Olivier DesbieyHead of Foresight, AXA Group
April 11, 2022
Metaverse or Metaverses? From the future of big tech to the origins of the Internet
Behind the trendiest tech buzzword of the moment are a variety of visions of what an immersive-digital-future should feel like: from a fusion of digital and analog worlds to the next generation of the Internet characterized by the (still) large dominant tech players or by a landscape of decentralized actors. What are the implications of these different visions and how do they fit into broader debates on the governance of digital spaces?
4 minutes
Behind the trendiest tech buzzword of the moment are a variety of visions of what an immersive-digital-future should feel like: from a fusion of digital and analog worlds to the next generation of the Internet characterized by the (still) large dominant tech players or by a landscape of decentralized actors, to a gimmickier experience relying mainly on virtual reality headsets (VR).
What are the implications of these different visions – particularly according to the time horizon in which they are projected – and how do they fit into broader debates on the governance of digital spaces?
From Sci-fi to reality: are we already in it?
Many futurists (including myself) believe that science fiction is always a good source of inspiration and illustration. This cannot be truer than with the case of the metaverse from which the concept of a long-term future where the digital world swallows the physical world directly originates. Movies like The Matrix, and Ready Player One by Steven Spielberg give a very thorough vision involving a strong intertwining of the virtual and the real, where value and power could be found mostly within a digital realm deeply experienced through immersive devices.
This initial foresight vision of the metaverse undoubtedly acts as a point of reference, especially in the minds of big tech leaders. Elon Musk said that if you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality
[1]. To show the next evolution of social connections, Mark Zuckerberg shared the same perspective built on the same codes during his demonstration of Horizon, where we would move seamlessly from one universe to another whether in the digital or analog world.
Coming back to today, in a way we are already in the metaverse. We spend a lot of time using digital services and devices, whether it’s for communication, entertainment, transactions, or developing social relationships (professional or personal). Most often they have real life consequences.
So why are we talking about the metaverse so much today, and what could change tomorrow?
Web3 Vs MAGMA: who will own the metaverse?
Since Second Life in 2003, one of the first large-scale online 3D virtual world experiences[2], socio-technical developments now make the success of similar projects credible. However, the vision of the next 5 to 10 years is dominated by the VR headset.
While underlining the immersive capability of the metaverse – arguably it’s most important feature – the VR headset is just the tip of the meta-iceberg. As demonstrated by the gaming industry, immersivity is not just about Virtual or Augmented Reality. Online video games[3] are unquestionably today the most advanced experience of the metaverse in that they combine 3D user-defined virtual worlds with not only the personification of the player through their avatar but also the purchase of digital goods. Emerging practices such as logging into a game without the intention to play it (but rather to attend a concert in Fortnite or to socialize by chatting with friends, for instance) and the development of in-game purchases that do not grant additional powers or capabilities (but rather allow you to, for example, customize your avatar to look like yourself) are two weak signals to follow. But they both beg the question: what is scarcity in the digital age?
For instance, we are currently witnessing the development of a new digital art market[4] around NFTs[5] and crypto currencies. It is a development driven by a mix of speculation and a new relationship to scarcity.
Apart from gaming players, two approaches to owning the metaverse are emerging and are led by big tech and pure players. On the one hand, there is the MAGMA approach represented by the big tech firms (Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon) for whom the metaverse acts as an extension of their current dominance[6]. On the other hand, there are the pure players, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, who seek to establish themselves as platforms that combine NFTs and gaming. The pure players claim to be part of an alternative project that goes back to the original vision of the internet: a decentralized digital space owned by its users.
In the metaverse as elsewhere, the future is unwritten. For the next few years, we should see a co-existence of different metaverses, which will lead to fundamental questions of metaverse identity: do you support a MAGMA-like approach or a decentralized one? The metaverses will certainly revive the old debates rooted in the early days of the Internet and digital technologies bringing back questions on governance (open and decentralized or proprietary), on sovereignty (global or national), on regulation (personal data and cybersecurity), and ultimately on their more ethical and societal implications.
