Well it’s not really anything yet. It’s an umbrella term for a collection of digital technologies, with a rough sense that they will reside within a virtual, alternate reality.

Author Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. Now lots of companies are calling anything vaguely futuristic a “metaverse strategy”.

In general, the imagined metaverse has these properties:

Virtual: Right now, you’ll need a VR headset to “get into” the metaverse.
Social: You will meet other avatars there, some of which might actually represent real people.
Consistent: In the sense that you can drop in and out of the metaverse and things will be where you left them. This means you can build over time, as you would in a game like Animal Crossing.

The name itself is intended to connote an all-encompassing environment, not just an isolated experience.

Facebook is dead set on creating the metaverse for all of us, but it is unclear whether they will be part of a broader infrastructure or if each Big Tech company will create its own “world”. We are loosely led to believe that “Web 3.0” will play a role in creating the infrastructure, but details are scarce.

These technologies and platforms could fall under the metaverse aegis:

Augmented Reality
Virtual Reality
Roblox (plus Fortnite and many other games).
NFTs
Smart glasses
Digital twins

Which… is just a collection of things.

We like to make connections and “the metaverse” allows us to link new technology into a narrative.

That has some benefits.

It gives us a common way of understanding this new world and allows for newsletters such as this. It’s also broad enough to encompass new developments that we have not counted on, of which there will be many.

On the other hand, its convenience is not necessarily tied to meaning. Are we any the wiser for saying the metaverse could be a virtual world where we have an avatar that can socialise with other avatars? That just sounds like The Sims, but I’m in it. And I didn’t much care for The Sims.

The name is also so vague that it’s hard to know what qualifies and what doesn’t. After all, these technologies will be embedded in our everyday lives.

Some crypto dudez have bought 40 acres of land in Wyoming to create a “blockchain city”.

Is that the metaverse?

Who decides? (And yes, yes, who cares?)

Facebook’s attempts to imagine the metaverse lack, well, imagination. Hey, it’s Facebook.

Is the below from The Sims or is it Facebook’s vision of our high-tech, rocket-powered future?

If anyone tries to tell you the metaverse is overwhelmingly complex, show them that image. That’s what Facebook has spent so much time and money on.

And this all chimes with our main obsessions these days: technology and ourselves. Not necessarily in that order of preference.

The earliest artworks we know of are cave paintings of animals. There is a sense of wonder, fear, and respect in those figures.

Here in 2021, we’ll create a digital mini-me in a silly hat.

That’s a facetious point, I hear you say, but there is something revealing in the comparison too. We have separated ourselves from the natural world already, first to elevate our species above the rest and then, to place ultimate importance on the individual human self. A “metaverse” filled with self-obsessed avatars won’t solve today’s ills.

And that’s not the point of this profit-driven initiative, one could contend. But if we look at Facebook, we can see that this whole idea is partially led by a sense of escapism too.

Rather than address his company’s real-life problems, Mr Zuckerberg wants to jet off into the metaverse. Is that better or worse than Bezos’ space cowboy adventure? That we can even have the debate is the true crime.

By rebranding as Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook wants to control the story of our new world.

Facebook is not the only company making this a priority though, even if they have tried to appropriate the metaverse title.

Microsoft has announced Mesh, a mixed reality platform for Teams.

If my avatar starts acting up, making that loveheart-hands symbol, I’ll replace him so fast his pixelly head will spin. Luckily, he won’t feel a thing.

Tinder’s getting in on it, too. Users will have a little avatar that can buy items using Tinder Coins and there’s no way that could go wrong.

So how will we even know we’re “in” the metaverse?

As it stands, putting on a VR headset and interacting as a digital avatar of yourself seems like a clear-cut metaverse Rubicon. But that is not the long-term vision for this technology.

Wearable technology like smart glasses will become gateways into the metaverse, allowing you to interact with the world around you. Smart glasses, which allow you to record audio and video with just a touch, are just the first step in this journey.
- Facebook (Meta)

The vision is that the boundaries blur between physical and digital, so that we no longer distinguish between the two.

You might reasonably contend that in a sense, we’re already there. Social media has warped people’s minds and led to all manner of terrestrial consequences.

We can think of the “metaverse” as a tipping point at which the virtual takes on more significance than the physical.

A point at which it becomes equally normal to roam around as your digital self and buy something from the metaverse Amazon as it would be to, well, buy from the real Amazon. In this case, which one is real any more? In which one does Amazon pay/not pay its taxes?

As El País put it in their technology newsletter this week, “El metaverso es un momento.” (I don’t need to translate that, do I?)

If you’re into gaming, you may be even more confident that we’re already in the metaverse. An influencer called Zara Larsson has made over $1 million selling merchandise on Roblox.

Her most expensive item is this avatar and I can’t believe I’m sat here writing a newsletter for nothing when there’s this much money to be made from that:

Imagine how much she’ll make when she figures out how to colour in all the way to the lines.

So is the metaverse just a branding exercise?

For all the hoopla of Facebook’s name-change, there is a kernel of substance in all of this.

Sure, it’s a made-up name to tie lots of different strands together, but all names are made up. They take on meaning as we use them.

You could say the metaverse is the next phase of technological development, taking us from the mobile era into an age of ambient technology. We will no longer reach for our devices, unlock, tap, then scroll. We will already have access to the digital world within our line of sight.

This makes sense in theory. We abhor friction in our lives and Big Tech is counting the cost of all those moments we aren’t mindlessly scrolling and buying.

But if we try to go further into what this looks like, with an example, it becomes more challenging. The technology either does not yet exist; or it does exist, but we don’t yet know how it will change in contact with real-life users.

I can say that AR will play a role but I can’t tell you exactly how, in detail.

We could say that wearing my AR glasses I could look at people and “see” the NFT pieces they were wearing. For example, a limited edition pair of Nikes. Then without the glasses, they would be wearing their boring old “real” shoes. It might work like one of these novelty pens:

But that’s precisely the problem. I am left to reach for analogies we already know from the past.

The alternative is to veer into the nebulous realm of buzzwords again. “It will be an immersive virtual experience”, and so on.

What was it my old pal Wittgenstein said? Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent. That would make this a shorter (no doubt, more popular) newsletter, but we can still probe at the periphery of these ideas.

Let’s look at another company to see how they might make sense of the metaverse for us.

What is Nike planning for the metaverse?

Nike has filed seven applications with the US patent office for:

"Downloadable virtual goods, namely, computer programs featuring footwear, clothing, headwear, eyewear, bags, sport bags, backpacks, sports equipment, art, toys and accessories for use online and in online virtual worlds"

I recall in the early-mid 2000s that you could buy Nike shoes in a basketball video game. You had a little character and you could, were you mad in the head, spend $2.99 for a pair of “sneakers”.

In-game micropurchases are even bigger business today, most notably in China.

The difference here is that Nike is betting on us living more of our lives digitally, as “ourselves”. Nike even has an open role at the moment for a “virtual material designer”.

Instead of creating a character in a videogame, we will “exist” in the virtual world and will want to put our best foot forward.

If that is the case, then the same old biases come into play. We will want the latest symbols of conspicuous consumption, and I can think of little more conspicuous than paying to dress up your own cartoon.

Nike has form in this area. In 2019, they launched a virtual pop-up store where loyal customers could use points from past purchases to buy some virtual Air Maxes.

It can also play a significant role in normalising the notion of the metaverse itself. We are all wary of Facebook, and for good reason, but brands like Nike have some credibility. If they say the metaverse is a thing, then maybe it is.

Nike will surely uncover new opportunities after it has sold some virtual shoes.

When people first figured out how to video-record the world, they just recorded stage plays.

They applied the new to what they knew.

Then over time, creators started to imagine other uses for the technology.

In turn, the camera liberated artists to experiment with the abstract.

We could say here that Nike can be a metaverse “lifestyle” or “culture” brand, but what will those terms mean in the metaverse?

The knock-on effects of technology (to paraphrase Condoleezza Rice), will in retrospect seem inevitable. Today, they seem impossible.

In conclusion

The key here is that removal of that distinction between the “real” and “virtual” worlds.

For those that do still see such a distinction (or at least, believe that they do), this all seems frivolous at best, dangerous at worst.

For those that do not, it is a natural extension of their current lifestyle. Hundreds of millions of people now socialise with their friends through videogames. AR filters are par for the course on social media apps.

As a thought experiment, there should be an opportunity here to create a different set of principles by which we communicate, learn, and socialise.

In the way that fiction allows writers to test out ideas and reveal new truths, a metaverse could be used to inspire real-world change.

But what we haven’t considered (and surely will in a coming edition), is the potential damage that could be wrought by the metaverse.

Señor Zuckerberg has done enough damage already with some photo-sharing apps.

Our existing principles, many of which set the tone for liberal democracies from the 18th century onwards, are under severe threat on Facebook’s platforms today. Facebook can’t control hate speech or fake profiles on its comparatively simple websites now, yet it would open up a virtual world to even darker threats without putting any protections in place.

We should learn from the unintended consequences of the digital age so far before we go blindly into another world of Facebook’s creation.

The metaverse could be even more of a cesspool than today’s internet. With Zuckerberg in charge I know where my money is going. And it’s not going on new Nike sneakers for my avatar.

Ok, headsets off.

I’m away to make a real-world Sunday roast and then go for a walk in the park.

*loveheart-hands*

What is the metaverse?