Why a Metaverse evolution is dangerous

My MBA friends and I all had a laugh (and a cringe) when Facebook changed its name to Meta. We wondered how much the brand agency got paid for such an unimaginative change. But the laugh ended up being with Zuck as I dutiful cleared out my lounge after having caved into the curiosity of the Metaverse and digital world when I bought an Oculus VR headset. It’s quite an elation that everything in my house remains intact despite my climb towards being a boxing champion in the digital world. Some others haven’t been quite so fortunate.?

My elation has become an ouch

However, beyond my home, the elation quickly becomes pain when I look at the articles explaining the Metaverse and the countless traditional companies and consultancies jumping onto the bandwagon. Unfortunately the jump from my employer has landed them halfway between platform and the bandwagon (ouch).??The ouch comes not from the horrible graphics, the awkward semi-human interacts or even the floating half bodies, these will improve incrementally, the ouch comes from the fact that many companies are misinterpreting what the Metaverse is, should be and could be. It is cringeworthy because companies have transported what we find a pain in the real world into the digital world, and more distressingly transported the limitations of our real selves into the digital world.

(Image of my worst nightmare; image credit: Meta)

The promise of the Metaverse

The digital world is an escape, during my 9 to 5 I have to appear poised and knowledgeable to appease my clients, but in the digital world I can be the crazy cat lady that scrolls mindlessly on TikTok watching cats making a fool of themselves and dogs getting groomed. The digital world provides an escape, it provides a world that isn’t burdened by all the past decisions I have made in my life, where I’m not having to battle the same unconscious bias constantly (there are different issues online), or where my skills are judged by my CV. The digital world allows me to explore opportunities that I can never do in my real life, in the Metaverse I am a champion boxer, in real life I’ll bruise if you fist bump me too hard, in the Metaverse I can be a rocket scientist despite my lack of training in astrophysics. The Metaverse provides a revolution into who I am as I can live multiple selves and I can live a life of little limits. Want to learn martial arts for fun as fast as Neo did in the Matrix? Done. Want to learn martial arts for fun because in the real world your parents couldn’t afford to send you to martial arts school? Not an issue. Want to learn to martial arts because in??the real world you suffer from physical disability? Fill your dreams and hopes - reimagine a life of possibilities.

Why the current approach by companies is dangerous

Seeing companies boast about having meetings in the Metaverse pains me. The Metaverse allows us the ability to reimagine ways we exchange information, but yet they’ve decided to digitise the worse part about a job (yes, they still do slides in the Metaverse). These companies are transporting the limitations we have in our physical selves into the world we find escape, or for some a chance for a better life. Inevitably, these companies will transport all the prejudice and judgment we experience in the real world into the digital world. It’s a danger when these companies speak about Metaverse as an evolution. Evolution encourages small, incremental thinking, defined by the world they already know and want to persist rather than a world the rest of us dream or hope for - one of significant inclusion and diverse experiences.

Metaverse as a new hope

The Metaverse must be a platform for evolutionary change and we shouldn’t allow companies to trivialise this, if we do, we allow the monopolies of today to become monopolies of the future. The Metaverse should be a world free of the agency problem, a world where society isn’t subject to agents who only hire the elite to solve the issues of the marginalised. Evolutionary change is about breaking down the barriers of today and empowering even the most marginalised with the resources, control and ability to become who they aspire to be.

There is already an industry that is doing this. The gaming industry already understands how to create worlds of escape and to create an experience limited only by the imagination of the narrator (geek out here at a16z). They see the future as a new narrative, not a problem that you apply consulting frameworks to solve. We must take inspiration from that industry and an evolutionary mindset when we look into and build the Metaverse. This is a chance for us to build a new narrative, and the Metaverse is a platform for a new evolution.

The above post builds on my earlier short post about the Metaverse