In part one of our simples guide to the Metaverse, we try to cut through the complexity and corporate clutter to delineate what the metaverse is, and when we’ll get to use it. 

Hosted by Matt Armitage & Richard Bradbury

Produced by Richard Bradbury for BFM89.9

Image by Kulturpop via MidJourney

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Richard Bradbury: We’re entering the MatterVerse today. It’s a bit like the Internet but it’s all about Matt. By Matt, from Matt and for Matt. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you’re in for an interesting half hour.

Matt Armitage:

• Before we do anything interesting. Last week we put out an episode on Twitter.

• Which, despite being recorded about 16 hours before it aired still managed to be out of date.

• Since it went out, Musk sent a letter to his remaining employees telling him that it’s not inconceivable that the company will file for bankruptcy.

• We should point out that that isn’t necessarily as dire as it sounds.

• Certain types of bankruptcy filings in the US are more about giving companies time to restructure and renegotiate their debts than they are about liquidation.

• So we don’t know if Musk means the company could be headed for restructuring or administration.

• FTX – the crypto exchange – which recently filed for bankruptcy is in administration.

• The CEO has been replaced by a company brought into salvage as many assets as possible.

• Twitter has also laid off 80% of its contract staff – about 40% of its workers – in addition to the 50% of its permanent staff.

• It also had to suspend the Twitter Blue service, selling the blue check mark, because – surprise, surprise – subscribers were impersonating other people and using the blue tick as authentication.

• And my favourite one, giving the remaining employees a deadline of Thursday – the day we recorded this show…

• …to commit to working long hours at high intensity and be extremely hardcore.

• But then saying he would eventually reduce his own time at Twitter and perhaps hand the reins to another CEO.

• During a cross examination in a court case relating to his pay package at Tesla, which hands him a potential USD50bn but doesn’t require him to work full-time.

• The response to this intensity of purpose and chaos?

• More advertisers and even some of the big media buying agencies have also paused spending on the platform.

• Adopting a wait-and-see approach.

• All of this further threatens a platform that is reliant on advertising for 90% of its revenues.

• Some commentators have started talking about the platform as entering a death spiral where it haemorrhages its key influencers and advertisers.

• Twitter just keeps giving.

• Ok. Birdyverse to metaverse.

• Let me ask you a question: what’s the metaverse?

Richard Bradbury: replies

Matt Armitage:

• Do I agree?

• The point of putting Richard on the spot like that is not to see if he’s wrong or right.

• Everyone you ask has a different response to what they think the metaverse is.

• Which makes all these discussions about the topic really hard.

• Not only do people think it’s different things, they want it to be different things.

• So I guess, the first question is really, not what the metaverse is, but does it exist?

• Because if it exists, we can then try and define it, right?

• Based on the models we have.

• So, does the metaverse exist?

• Yes and no.

• There are lots of things – especially games – that call themselves a metaverse.

• Or that they are a small part of a larger metaverse system.

• The important part here I think is to understand that the metaverse is not a single thing.

• It’s more of an umbrella term for a bunch of different web-based technologies.

• And it’s the convergence of those different elements which is creating new ways to navigate and experience the Web.

• Where we get derailed is when we try to think about the Metaverse as a thing.

• As an entity.

• It’s a bit like discussions about all the blockchain-related products that have been labelled Web3.

• And which are increasingly being labelled as Metaverse or metaverse adjacent.

• This is a topic that can seem so broad that’s it’s impenetrable.

• So what are the things the metaverse is made up of?

Richard Bradbury: It sounds as though you’re about to do a Mary Poppins number…

Matt Armitage:

• These are a few of my favourite things?

• VR, and blockchain. And meetings in spaces.

• Crypto and defi. And avatar faces.

• That’s enough of that.

• But yes. What can we think of as metaverse technologies?

• Well, there’s VR and AR.

• Blockchain and wallets covering everything from ID and verification to almost frictionless payment transactions.

• Open-world platforms that cover everything from productivity solutions to gaming and entertainment.

• We don’t have to talk about any of these technologies in detail.

• At least not in this episode.

• Any and all of these technologies have been labelled as metaverse technologies.

• But really, they only become interesting once they start to converge.

• VR is only cool if you have a compelling use for it.

• Blockchain is more than just an infrastructure for pump-and-dump tech bros.

• So today the task is to take all these enormous and complicated technologies and try and simplify them.

• To create a vision that is more concerned with what they do than how they work.

Richard Bradbury: So, Matt’s Tip #1 for understanding the Metaverse is?

Matt Armitage:

• The Metaverse is just the Internet.

• I’ve kind of stopped thinking about Metaverse, Web3 in terms of labels.

• I don’t think it’s useful.

• And I don’t think it’s something that is even relevant at a consumer or user level.

• Whatever changes may be made under the hood, at a consumer level, the metaverse is the Internet.

• It’s what the Web will be and how it will work in the future.

• Which is where I go back to history.

• Do we think about our current Internet, its services and solutions as Web2.0?

• Of course we don’t. It’s just the Internet.

• It was the Internet in 2003 when we thought MySpace was cool.

• Web2.0 may have been a huge advance on Web1.0.

• But most of us didn’t care about the semantics.

• It was simpler. Our reaction was yay, apps. Yay, eCommerce.

• The fact that the Internet of Things and the Internet of AOL are fundamentally different things doesn’t matter to us at the user level.

• We don’t really care about the engineering thing.

• We want what it does. We don’t really care how it gets there.

Richard Bradbury: But hasn’t that sense of separation, or that lack of understanding of the technology, led to the kind of instability we see in crypto markets? If people knew more, wouldn’t the be equipped to make smarter decisions?

Matt Armitage:

• I understand that argument.

• But what we’re seeing in crypto really isn’t so different from the Florida real estate boom 100 years ago.

• Those were classic pump-and-dump schemes too – not that all crypto or defi is pump-and-dump.

• Far from it.

• People bought parcels of swampland on the basis that it would be developed and turned into commercial real estate.

• We’ve seen similar property booms in recent decades.

• People investing in property without understanding that markets can go down and mortgage rates can go up.

• It’s not always about information or understanding, it’s sometimes the simple seduction of the bubble.

• Getting in and getting out before it crashes. Following the herd.

• So the issue isn’t as much about the complexity of digital products – traditional financial instruments can be demonically complicated -

• Which is why most traditional investors have an adviser or a broker, because market watching and market understanding are full-time jobs.

Richard Bradbury: So your argument is that we don’t have time to understand the Internet?

Matt Armitage:

• Not exactly. It’s that we don’t have to understand it to use it.

• I’ve used this analogy on the show before:

• How many of us really understand how electricity works?

• Or know that there’s no fire on the sun? Or possibly nowhere else in the universe but earth.

• There are so many daily essentials in our lives that we have only a passing understanding of.

• Is that a good thing? I’d argue no. But it’s a reality thing.

• We didn’t understand Web1.0. We don’t understand Web2.0.

• Why expect us to understand the metaverse or whatever the web becomes?

• We want to know what the metaverse will do for us, we’re not that concerned about how it does it.

• It didn’t matter when a website made the leap from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

• As consumers, to us it’s just the Internet.

• All we really want for these evolutions is to make our Internet experience better.

• And I think that’s really all the metaverse will be to most people.

• A better Internet.

• Which brings us to the next question or questions.

• How will it be better?

• From my perspective the more interesting question is whom will it be better for.

• But first things first.

• Why will the metaverse a better Internet?

Richard Bradbury: Let’s stick with the basics first. What can people expect in terms of better Web experiences from a Metaverse?

Matt Armitage:

• A lot of this is conjecture. When you go to something labelled metaverse today, it probably isn’t going to be a metaverse experience.

• It will probably be a VR experience.

• Or a streamed game with NFTs and other stuff you can buy or earn.

• It might be going to an exhibition and AR layers adding video or information to an installation.

• It could be frictionless transactions that don’t require a clearing house, or accessing credit or loans without going through banks.

• It might even be digital land and other assets becoming as valuable as those Florida swamp tracts.

• It could be changes to the way we work – replacing in-person offices with virtual desks.

• The same for education. And the ability to access all manner of government services.

Richard Bradbury: Holograms!

Matt Armitage:

• That really is the fault of Star Wars as far as I can see.

• It’s such a hollow experience. They truly are the flying car of computing.

• The thing everyone thinks they want and would actively hate If they had it.

• All because George Lucas made a weeny Princess Leia pop out of a droid, and invented 3D hologram chess.

• I mean, imagine hologram doctor consultations. I know telemedicine is huge.

• And there’s immense value in developing that sector – either in or out of the metaverse.

• But how horrific for doctors if you hologram up because you have a rash on your rump.

• After the break we’ll look at some of the more structural aspects of the metaverse.

• If there’s time, we’ll have a look at what some of the leading companies are doing to create their visions of the metaverse.

• But that may have to wait until next week.

Richard Bradbury: When we come back, MatterVersion 2.

BREAK

Richard Bradbury: We’re back in the metaverse again today. Let’s go over one of the fundamental misconceptions that people have about the metaverse. Which is how it will look and how it works. But I suppose the larger question is: Will it be one metaverse or multiple metaverses?

Matt Armitage:

• This is why it’s hard to explain to people. If you don’t have a real idea of what a metaverse is, what it looks like, how it operates.

• Then that idea – is it one multiverse or lots of them – doesn’t make any sense either.

• It’s just noise.

• Which is why I think it’s a lot more helpful to go back to the idea of thinking about the metaverse as an updated part of the Internet.

• On the current versions of the Web and Internet we have all these individual and intermeshed actors chained together.

• The layer we usually interact with is the Web. This is essentially all the visible components of the Internet.

• The listed content you can access via your browser or through a google search.

• That Web is built on top of the Internet, which is that much wider and deeper network that includes all the stuff you don’t see.

• The company servers, the infrastructure that serves up the sites you see when you type www.

• And the Internet – all that unlisted content – is way way bigger than the Web.

• So when we think about what a metaverse enabled Internet will be, it will be like our current Web with multiple entities.

Richard Bradbury: We’ll talk about interoperability in a minute – moving from one metaverse to another – but can we clear up one of the major issues people have with understanding the concept: Meta.

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So this is a deliberate obfuscation by the former Facebook company.

• We’ll delve more deeply into what Meta is actually doing and working on next week.

• We should point out that Mark Zuckerberg has had to do a bit of a public about face over the past few weeks.

• Over USD80bn has been spent on the company’s metaverse experiments.

• That’s nearly two twitters, which I’m hoping will be adopted as a unit of measurement.

• And he’s slashed around 11,000 of the company’s workforce.

• MZ’s vision was to transform the social network into a metaverse giant.

• This is essentially the model of one metaverse to rule them all.

• You’d log onto FB with your avatar or identity and your Web experience would start from there.

• In this version of the metaverse everything is there under FB or Meta’s umbrella.

• Your virtual hang out and shopping spaces. Games.

• Your office space. Education. It’s a bit like the Ready Player One movie model.

• You have a single simple login and you access everything from there.

• To some people that’s the utopian vision of a unified metaverse experience.

• To other people that’s the dystopia.

• The utopian response often comes from the people who stand to benefit most.

• Think of it like a traditional economy.

• For argument’s sake we’ll call the owner of this digital world Matt and call it the MatterVerse.

• That’s Matter for people who can’t see inside my head.

Richard Bradbury: You like the idea of telling people to be Matter, don’t you?

Matt Armitage:

• I’m not going to say no. Telling people they’re not Matter enough would be fun.

• Hey Jeff Bezos, be more Matter. I could get into that. It’s like a Bill & Ted thing.

• Anyway, vast and inconsequential egos aside.

• Let’s say you go to work in the MatterVerse every day.

• Your company will be paying some kind of rent for the digital services it uses and the server space it occupies.

• They probably won’t be paying me, they’ll be paying a third party.

• In the same way that you may be paying the rent on a physical property to the owner of the unit rather than the owner of the building.

• The same when you play a game, buy your own virtual space, hang-out, shop, have fun.

• A portion of all those transactions, which will probably all be denominated in my proprietary KulturKoins, filter to me.

• So I am the ultimate beneficiary. In exchange for providing the MatterVerse I charge rent, earn transaction fees, potentially levy property and other taxes.

• I am a full-fledged economy.

• Which is exactly why people don’t like the idea of a unified Metaverse.

• And Facebook isn’t the only company looking to imprint its vision of the metaverse on our future.

Richard Bradbury: How does this differ from game economies, like World of Warcraft, which have been charging people for in-world items and purchases for years?

Matt Armitage:

• That’s why I’m saying it’s better to think of this as an evolution of the Internet.

• When you look at all those component parts individually, nothing about the metaverse is intrinsically novel.

• The power comes from the convergence. In the same way that apps turbo-charged our smartphones.

• Without apps our phones are just really powerful email and browsing tools.

• Even though both of those services are also apps.

• It’s probably nearly 15 years since I talked to the founders of Second Life, a proto metaverse of the noughties.

• Companies like Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Roblox are all creating their own visions of the Metaverse.

• And games-maker Epic is likely to be a leading contender in the field.

• Its Unreal games engine has already transitioned into the film industry, where it’s creating amazing real-time effects.

• So the potential of those tools in terms of virtual spaces in untold, on top of the environments the company designs and builds.

• But, despite the influence of these huge titans, the metaverse we’re likely to see will probably be a lot more decentralised and distributed.

• Just as the Internet is today.

Richard Bradbury: Which brings us to interoperability. Will I be able to take my money or my items from one space to another?

Matt Armitage:

• Yeah, so this is where it gets complex.

• But at the same time it doesn’t. Because you go back to that same root.

• It’s just the Internet.

• On the Internet you have all these different logins for sites and services.

• You pay for goods in different currencies or tokens.

• What currencies and tokens you can use depends on the site you’re visiting.

• The partnerships it has forged and the agreements it has made.

• Those same Internet rules are not going to disappear.

• We may see a higher degree of interoperability, or we might choose a specific ecosystem where things are more highly integrated.

• Again, not novel. Think Amazon: you interact with the company and its third parties pretty seamlessly.

• All tied up with Alexa providing that customer interaction and experience layer.

• Or think about the e-wallet apps that are integrating shopping, payment, financial tools, games, entertainment, messaging.

• Those are also a potential metaverse model just as they are a potential future of the Web model.

• But there are always likely to be limits on the degree of interoperability between the different actors.

• As we talked about on a recent Weird Science episode, it doesn’t make sense to be able to take items from Call of Duty into Assassin’s Creed.

• Because it fundamentally breaks the physics of those worlds.

• What groups like the Open Metaverse Alliance are advocating for is the adoption and use of open protocols.

• Kind of like a Linux of the metaverse.

• And we’ll see these clusters of interoperability that may be based around companies like Meta and Epic and all the independent actors.

• They may be sufficiently interoperable and unified that you could use a single login or wallet across a chunk of operators.

• But it would be unlikely that your avatar would be as easily portable.

Richard Bradbury: It’s amazing that it’s taken us to the end of the show to get to what the Metaverse might look like and how we interact with it.

Matt Armitage:

• That’s partly by design. We get hung up on that aspect.

• And it actually contributes to the miscomprehension about what the Metaverse will be.

• Because we don’t say, what does the Internet look like and expect to get a holistic reply.

• That’s a rhetorical question by the way, I’m not putting you on the spot again.

• They were used in bigger companies. But it would still be hard to explain the Internet of today to them in a few short sentences.

• But that’s what we expect people to do with the metaverse.

• Tell us what it will be and what it will look like.

• The answer is – as answers often are – a lot more boring.

• The metaverse itself will change and evolve as technology advances and shifts.

• Telling you what it will look like today, short-sells you on its potential.

• Which is why I left it until the end – I know it makes it easier to visualise it.

• But visualising it can serve to limit it. Because it’s hard to visualise the potential of what it could be.

Richard Bradbury: But we can look at some elements, is it likely to be virtual reality, for example?

Matt Armitage:

• Again, a reason for not explaining it in those terms.

• Some metaverse building companies want it to be VR based.

• And Meta has Oculus, one of the leading VR equipment and experience-building companies under its domain.

• But VR is still a long way from mainstream acceptance.

• A lot of people experience physical symptoms like nausea and vertigo when they use it.

• Some immediately, others after prolonged use. The same with AR glasses –

• Some people find it hard to focus back and forth between the real world and the data layers.

• So talking about the user experience side of the metaverse – the design and the interfacing – is a little redundant at this point.

• Because no one has nailed it. What we get are these slick CGI-filled videos that for some reason always use holograms.

• Which we will probably never perfect a technology for.

• The reality is that most people will not want to rely on clunky VR rigs to access the Internet.

• Smart glasses fall-down because people don’t like wearing glasses.

• When you design technology you have to look at the world and the choices people make in the way they navigate it.

• Look at glasses and contact lenses.

• Lenses are more expensive in the long run, more invasive and create more waste

• So, why do people choose them over glasses?

• Because they don’t like wearing them and don’t like how they look when they wear them.

• Where I think there is more agreement is that voice will play a much greater role in controlling the user experience in the metaverse.

• Voice control is efficient and user-friendly. It’s not ideal in every environment.

• But a lot of workspaces have become unnaturally quiet because we’ve pushed voice to the background.

• Mouse, keyboard, instant message. If you work in an office, compare the noise of your workspace to the noise of the places you go out for lunch in.

• Conversation, laughter, shouting.

• I’m veering off-topic again. Next week we’ll look more closely at what companies are actually trying to create in the metaverse.

• And we’ll look at some of the more socio-political aspects; will China have a firewalled metaverse for example.

• But back to that central point for today.

• Don’t overthink what the metaverse is. That story hasn’t been written yet.

• And simplify it. It’s just the next evolution of the Internet.