Making Sense of the Metaverse – Part 2

In part 1, I tried to make sense of the metaverse through the lens of my professional career during the waves of Web 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0. In this blog, I will answer what the metaverse really is in my view.?I will share my thoughts on the opportunities and potentials in the metaverse, especially in the retail and consumer goods industries.?I will then raise my worries and concerns in the metaverse.?

I: Definition of the Metaverse

What really is the metaverse?

This question reminds me of DevOps.?When I started my DevOps journey, everyone had their own definition and interpretation of what DevOps was.?At the theoretical level, people understood that DevOps was about people, process, and technology in building software, but at the practical level, DevOps was seen as CICD, Infra-as-code, ALM (application lifecycle management), Agile, GitOps, MLOps, or even Azure DevOps.?We are going to see a similar evolution in the metaverse too.?For example, people often talk about NFTs or games interchangeably with the metaverse.

The metaverse is a term coined by novelist Neal Stephenson in his famous 1992 novel Snow Crash in 1992. ?The novel defines the metaverse as a place where people use virtual reality headsets to interact in a digital game-like world.?The term metaverse is a portmanteau of meta- and universe.?Meta- is Ancient Greek for “after” or “beyond” and is used as a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or “transcending,” while -verse refers to the universe, so metaverse means “comprehensive universe.”

Here is a list of a few definitions I have seen:

1. The metaverse is a persistent digital representation of people, places, and things in the virtual or physical world.
2. The metaverse is where the physical and the digital worlds converge into a “physical-digital” experience, augmenting both the virtual and the physical worlds.
3. The metaverse is a successor to the internet.?It will be the most pervasive and powerful system humans ever created.
4. The metaverse is an economical system where individuals and business can create, sell, and exchange assets.
5. The metaverse is a natural iteration for humanity and it is not any different from the real world where people come together and form a community around whatever topic they are interested in, as belonging to a group has always been crucial for individual survival.
6. The metaverse is a complete convergence of the physical and the digital world. ?As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it during the 2021 Microsoft Ignite event, “We will embed computing in the real world and embed the real world into computing, bringing real presence to any digital space.?What is most important is that we are able to bring our humanity with us and choose how we want to experience this world and who we want to interact with.”

What the metaverse is NOT:

1. Online game
2. Social media/network
3. Online app marketplace
4. Only for kids and young people

As a seasonal software architect, I always use Information Architecture (I.A.) to organize my thoughts and my work.?I.A. is a science of organizing, labelling, and structuring knowledge.? It allows people to find whatever they need in different environments within the physical and digital space and in a simple, fast, and intuitive way.

Organization is structure and structure make every subject easier to understand and remember.?It can also speed up access to related information and make sense of our detailed and complex world.?How you organize your information cannot?be arbitrary because every decision we make—or fail to make—changes the way the information is perceived.?

So far, I have organized the metaverse in two ways:

1. By usage patterns—more practical in the short term
2. By core attributes—more important in the long run

#1: Organizing the Metaverse by Usage Patterns

1)?????Industrial metaverse: Operational enhancements.?

Common use cases:

a.??????Visualization of supply chain

b.??????Digital twin optimization

c.??????Internet of things monitoring

d.??????HoloLens training

e.??????Virtual Remote Assist

2)?????Commercial metaverse: B2B experience in the metaverse.?

Common use cases:

a.??????Immersive collaboration

b.??????Digital water cooler environments

c.??????Virtual town hall

d.??????Remote training and learning

e.??????Employee onboarding events

f.???????Employee recruitment events

3)?????Consumer metaverse: B2C experience in the metaverse.

Common use cases:

a.??????VR/AR/MR retail and NFTs

b.??????Brands directly engage with customers

c.??????Fashion shows and promotions

d.??????Duty-free product pre-orders

e.??????Experience virtually and fulfill physically

#2: Organizing the Metaverse by Core Attributes

1)?????Self-sovereignty (Identity)

Self-sovereignty means that the individual remains in control over their online identity and data, not the platform or website. ?People can regain sovereignty over their identities and data using blockchain technologies. ?People value their digital personas, assets, and reputations and want to carry them across the digital world and even into the real world.

2)?????Spatiality (Immersiveness)

Any virtual world, space, or experience should incorporate spatial anchors to make objects inside those virtual or augmented experiences persistent so people can find them and provide an experience that is more akin to the real world. ?Spatial data will enable users to interact with digital items, whether placed in the virtual or real world.?People don't just want to consume.?It's far more engaging to have gamified, contextual, and immersive experiences between real and virtual worlds.

3)?????Economic model (Ownership)

People enjoy ownership and rights over their digital assets. Digital rights serve as the foundation for a potentially infinite number of creations that lead to a creator economy. ?With the metaverse economy, there is a shift to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. ?Therefore, in combination with feel-good moments, people experience financial gain and rewards in these digital worlds.

4)?????Decentralization

Decentralization is all about who controls the virtual worlds, assets, and experiences and who reaps the benefits if they become successful. ?The vision for the Web has always been one of full decentralization, where the power lies with the individuals and not with Big Tech or governments that can use centralized platforms to control, exploit, and manipulate individuals.

5)?????Community-driven

The community will be crucial to the metaverse whether an experience is designed around a community or created by the members of that community. ?To that end, the metaverse is not any different from the real world where people come together and form a community around whatever topic, as belonging to a group has always been crucial for individual survival. ?Co-creation and co-ownership become the norm.

6)?????Interoperability

Interoperability refers to what extent users can take out the value they created inside one platform and bring it to another platform and vice versa without any barriers. Interoperability would enable users to win, buy, or earn a digital asset in one environment and use it in another environment, whether physical or digital. ?Interoperability provides users with the means to transfer their data and assets from one platform to another and sell it to other users at the market value determined by the open market.

II: Opportunities and Potentials

In this section, I list some of the examples I have seen with my own eyes of why the metaverse offers a unique opportunity to various industry players.?I will only share 6 examples below, but the list can go much longer.?For each use case, I offer my perspective on the value the metaverse will create.

Before we begin, let’s understand why brands are now embracing the metaverse.

Thanks to radio and television, it has become possible to?reach large groups of people with a single company's commercial.?That is why companies spend millions on TV ads during large events such as sport events like the Olympic Games or the Super Bowl, fashion events in New York or Paris, or industry events by retailers and consumer goods companies.?Over the years, this type of mass marketing worked well for brands, which is why when the internet arrived, brands at first were reluctant to develop an online presence.?Why would they spend more money on something called the Web when the mass TV commercials worked so well for their brands?

At the beginning of Web 2.0, plenty of brands did not see the need for a website. ?Then when eCommerce arrived, brands were reluctant to open an online store. ?At the beginning of the pandemic, there were plenty of brands that had not yet invested heavily in an online channel and thus ran into problems when brick-and-mortar shops had to close due to global lockdowns. ?Those companies that had not updated their supply chain for the digital era before the pandemic began faced many more difficulties in adjusting to the new normal than those companies with digitally optimized supply chains and eCommerce channels.

This same reluctance appeared during the start of the social media and mobile internet era. ?Again, plenty of brands were not convinced that it was a good idea to develop a mobile app, create a presence on social media, and build a community on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or more recently TikTok.

Over the past 20+ years during the Web 2.0 period, brands have been reluctant to embrace new opportunities. ?Many brands missed Web 2.0 altogether, but high-tech fashion companies like Farfetch or high-tech online platform companies like Alibaba made huge fortunes in Web 2.0.?Alibaba is a positive example I have personally witnessed.?During the pandemic, I couldn’t go back to visit my parents in China for almost three years so the only thing I could do for my parents was to order goods for them through the Taobao mobile app.?Their online ordering, tracking, and delivery services are amazing.?Before the pandemic, I had never used Taobao even though my friends told me it was safe and secure.?Only the pandemic made it possible for me to use their services because they became a necessity.

However, Ann Taylor is an opposite example.?Ann Taylor was my favorite brand for a long time, but over the years, it became less and less attractive compared to brands like Lululemon, which is highly active in community building using technology to promote its brand.

History teaches us a lot.?Many lessons learned have been painful, which is why most brands today try to avoid making the same mistakes again and don’t want to miss this Web 3.0 wave. ?The immersive internet will offer an opportunity to engage with customers in authentic and unique ways, offering experiences to create new personal bonds with their products that they can never generate through mass TV ads or mass marketing events.

Value: Offer an opportunity to engage with customers in a more authentic and creative way.

#1: Reinvent an education model that has not changed for a century

Though the world has changed drastically in the past century, our education system has remained largely unchanged.?Regardless of students’ abilities, education consists of a large group of students in a classroom sitting forward-facing and listening to a teacher who explains topics, gives assignments, or answers questions. ?We cling to the traditional way of teaching students’ subjects, most of which will become useless in the next decade. ?Our education system even became worse during the pandemic, as the situation forced students worldwide to learn from home, sitting for hours in front of Zoom or Teams meetings. ?Online learning during the pandemic was immensely challenging for students, parents, teachers, and mentors.

Instead, just making students memorize facts, we should focus on teaching students critical thinking and analytical skills so that they know how to form an opinion and self-educate, be adaptive and deal with rapid change, and use and apply technology to innovate. ?Above all, we should embrace the latest technology from AI coaching to virtual and augmented experiences to prepare our children for a world that will look fundamentally different by the time they finish school.

In our Dojo blog – experiential learning, we talked about various ways to learn.?Research has shown that passive teaching methods are ineffective in maintaining knowledge. ?The least effective method is a lecture. ?Long-term retention rates of knowledge shared in a typical lecture are around 5%, while reading about a topic only marginally improves the retention rates to 10%. ?However, participatory teaching methods drastically improve memory retention rates, with group discussions bringing them to 50% and learning by doing raising them to 75%. ?Students teaching others can even reach 90% retention. ?As you can see, the best way to retain knowledge would be to learn by doing and teaching.?This is where the metaverse comes into play.

This article discusses a whole new world where education meets the metaverse.

A whole new world: Education meets the metaverse (brookings.edu)

Just imagine how you would study science or history this way:

Education in the metaverse - YouTube

The world is 3-dimensional, so we learn better in 3D across all possible measurements. ?In an attention fighting environment, it is vital that we make learning immersive, engaging, and fun.

Value: Reinvent education by offering experiential and immersive learning to train skills such as team building, collaboration, coordination, co-creation, and entrepreneurship.

#2: Employee onboarding and engagement in all industries

Employee engagement is not just about employee attrition, it is about hard business results such as earnings per share (EPS), the most precious result for a publicly traded company.?According to a Gallup study, companies from the top decile in employee engagement saw around 150% more earnings per share than their competitors.?Companies from the top quartile in employee engagement are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable than those from the bottom quartile.?

Engaged employees deliver great customer experience.?This means that an engaged marketer works harder to explain their product or tell a better story of the company’s brand with just the right level of details, an engaged software engineer co-creates and co-designs better software with cleaner and more efficient code, and an engaged sales rep shifts from just taking orders to actively creating a more consultative sales process.?A good customer experience creates customer loyalty.

Emirates to hire 4,000 new cabin crew to train in the metaverse - Arabian Business

Just image how you would conduct a new employee onboarding event.

Welcome to the Nth Floor – Accenture’s Virtual Office - YouTube

Just imagine how you would learn DevOps in a fun and immersive environment.

DevOps Dojo in the Metaverse - YouTube

Value: Increasing employee engagement has a direct impact on a company’s business objective.

#3: Manufactory/supply chain with digital twin

With more than 200 breweries and over 150,000 employees across the globe, Anheuser-Busch InBev is the largest brewer in the world.?They are dedicated to the highest standards of quality and consistency, they are experts in process manufacturing, and they are taking advantage of the Microsoft technology stack used for metaverse applications to dramatically transform their operations. ?The control and optimization this technology stack provides allow AB InBev to make sure the perfect sip is delivered to customers every time while still meeting their bold business and sustainability goals.

To see how the industrial metaverse works, please check out this video.

Creating the brewery of the future with Anheuser-Busch InBev - YouTube

Value: Industrial metaverse improves safety, productivity, and cost-efficiency.

#4: Product demonstration and launch

Immersive digital product demonstrations or customizations allow consumers to try out and create a product before actually buying it.?This can bring a great competitive advantage for brands.

IKEA's Place app is a leading example of using augmented reality to offer a unique experience for customers. ?The AR feature allows users to digitally place furniture anywhere to better understand how that new chair or table would look in their house. ?The real-time feedback provides extremely valuable insight into the customer’s needs.

Using IKEA's Augmented Reality App placing furniture - YouTube

What about when you launch consumer products for enterprise users and 2D video guides or written instructions are not enough??You need 3D instructions to walk you through the features and installation process.?Please check this out:

Siemens Healthineers MetaVRse 3D Training - YouTube

Value: Immersive digital product demonstration and product launch lead to a superb consumer experience.

#5: Duty-free shopping experience

I used to travel internationally all the time, and as the world is opening up again, I have started to travel domestically and will be travelling internationally.?One challenge I always had was purchasing duty-free products efficiently in a limited amount of time before boarding international flights.?Moreover, depending on what my departure or arrival locations were, the goods available and rules of purchase would be different.?

Just imagine that if I could visit the duty-free metaverse before I travel, I would have enough time to browse the 3D products in terms of price, ingredients, packaging, or rules and I could also check with my friends and family if the products are what they want before I place an order.?When I arrive at the airport, I would just need to pick up the goods.?If I want to buy duty-free products at the arriving airport, I could access the metaverse during my flight as I have plenty of time to browse the products and place an order.

Additionally, we can add an AI coach to the duty-free metaverse, or we can work with real people behind avatars. ?When the world has finally opened up, more and more people will travel again and enjoy duty-free products from around the world.?This strategy will increase sales significantly and I bet travelers including myself will be a lot happier if this type of service can be offered.

Value: Significantly boost travelers’ shopping experience and increase duty-free sales.

#6: Reinvent a fashion industry that has not changed for a century

In my next blog, I will have a dedicated article talking about the opportunities and potential for the metaverse to be used in the fashion industry.?Please stay tuned.?For now, I will only show a few common use cases.

Fashion show

Metaverse Fashion Week 2022 in Second Life - YouTube

Fashion showroom

ByondXR - Immersive Fashion Showrooms - YouTube

Virtual clothing try-on

Virtual Try On Clothing using Full body Tracking Technology - YouTube

Fashion mall

MetaVRse Promo Video October 13, 2022 - YouTube

With the amount of data generated in the metaverse predicted to be 10 to 100 times that of the current Web, not stepping into the metaverse as a brand would be akin to driving blindfolded.

Value: Fashion in the metaverse will significantly reduce product returns and improve sustainability.

Don’t completely mimic the real world in the virtual world

I think mimicking the real world in the virtual world would be a mistake.?Replicating it in the metaverse misses the opportunity to expand the customer experience via the immersive internet.?Remember, the real world has physical limits, but the virtual world has no limits.?If all of what we can do in the virtual world can already be done in the physical world, people will create less value or challenge the value created and may eventually leave the virtual world.?I believe that brands should create highly visual, creative, experiential, and engaging experiences unlike what we have seen in the real world to take advantage of the limitless digital possibilities.

However, humans prefer familiar experiences in order to feel less threatened, so I think most brands will start from familiar experiences. However, they should not limit themselves to what is familiar as the virtual world is limitless.?It will be the creator’s ecosystem.?

Finally, I think we all crave creativity and authenticity from any brand. ?With the metaverse, these attributes will become more important than ever as anything will become possible in the metaverse.

III: Job Opportunities

As technologies advanced in web 1.0 and 2.0, we saw new job opportunities created.?Web 3.0 is no different as the metaverse is becoming more accepted in the industry.

The following list of new job opportunities comes from my personal views based on what I have seen so far by working with our customers and partners. ?This is not a complete list, and it is rapidly changing due to the metaverse being a new and emerging space.?For example, barely anyone talks about how to do DevOps for metaverse delivery to production.?Once the metaverse becomes mature and more companies join the metaverse ecosystem, I expect that DevOps job opportunities for metaverse creation will increase.?Here is my list:

1)?????Strategy and Partnership

2)?????Marketing and Branding

3)?????Chief Metaverse Officer

4)?????UX Architect/Storyteller

5)?????Metaverse Engineer/Creator

• Virtual world/space
• 3D object/asset/NFT
• Virtual wearable
• Spatial audio

6)?????Metaverse Solution Architect

7)?????Metaverse Legal/Ethics Specialist

8)?????Metaverse Security/Privacy Specialist

9)?????Metaverse Finance Specialist

10)??Community Lead and Moderator

11)??Blockchain Engineer

12)??Digital Twin Engineer

13)??Data/AI Architect

14)??Data/AI Engineer

Many people worry about job loss with the advancement of AI, but as you can see, the AI-powered metaverse will create many new jobs.?In a recent event, I also heard that people are looking for magicians and moderators in metaverse events.?Moderators will play a key role in this new metaverse world by allowing people to enjoy an immersive experience without getting lost in the limitless world.

IV: Worries and Concerns

The metaverse of the future is likely to fully support AR, VR, AI, and the connectivity to link all worlds.?In fact, the metaverse will be the most democratic instantiation on the internet.?Anyone will have the opportunity to create a space and be part of a user-generated global community on an interoperable multiplatform where they can share their games or goods with the world. ?But as anyone who lives in a?democratic environment knows, democracy is messy.

Social media was a democratic instantiation because it made the powerless powerful around the world.?Social media/networks brought everyone together but also brought out the darkest side of humanity. ?People need each other, but when technologies develop much faster than policies, ethics, and industry expertise, we create more social issues, more division, more conflicts, and we create an unsustainable world.?

The challenges in the metaverse will be plentiful, ranging from: physical and mental health issues, harassment, abuse and bullying, unlimited data harvesting impacting our privacy, security breaches, biased and unethical AI, a further polarized society, to increased inequality, etc. ?The current internet introduced a flood of problems, so will the metaverse be the same or can it potentially solve some issues??What should we do now to prevent us from repeating history?

The following issues already exist in the Web 2.0 world.?In a 3D version of a more immersive, gamified, and decentralized online world, without intentional effort from the start, these problems can and will intensify.

#1: Mental illness and health risk

I recently started working on the development of the virtual metaverse world as someone who has experienced Web 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0.?From my personal experience, I learned that gaming development is additive. ?Even though I got motion sickness at midnight on a Saturday night building a world, I just couldn’t leave my chair.?Developing or playing gamified scenes can cause the brain to release large amounts of dopamine: This is simply biology.?

I have a good life in the physical world, so I don’t really need a virtual world to bring me more pleasure and satisfaction.?What I enjoy the most is creativity and storytelling in the metaverse.?Now you can imagine that if someone is struggling or unsatisfied in their physical world, they may turn to the virtual world for excitement.?Each time they feel that release of dopamine in the virtual world, their brain strengthens the connection between accessing the virtual world and feeling pleasure or satisfaction.?As this continues, they start to crave this ideal, fun, and exciting virtual world and want to stay in it all the time.?When they return to reality, they feel a stark contrast between the two worlds.?This could eventually lead to or exacerbate mental health problems.?We won’t fully understand the consequences until further research is done on the issue.

The comparison of personal experiences is a strong mental motivator for people to go one way or another.?For example, I used to be a platinum member of one airline, so I could always board flights earlier and get better seats, frequently being upgraded to first class.?One time, I had to fly with a different airline where I had no status.?I boarded with the last group, I was assigned a middle seat near last row, and my carryon had to be checked in.?I hated that experience, but I learned what privilege really was and how it can impact people’s emotions if they were used to privileges before.?So, regardless of the situation, I stayed with my preferred airline for the comfort and privilege I had.?I consider myself a mature adult and I study psychology, so if even I have a tendency to seek out comfortable and pleasant spaces, you can imagine that young people would have a similar or even stronger tendency.

#2: Online harassment, abuse, bullying

I actually didn’t understand why people harass and bully others more often and more intensely online than in real life until I experienced it myself.?I guess it is the same concept behind why we spend less when we have to pay with cash for everything compared to when we can pay with a credit card.?Paying by cash is entirely physical so you feel the actual loss from your savings, while paying by credit card is a virtual transaction in numbers so it is a lot easier emotionally and mentally.

I have a friend whom I met back in the late 90s in Connecticut.?Our families were close, and we did many things together.?Her family moved to Nebraska as her husband got a job as a physician there.?I visited her once and she visited us once, so we had kept a good relationship for over 20 years.?We continued to keep in touch through WeChat once we had smartphones.?That was until we had disagreement on a social issue.?I asked us to stop and avoid this topic because I valued our friendship.?In return, she sent me a nasty text and 60 second voice message that was so ugly, so disgusting, and so hurtful.?I told her that I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from her. ?Within a minute, she turned herself from a close friend to a bully.?I didn’t say anything and then she blocked me.?That was an “a-ha” moment for me.?If we were face-to-face, I think that we would have some control or courtesy to not go that far, but because we were in the online world, emotions escalated to anger much more quickly. ?My conclusion is that harassment, abuse, and bullying is just easier online than in the physical world.?

With decentralized, gamified, and immersive 3D virtual worlds, people may feel less restrained and more impulsive and do things that they normally wouldn’t do in the Web 2.0 space.??In the metaverse, you can change your name, your looks, and your outfit.?In my view, avatars sit in the middle between anonymity and known identity.?If people today are already doing crazy things to harass, abuse, and bully people, with the increased flexibility in representing our identity in the 3D world, there will just be more ways and opportunities for humans to show our weaknesses.

#3: Data privacy violations

Here is my favorite proverb from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:

• Mind your thoughts—for thoughts become words
• Mind your words—for words become actions
• Mind your actions—for actions become habits
• Mind your habits—for habits become character
• Mind your character—for character shapes destiny

However, now our thoughts can be intercepted from within the metaverse because with advanced technologies, the metaverse can collect our behavioral data to much more accurately reflect our thoughts than when we put them into words.?This could include where we look at, how long we look, who we look at, how long we spend with which individuals and groups, what we like and dislike, and so on.?With those data, before we say anything, the metaverse can already recommend various actions for us and the more we do, the more it becomes a habit.?Once it becomes our habit, we begin changing our character, which can shape our destiny.?

Today, the recommendation engine already does it.?I use YouTube to learn various things, check out cat videos, and watch comedy.?The recommendation engine only recommends to me the things I have checked out: It only shows me cat videos and only pushes Asian comedies and standup shows.?In order to break the cycle, I have to purposely search other topics so that I am not being led by the recommendation engine all the time.?

The amount of available data collected will explode compared to today, enabling even more personalized and intrusive ads that follow us wherever we go.?The metaverse will be at the next level of the recommendation force that shapes our destiny because our thoughts can be accurately captured before we even say a word.?It is therefore extremely important to address data privacy issues at the early stage of the metaverse.??We cannot hope that all technology will do the right things for us, so we need to educate ourselves more on data privacy.?If we don’t, our thoughts will be capitalized, and we will march toward a destination we will regret.

#4: Biased and unethical AI

The executives in different companies who invest the most in metaverse solutions tend to be the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Data Officer.?At the end of the day, the future metaverse has to be powered by data and AI.?AI will be vital to keeping the metaverse running and accessible, but unfortunately, algorithms and models are black boxes to consumers. ?In fact, biased AI is more the norm than the exception. ?Too often is AI trained with biased data and created and tested by development organizations that lack of diversity and inclusion, further reinforcing existing harmful stereotypes and putting women, minorities, and people with disabilities at risk.

#5: Lack of women in metaverse creation

Web 2.0 was developed by web developers.?As of now Web 3.0 or the metaverse are being developed by gamers, and most gamers are young men.?In fact, as I am building a community of the metaverse, I haven’t yet found a single female game developer in my circle.?That is concerning.

Over 3.5 years ago when I started the Dojo community, the situation was similar.?At the time DevOps was more about CICD, infra-as-code, and MLOps, so the DevOps positions and jobs were filled by mostly men.?Today, we have almost as many women as men in the Dojo community core team and this mix really changed our DNA and culture.?It remains a highly active community that creates the highest quality IPs and DevOps deliveries that lead to true customer DevOps transformations.

In fact, this is one of the main reasons why I want to participate in the metaverse as it is personal to me.?Women cannot be missing in building our future world and enhancing our humanity.?We can’t hope that the world will be good for us when we are not at the table.?Hope is not a good strategy; we need to be part of the creation of the new world we wish to see and live.

V: Fashion in the Metaverse

A metaverse economy is a creator community.?If we build the metaverse with mindful intention and diversity, it will give humanity a chance to create new worlds that are rich, fair, immersive, creative, joyful, and sustainable.?One of the exciting areas in the metaverse is fashion.

The fashion industry is one of the oldest industries and it has not changed for more than a century. ?The fashion industry is one of the largest polluters in the world, just after the oil industry. ?The fashion industry should be held accountable to more sustainable practices because the industry is a large contributor to climate change. ?The fashion industry produces an estimated 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. ?The production and distribution of the crops, fibers, and garments used in fashion all contribute to differing forms of environmental pollution including water, air, and soil degradation. ?The textile industry is the second greatest polluter of local freshwater in the world and is culpable for roughly one-fifth of all industrial water pollution. ?Some of the main factors that contribute to this industrial caused pollution are the mass-production and over-production of fashion items.

The metaverse will play a key role in addressing the sustainability crisis we are facing in the 21st century. ?In my next post, I will share my view of fashion in the metaverse.?Stay tuned.