're all going to be wearing AR and VR models.
And then for persistence, I think of it about the digital objects.
My mental models that will have persistent digital objects.
Now what's a digital object?
It'll be anything, right?
It could be a piece of art.
It could be an avatar.
It could be a wearable.
It could be a specific three dimensional space in which you do something.
It could be a piece of "land".
The land is different than a space, right?
Land implies that there's some type of property that is surrounded by
other property and you own a specific property.
A space doesn't need to be the same as land, right?
You can have a space that's not tied to some property grid.
And my view of persistence is that they are there, when you come back.
Now, where that open metaverse stuff?
Well, it's not in the stuff initially.
But to me as a definition, you could imagine closed metaverses fulfilling these conditions.
And I think for the question over here, what's a metaverse?
That's fair.
There's going to be closed metaverses and they might even win or partially win.
So I don't think we can say that the definition of a metaverse by definition means it's open.
It might be closed.
We can think about what are the characteristics that make it open.
But it's not like it's a short thing, but it's going to be open.
But for me, these three things are the three main ones.
They cover all scenarios.
That is a less useful framework than say George's for classifying different metaverses
on different dimensions.
But it also, I think, is it covers almost any possible inconsolable manner.
I want to show an example here because I think people often, you say VR and AR, and this
all cannot make sense.
There is a 3D visualization browser.
What do you mean?
And this is a very silly example, but I think it illustrates the point.
These are both screen grabs from the browser.
And on the left is the website over the museum of modern art, a mobile that has the inventory
of everything at the moment.
That is perfectly fine and functional
and you can search by artist and you get this list of artwork.
And on the right is the generative gallery of the 6529 museum, also running in
the browser
but one of them is 3D.
And I think, over time, quite a few usage cases will migrate from the visualization on
the left to the visualization on the right.
Now, some things might stay on the visualization on the left for speed and ease of use
and certainly we are not particularly ready to go to the right because they are still
all of them are wonky.
Even, do I think, oh, which is where this is on the right, is ready for prime time,
retail, consumer use?
That's okay, it's still early. Over the course of the next few years,
we'll sort out how to make these spaces functional and fast and performant
and people will figure out what is the model for moving around these spaces.
Everyone now knows the model for working on the web.
But it took a long time to sort that out.
But I do think there are many usage cases where looking at something with this more expressive
visualization has got to make sense.
And as I was saying, you can put goggles on and go into VR into that gallery.
Yeah, that's true.
It can.
But VR is there now.
And so it's not, actually, don't think it's the rendering that's hugely the problem
right now.
I think it's the devices.
Yes, that gallery, we can see it in VR
and I've seen it once in VR.
And every other time I went, I just went to the browser because I wasn't going to go
get VR goggles and put them on just to go and insert something.
So until that becomes easier, I think it's going to be mostly, most of the screen time
is going to be in the browser not in VR and 3D on your browser or your computer, not
in VR, we will get there in time,
but not yet.
Anybody definition raises a question, which is a general question of, is metaverse a
singular or plural word?
And I'll say as always, I don't know.
Nobody knows.
But I will throw out a concept about how potentially, we can resolve it.
And maybe the concept, which I think matters more, my definition is all unbiased, I think.
My concept is that today they are plural and that some sufficiently far off time in the
future, it's singular.
Why are they plural today?
Well, because today, metaverse spaces are a small fraction of the internet
and so you kind of need the word to distinguish them from a regular website or a regular mobile
application.
It's very clear that not every website is a metaverse, right?
And not every mobile application is a metaverse.
And there is obviously more than one competing for this idea of being a metaverse.
So I think today, it's sensibly a plural topic.
If this is correct, but in the long run, the internet won't really be a different thing,
I think in the long run, it's not going to make as much sense that they are plural, I
think.
I think the whole thing is going to just be metaverse.
The way to think about it is, I don't know, imagine a kid growing up in 2040.
You know, if you have spent any time around young kids today and you're a little bit older, like
I am, it's a little bit disconcerting that they look at the TV as kind of being a subset
of an iPad or something, right?
A TV is a poorly functioning iPad,
you can't do things on demand and, you know, I mean, linear TV, right?
And then, you know, with smart TVs, you end up getting the YouTube and Netflix and whatever
applications on them
and so, they just become an iPad.
The linear TV part of the TV is close to irrelevant.
And that's weird,
if you remember, like I remember, when TV was one thing and streaming video was something
else, so you turn on TV and you watch on NBC, the Thanksgiving Day Parade, it's on NBC or it's
on CBS, however
tomorrow you'll turn on network TV and you'll watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
And then you'd go to your computer, to the internet, and watch a YouTube video.
And those were very distinct things and there were whole reports about internet video and
video on demand and over the top video and I think those reports still exist, right?
And if I look at older people, there's the most you watch a linear TV and you're going
to get a little bit on their iPad or what have you and they're still very distinct.
But if someone doesn't have the history and is starting you, the idea of telerestrials
or cable or linear TV is absurd and irrelevant and stupid, right?
It's all video and they're just different screens.
I think very abstractly, very conceptually, that's how it's going to be.
You know, once these metaverse spaces are performant and simple to use and in any case,
I believe it's going to be easy to go from one to another, even in the closed case.
I think it is going to be easy to go from one to another.
Then someone who does not have the prior experience of a pre-metaverse internet, I think it's
just going to be the one thing that you go and do things.
I'm not specific applications there, right?
And yeah, maybe the one by then is not going to be metaverse, right?
Maybe there'll be something else.
But I do think it's going to be unified in the end.
I don't think it's going to be a bunch of different ones.
Now, just conceptually here, we're not going to get into so much details on each one
of these, but where were what might be the earliest metaverse?
You know, multi-user versions were text-based and they had characters and you interacted
with people.
Immersive?
Anyway, now on George's framework, not in the slightest but photo-realistic, but not
necessarily relevant
so we started here, right?
And then we got some graphics.
And shared, shared version, right?
But then we got some better graphics.
And a little bit more of a virtual world, right?
This is all very early
work.
But I'm not sure they are conceptually different from us bouncing around and essential and
or all know whatever now.
How are they conceptually different?
Is anything different other than the graphics are better?
Is anything different other than the graphics are better,
well, maybe now we have NFTs, which is a very specific topic, but for the metaverse aspect,
I think the fundamental principles were already there in this year.
And then I think the very obvious, you know, we come decades ahead.
I think there's an excellent case that the massively multiplayer online role playing
games are in the concept of plural metaverses, they're metaverses.
A bit older, you enter a specific node, you have a specific role or character or avatar.
There's persistence in some of these there are economies.
I would credit them with being a metaverse research.
Even our social layer metaverses have been doing it for a long time.
Second life, very famously, got a lot of traction trying to build a metaverse in the
2000s,
it's been at least 10 years.
I'm going to have to check exactly when it started.
But it's been the same concepts as well there
and a lot of the things we're seeing now with the blockchain based social virtual worlds
existed then IBM is going to open a campus in Second Life.
Some universities can open a campus in Second Life.
Some retail stores are going to open a store in Second Life.
We went through that cycle
and it didn't totally quite stick with Second Life.
Second Life is still up and running
but it didn't take over the world the way.
some people might have thought that it would.
Here's another one.
I ask myself this.
Is NFT, Twitter and Discord a metaverse?
Are those avatars or persistent digital objects?
The world itself is persistent, my Twitter feed is persistent, my Discord feed is persistent.
I come into them and I see the same type of people, characters, etc.
There's definitely an economy.
There is in fact a self-soverign economy because that economy primarily runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
I'm thinking back to George's six factors.
It's not photo-realistic.
But OK maybe I'll it a little bit.
Is NFT, Twitter and Discord and OpenSea and Oncyber and on-central and in some is this
a metaverse?
Sort of, I think.
Is it fully polished and integrated?
No.
Is it a metaverse?
I think.
I think it is.
And it's weird because here there's not one platform.
Here what is to some degree serving as the unifying link is it there?
And is it fully integrated that I signed Punk 6529 on Twitter and I signed Punk 6529
on Discord?
Why don't I sign on Discord?
I could.
I guess.
Do it cloud-land.
Do I Oncyber and on?
Yeah, I do.
And so, it feels to me that this is one a relatively more decentralized metaverse or relatively
where the layer that ties people together imperfectly today.
And with a lot of noise, not full signal, a lot of noise, is the Ethereum option?
What's some other examples?
What can I go?
Okay.
I'm just a parent.
Does it have some metaverse characteristic?
Yeah, it's persistent.
Is there a community?
Yeah.
Is it a game?
I don't know
ask this question in a couple of seconds.
Where is the line between any multiplayer game, and I also need this for the massively
multiplayer online games, and Pokemon Go?
Are the games or are the metaverse?
I don't know.
Is every game a metaverse?
Does that just mean all games are metaverses?
It feels like it diminishes the term of it.
Also I feel like it diminishes the concept of metaverses, plural.
Because you can't, there's no obvious stopping point on the point on when it's no longer a metaverse.
So it's why my mental model often goes to someday it's just going to be metaverse singular.
And then you don't have to have these highly theoretical discussions of is this a game, or
is this a metaverse?
Is this a virtual world?
Is this a metaverse?
Is this social media or is it a metaverse?
Seems unhelpful, not particularly clear.
And things that are unhelpful, frameworks are unhelpful and not particularly clear and don't
drive any particular changes in behavior possibly might be not perfectly fine-tuned to the
environment.
Then we have the ones in our spaces, you know, the central and crypto console, some in other
side, all of these that tend to be NFT based for the land assets.
We do tend to have a centralized rendering delivery system.
We'll talk about that in the very last session of the course.
Here's my game slide.
Is it a game or is it a metaverse?
It doesn't matter.
Right?
Does that mean none of these things matter?
Instead of fighting what exactly is or isn't a metaverse,
if you go to the generic definition that it is, the internet with better visualization
and persistent digital objects starts to get interesting.
You sidestep all these questions.
Let's talk about openness for a second.
We'll talk about a lot more in session 12.
That's why I haven't got into great detail here
but I think it is useful to at least touch upon it a little bit.
All of these are versions of openness.
Some of them more open than others, I think.
Let's start at the top.
Interoperability.
All of the big closed metaverses are going to talk about this.
Why?
Because partially for PR reasons, regulators like interoperability, and so
nobody is going to come say, I don't want to be interoperable with others.
There are also cases where interoperability helps the big guys because they can absorb
other users.
And so expect from the big closed platforms, none of them are going to say that they're
closed.
What they're going to say is "we are absolutely in favor of interoperability".
That interoperability, of course, is going to be driven through closed systems and some
interaction models with closed systems.
And usually what happens in this case is there's a game to make it easy to come into
your world or application or what have you, and make it hard or inconvenient to leave.
This is usually how people deal with interoperability.
Let's say that is the absolute bottom layer of openness.
Let's say the next layer, which is where most of the activity today is in the space.
This is like a kind of five step model.
A lot of people say, yeah, no, all your digital objects.
Your land in, fill-in-the-bank is an NFT.
We can't take it from you.
So that's good.
It's certainly better and from my opinion, better than the alternative.
But also, this usually comes with a bunch of terms and conditions.
If you want to play this object in our world, you got to do these things or we can kick
you out, which is different than saying, you know, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin does not come with terms and conditions like Bitcoin.
No one can kick you out of the Bitcoin world.
Next topic.
Governance models.
Is someone in charge?
Some of the metaverse NFT/metaverse platforms, games, etc.
It's very clear there's a company in charge.
They make the decisions and you play as a customer in effect.
Some others have some form of partially decentralized governments where different districts can
make decisions for themselves, but they do still, I think, fall within broader top-level
governments.
Next topic, what's the client?
You know, what's the client and what's the server, do the client and the server go together?
You know, some folks are trying to do open the Web3 types of servers, what we need in
the browser.
There's a some downsides, you know, that infrastructure is more developed to doing it
with one of the gaming platforms
but browsers are more open
as a endpoint.
I think nobody has right now, there's multiple rendering environments.
Like on all these, you have to go, even the ones who have open clients and ownership of
digital objects as NFTs, there's still a form of interoperability as opposed to being
fully decentralized and open
and if it's fully decentralized and open, again, the rental model is Bitcoin; anyone can run
a Bitcoin client, anyone can run a Bitcoin miner, you don't have to go to Bitcoin.com to
do something.
Today, every one of the platforms, you have to go to a platform-name.com or.io to run
a Bitcoin miner.
It is a point of centralization.
It's a point of not censorship-resistant.
Everything we've got in the whole sale, I can't get one, but you can take them and rebuild
them somewhere else, and yeah, that's fine.
But that's some more interoperability.
It's the last...
What I'd like to see, or I'd like to get to it, is I might not get to, which is why I'm
not saying all of these things yet, because it's not.
I hope to get them.
It's not today.
So, is that anyone can do any of these things?
Like the Internet.
There is not one place you can have a website.
Even if it's on popular website, confidential systems, WordPress, there's not one place
where you can run WordPress.
You can host your site on WordPress.org.
But if you also download WordPress Self-Reserving chosen, you can run the WordPress software
by yourself.
You don't need anyone's permission to do this.
There is no global governance governing one WordPress site.
There's not one company that owns all the WordPress sites.
It's all right.
And this is, I guess, metaverse is going to be exactly WordPress? No, but it's a useful
example to think about.
Are there centralized companies that are built on top of WordPress? Sure
Are some of them variable?
Sure.
Is WordPress centralized?
No, it's not.
It's open.
It's decentralized.
So, I think these are things we'll talk about more in four weeks, but I do want to, like,
introduce them to the discussion.
Now, let me pause there because I'm on one hour and three minutes.
So, we'll switch to questions.
But I do think the three big takeaways, I would say, the is a new found interest in the
metaverse.
Anyways, multiple potential frameworks on what THE metaverse or A metaverse is,
and there's multiple different candidates over the years of things that could have been
or might have been metaverses.
And I think all of these are works in progress and a space where I think it's going to evolve
very quickly.
In five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, we're going to have a different framework on these
topics.
So, let me open up my chat so I can see
and then I'll switch to questions.
Okay.
First question.
"Why doesn't your definition include decentralized platforms?
It's so important."
Yeah, I agree.
I'm running around, tweeting all day long about the open metaverse.
But I need to be in touch and honest in this presentation because it is perfectly possible
that the open metaverse doesn't happen.
I hope that's not the case.
I'm spending an infinite amount of time hoping it does happen.
But the metaverse could exist
that is closed.
And I think it would still be a metaverse.
It would be a closed metaverse.
I'd be less happy about it, but there is no reason why it couldn't exist
So, me, as 6529 believe in open metaverse.
Me as someone running your presentation on what a metaverse is, I don't think it is by definition
decentralized.
An open metaverse might be.
Right?
That's why I added the slide on open.
"The Giaglis Framework seems to bridge metaverse with a Web3 ethos.
Is that the intention?
Because not all visions of the metaverse do this."
Yeah, now I noticed that when I read it.
George is a crypto person, has been for a very long time.
And so,
I am not surprised that there is a Web3 ethos embedded in his metaverse framework.
And I think a lot of people who do not come from this Web3/Crypto aspect
do not include those parameters at all
So, I'm glad he has included them.
Does the 6529 framework believe they will be connected?
Well, I hope so.
I hope the basis, I'm parking this until week 12
because week 12, I'm going to be a little bit more personal.
And a week eight, I'm trying to be a little bit more neutral
I guess.
My view is that we
have a mechanism to make them interoperable.
and that mechanism is a kind of tease.
And instead of having some large organizations decide on interoperability standards,
but fundamentally work in closed
environments.
NFTs are fundamentally open environment
and then people can build on top of them
but I want to talk about that in the week 12.
There were heading away from.
An objective understanding of the situation to my personal belief
on what would be better.
"What is the overlap between the concepts of metaverse and cryptocurrency?"
Well, if you want a
closed metaverse, you don't need any.
You can run a close metaverse where
people own the game objects, but in
Epic's database, people can pay for them with credits in
Epic's database.
A lot of companies are going to do that, to be honest.
So,
if you want an open
metaverse
with not one party in charge with not one person's database in charge.
Well, then you need something that's on a database and that's really a blockchain and specifically a public blockchain, which is what we call a cryptocurrency or crypto asset.
So, that is a good question.
I thought there was a social aspect to the metaverse versus just the 3D space, but it wasn't included in the definitions.
This is a very good point
and we need to think about it.
That needs to get on the slide somewhere.
Yeah, for sure
there's a social aspect
and it's kind of implicitly there
and it should be made explicitly there,
I mean, one mental model that I sometimes have
are
metaverses just social networks
with just different visualizations.
But overall, those are social networks.
I don't know.
But we need to put a slide in there, which says this
explicitly.
High risk that large companies get to set the rules for metaverse, is that a threat or a possibility in your opinion. Yes, in fact, the whole reason 6529 exists is that I think that
that is a very high risk.
I think that is the default case.
I think the default case is that
metaverses will become like Web2, they will be centralized in 5, 10, 15, 20 companies
and I think that's about outcome,
and that's my personal opinion. I don't think that's an objective view about the metaverse someone might have. Someone from Meta might think it's better not to be that way.
I mean, to be that way, but,
for sure I think it's worse.
"Do you believe in a future of the concept of land and gravity in metaverse? To me, they seem like artificial limitations of limit the entry barrier as people are familiar with
these concepts."
Well, I mean,
I hear this fairly often.
From people who are
very deep into the space.
And as hell these things are just total skill morphism.
They're limitations.
We don't need to stick to the land concept.
We don't need to stick to the human scale concept.
And I appreciate that in theory
now, without a counter argument
which is the following.
The counter argument is,
almost we've been making video games for several decades now
a,nd those video games
have been
overwhelmingly
skeuomorphic with land and gravity and things of that nature.
I think there is something to that,
I don't think it's accidental
that almost all games match these types of models. I don't think it's an accident.
I also have
seen attempts to make hugely conceptual spaces
and every attempt I've seen so far,
has been kind of junk.
Now, maybe the space is really good, but the problem is like
our mental models are stuck on
things looking a little bit like the real world.
Maybe.
But it's kind of six and one and a half dozen of the other.
It's.
I have yet to see one where it works.
So in theory,
yes, these are official limitations and we can do whatever we want,
and practice,
whatever we want.
So far has ended up looking
kind of like the real world.
Now, not exactly like the real world but,
there's gravity in home, for example, but not a lot of gravity,
you can jump really high.
So
to prove it otherwise,
I would expect most things will somehow correlate with real world
concepts.
"Thoughts on digital twins using the metaverse."
So digital twins are a digital representation of something in the
physical world,
and they came out of the world of like
high end equipment manufacturing and so on.
And so you have like a turbine and you make a physical copy of the turbine and
you put on the physical turbine sensors
and those sensors feed data to the digital twin
and so you can watch and monitor,
the
turbine
during
In the digital world.
And you know
say, oh, look, there's
data is coming out of line,
the turbines are not behaving normally,
let's go fix it in the physical world before it breaks.
Now there's other use cases too
I think in time you'll have cities where you'll see full in some
cities, there are cities with digital twins, but they'll get better where
you'll say, look, we're monitoring traffic flows and pollution and waste
water and disease spread.
Absolutely is going to exist
I think for
kind of boring
I'm sorry, not boring, what is the word I'm looking for.
Institutional use.
Not like hanging out fun social use actually think digital twins are going
to be very important
because they will give us
a viable
model
to improve the real world and monitor the real world better.
So I'm fairly bullish on these as a concept
I can't an architecture.
How do we protect these from being copied?
I don't think it's easy to be honest.
Just like anything else on the Internet,
how do you protect them from being copied?
Not that easily.
So what do you have to aim for?
Well, the same,
I mean, it's a version of right click.
And so you're going to have to have some concept of
providence
for that
not to be a big issue.
But I do think like, if you make a cool looking building somewhere
might someone copy it somewhere else?
yeah, I think that one comes.
I don't see it obviously for it not to happen
so I think given what we've learned from NFTs,
if
X copy makes some cool X copy building
and there are 1000 tokens of that X copy building
and
you own one of those,
that's going to be different
and more valuable than someone who just right clicked saved your X copy building.
So I suspect we're going to have to use the same frameworks and mental models that we use for digital art for digital buildings.
I don't see any other
way around it.
You want provenance and tokenization
to manage this topic.
There's a question that I don't have about the slightest idea what it means
or how to answer it but I'm going to read it because it's amuzing.
"Is a metaverse a way of function with multiple potentials with collapsing one through observation?
I think quantum computers will drastically change the metaverse definitions."
I kind of understand the words
and sort of the concepts behind this
I just don't have any idea how to answer this question.
So I didn't think it would be hard to read it for everyone
in case it's helpful for anyone else.
"What's the best book you've read about constructs?"
I mean the classic book on this right is Snow Crash,
everyone starts there.
Actually I think a book that people don't think of as directly being a metaverse book.
It is kind of a metaverse book.
A mixed reality metaverse book is the series of
Demon and Freedom.
So,
it's interesting because it's basically a gaming platform.
Like wild and started.
Impacting behavior in the real world,
and it is a form of metaverse,
I think.
A kind of an abstract form of metaverse like some of these ones we're talking about
so I threw it out there not because it's...
it's not a classic book of the genre
but I think there's a mental model that you could view it there and I find it's interesting.
"Aren't you afraid that the metaverse will become a trap?
A.I. and robotics throw us from offices
there'll be nothing to do.
The metaverse can be such a golden cage to socialize and entertain us."
Well, I mean
I'm not sure I believe the premises of this question.
But, if A.I. and robotics start doing all the work for us,
we probably will hang out in the metaverse more.
I know this question is written with a value judgment in it.
But,
maybe the value judgment is opposite.
Maybe if the machines do all of our
work for us
we can be the people focused on
self development and self expression.
I'm a little skeptical of how that will play out.
It hasn't played out and I'm
actually not sure it's super healthy for humans not to have challenges
so I don't know if it's going to play out that way.
But yeah, I mean conceivably in the world that the A.I.s are good enough to do all our work,
but not good enough to get rid of us,
will we keep ourselves, or to frame it differently,
keep ourselves more occupied with social activities from people around the world?
Sure.
Is that metaverse a golden cage?
Maybe
but like
I don't know if there's any more of a golden cage than Twitter is today.
And some people say, oh, putters not.
It's taking people away from real life.
Do you see our visual one largely the same as we come up on a year of their deal?
Yeah
more or less exactly the same
I'll talk about it more in week 12
and I want to make the session more general.
Okay, I think we're an hour and a half.
Let's wrap it here.
Thank you as always for joining.
We'll make the announcements in a little bit about
regional and course logistics a little bit so we can start getting the guests back and coming.
There's just an awful lot going on and the teams are doing a great job
working on things.
So we're just going to give ourselves a little bit more breathing room to get everything done.
Can anyone build them on the other?
You need to.
Can anyone can use a space and put NFT's in it.
If you want to design spaces, you do need some
experience and 3D modeling, but if you have that, yes, you can do that.
All right, everyone.
Thank you so much as always.
And I'll see you back on Twitter.
Sure.