A Tale of Two Metaverses
Exploring five binaries embedded within the Metaverse and five ways we can responsibly participate in, and make this fantasy ours.
Due to email size restrictions, this email can only provide an excerpt of the essay. To read the full writing, please visit my website at hoangviet.co
There, a world beyond, encroaching through discourse,
Armed with devotion, and fit with hopes.
Here, a world remains, drowned in promises,
Chasing illusions, and haunted with truths.
Here, a glimpse of the world beyond,
Fragments of flamboyant reality,
Embellished in a proprietary fashion,
Vast and novel, we who participate,
Eerily narrow and familiar, we who control.
There, a sight of the world, that might not remain,
Fractured between beings and their self-references,
Bizarrely dependent, on techno-fantasy,
Struggling with the same battles, in-and-out realities,
Torn, shredded apart, distant pockets of humanoids.
Somewhere, a vision, of the two worlds collide,
Discontent combusts, and old structure crumbles,
Reality untethered, from algorithmic doings,
Communities escape, from tokenized shackles,
Visionaries dethroned, so our priorities reset.
Consequences afflict, but this time we'll face,
The after taste of complacency,
Hard as it will be, we'll regain what’s rightfully ours,
For this time, we'll build,
Our own world beyond.
“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”
Matthew Ball, Framework for the Metaverse.
“How would you explain the metaverse in 5 words or less? The best I got is ‘virtual reality with unskippable ads.’”
Wendy Liu, Author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism.
Prologue
As of writing, the market value of the Metaverse expects to reach $800 billion by 2024, with an estimated addressable market of $8 trillion. While its definition remains uncertain, the Metaverse’s omnipresent development and discourse seem to be imposing a narrative of certainty—one that preaches its inevitability.
In many ways, this claim is not without merit. How could the Metaverse go away when Meta, a company with 2.9 billion monthly active users, already immortalized the concept in its brand name? How could it be futile when VC firms whose portfolio companies fit our society with digital reliance are determined to make it a reality? How would it lose significance, when its mere mention proxies innovation?
If it won’t go away, would it ever go our way?
Coming to terms with the Metaverse impinging itself into truth, I’m torn between hope and rejection. The former wants to believe in tech-empowered yet made-for-human solutions, while the latter is still haunted with modern evidence of its diversions. Both perspectives, I realize, are the mind's guilty pleasure; for it traps actions in a binary and removes my agency from this imposed, yet shared trajectory.
Writing this essay has been an act of wrestling myself into participation: an attempt to overcome the hype that amplifies the Metaverse’s promises while neglecting its potential consequences. A resistance against my fear of giving credence to new rhetoric. Most of all, this essay is an endeavor to find clarity, through the exploration of five entwined relationships embed within the Metaverse:
Reality and Virtuality
Freedom and Custody
Money and Power
Abundance and Scarcity
Redemption and Condemnation
Due to email size restrictions, this email can only provide an excerpt of the essay. To read the full writing, please visit my website at hoangviet.co