I’ve read exactly one fiction book over the last few years — Snow Crash. Among numerous accolades, it’s often credited with coining the term “metaverse”. Whether or not it was the first usage of the word, the book piqued my interest in the concept of a metaverse and it’s something I have been pondering ever since.
Here’s how I’ve been thinking about the metaverse over the last couple of years.
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It’s 2022. You log on to your work computer Monday morning at 8am. You haven’t seen a co-worker in person in months. They’ve only appeared on a screen; the amalgamation of data sent through fiber-optic cables.
Chances are your job has you moving more bits and bytes than actual physical matter. If you are an accountant, you don’t actual push papers every day. In fact, there is no physical accounting ledger on a sheet of paper somewhere. Just bits. If you are a marketer, the “billboards” go up on Facebook not in Times Square. Bytes. Maybe you even worked for Starbucks, a brick and mortar coffee chain, at one point in your career. But you’re a backend developer not a barista. You’ve never made a latte in your life. What’s the difference between a cappuccino and latte again? Bits not beans.
Outside of work — more bytes and bits. Over the weekend, you did a bank run to transfer money from one account to another. You completed your weekly grocery shopping. Lastly, you were good to yourself and attended that spin class.
That money was moved without interacting with a bank teller. The groceries appeared at your door without ever talking with a clerk. Although you high-fived six fellow cyclists in your spin class, you’ve never been even been in the same state as any of them. Every one of these interactions and transactions were completely facilitated by the internet — packets of data sent through fiber.
You’re living in the metaverse and you didn’t even know it. It all feels normal. And it is. That’s because the metaverse is more iterative than novel. At least for now.
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What is the metaverse?
The metaverse is simply the next version of the internet. It’s next version because it is undergoing an update to accommodate “spatial experiences,” as Mario Gabriele put it.
While the last 24 months have ramped up just how much time we spend in the metaverse on the internet, it’s not a new thing. The internet has been the centerpoint of our lives for a decade plus. If you’re a millennial, and you have a bachelor’s degree, it’s very likely that 100% of your post-grad work has been completely internet-based. It’s not an exaggeration and it’s not complex. We move data around a computer screen. In its simplest form, that’s what we are doing. That’s the bulk of our work.
Think about the last time you lost your internet connect in a work setting. Fully crippling. It’s nothing short of catastrophic for productivity. SMS messages will be flying… “Is Slack down for you?!”
I am aware this concept is not relatable to everyone. Not for the sandwich artist at your favorite sub shop. Not for that elementary school teacher in your life that has 30 screaming kids in their face. Not for the construction manager and the delivery truck driver. Each of them could do most, if not all, of their job without the internet. For that reason, the need to ponder a seemingly sci-fi creation like a metaverse is less relevant.
For many of us, though, if we had to do our current job without the internet, the tactical moment-to-moment work would change so dramatically that it might as well be a completely different role. The work day would be indistinguishable from our current day-to-day.
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The term metaverse hitting the mainstream is a natural evolution. A similar trajectory occurred with “internet” in the mid-90s. It happened with “cloud” technologies and “social media” in the early-oughts.1
Today, terms like “crypto” and “blockchain”, and more recently “metaverse”, are the new buzz words. They are the new “social media” if you will.
What did social media end up being? It turned out to simply be the next version of the internet. At the time the internet was undergoing an update to accommodate collaborative experiences. Prior to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger/Wordpress it was hard to publish content to the internet. You could read all the content your heart desired thanks to Google, but it took technical ability to write content. Facebook and Twitter made it so anyone, regardless of technical ability, could create their own content and other users could interact with that content via their own content.2 These technical innovations made the internet a more collaborative experience.
Today, with the metaverse, subsequent technical upgrades will enhance how spacial experiences come to life over the internet.
History does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme. You’re already in the met-averse, Neo Hiro. It’s just a beta, version 0.1.