The race is to monetize the metaverse hype. Last week, Microsoft described its $68.7 billion take over gaming studio Activision Blizzard—A move often interpreted as the Xbox maker is simply expanding into the gaming arena — as a way to create “building blocks for the metaverse.” Meta – rebranded from Facebook to be named after the metaverse – is working on the world’s most powerful supercomputer, to power the metaverse. Now, Meta is also reported as intends to introduce NFT features on its Facebook and Instagram platforms; Twitter already allows users to convert their NFT into a hexagonal profile picture; and YouTube may soon do something similar. Follow Metaverse analysts consistently rising ratings and chin, NFT, a cryptocurrency token that is considered a digital title deed, will be a core component of Metaverse.
That is, of course, when and if such a thing exists. Metaverse is a fuzzy concept: It entered the dictionary through Neal Stephenson’s bizarre 1992 sci-fi novel Snow, where the Metaverse is a virtual refuge from a world full of anarchy controlled by the Mafia, and brought back by a series of blog posts by VC Matthew Ball. Following Ball’s formula, which quickly became scripted, Metaverse is an always-online virtual world that seamlessly blends with the real, flesh-and-blood world, aided by augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. Video games are part of it, but not it; Cryptocurrencies and tokens will play big roles as Metaverse currency and assets, as people will actually work and earn from it.
Rest assured, we are told, Metaverse is coming.
The most striking thing about the buzz around Metaverse is that everyone claims to be building it, but no one knows what it’s actually going to be or what it looks like — and whether people want to use it or not. Are not. As editor-in-chief of WIRED Gideon Lichfield put itwe are witnessing “a land grab in terms”: Companies and entrepreneurs are already feeling some sort of change popped up in the air and they’re scrambling to call it the next big thing, put their own labels on it (in some cases to extremes at the Meta-rebranding level) and figure out how to monetize it . The question is whether we – the intended users – will go with it.
The change Big Tech has noticed is obvious: Over the past few years, people have started spending more time online. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated that rapidly. For white-collar workers who are required to work from home, the office instantly shrinks to just screen size. Free time, for the same reasons, is also forced to find digital alternatives. When the cinemas close, the bars close, and the parties are unquestionable (unless you work for the UK Government), bored people spent a negligible amount of time playing video games, to engage in gambling activities such as Flip stock meme and get into crypto or crypto-adjacent products (like NFT photos). In some cases, the two merge into weird crypto-finance and games, making pay-to-play universes like Axie Infinity, the NFT-based video game, a source of revenue for impoverished Filipinos. Meta et al’s gamble is that this situation will persist and eventually evolve — with faster internet connections, better VR, and a more efficient online economy — into the Metaverse, aka the Metaverse, aka the Metaverse. is the next internet.
It was a fraudulent gamble. To actually work requires us to feel bored at home in the near future. Except in extreme cases, only when clubs are closed, concerts are cancelled, and face-to-face meetings are off limits can one participate in Metaverse-equivalent activities. their. It might be a smart gamble — a new variant, the climate crisis, or a nuclear apocalypse could force us all to stay indoors — but amazingly speaking, it’s a life-changing event. bet against humanity. It’s not necessarily bad for tech companies to take a title card from science fiction, but if you really have to, at least try to pick up the utopia, like Amazon’s Echo, which is whitewashed. roll. Star Trek‘s chattering computer Snow Crash.
And still, the ethics of the Metaverse project is the least of its problems. Unlike Google Glass, the gold standard of tech perverts, it is not a product of hype (and is not envisioned): It is pure hype, with no product — except for some hypothetical “building blocks”. Benedict Evans, a venture partner at London-based Entrepreneur First, drew a parallel apt between the Metaverse and the “information superhighway”—a very fashionable term in the early 1990s that announced the birth of several types of digital media networks across the United States that included everything from video games to video games. electronics to the interactive TV, to the fiber optic cable.
