You're Thinking About the Metaverse Wrong

I should have invested in Minecraft.

I had one of the first 10,000 Minecraft accounts back in 2009.

Zombies didn't attack, and sponge blocks didn't work, but flying around the map gave a sense that this game style could be huge.

The forums agreed. Everyone thought it would be THE thing by the end of the year.

But it wasn't.

Fanfare died down. In 2011, many folks said Minecraft was a niche, dying game.

But the developers kept building.

Microsoft bought them out in 2014.

Minecraft has sold over 300 million copies and has an education edition that teaches millions of kids about real-life scientific concepts.

We overestimate the potential impact of technology in the short term, and we underestimate its impacts in the long term.

Tech is a Long Con that Pays Out

The short-term impact of technology is overrated.

It is primarily a series of manufactured hype cycles stemming from humanity's mimetic and memetic natures.

Mimetic means we mime and imitate other humans. That's how trends start.

Memetic means how we share culture–it's where we get the term "meme." That's how trends spread.

Real-world example time:

• 1886 – Cars invented

• 1901 – Assembly line invented

• 1908 – Model T invented

• 1913 –The Assembly line used for the Model T resulted in affordable and accessible cars for everyone.

• Total: 27 years

How many "Cars For All in 10 Years!" newspaper articles ran between 1886 and 1899?

How about "Cars are Dead" articles between 1900 and 1913?

• 1960 - First "AI" creates

• 1997 - AI beats chess champion

• 2008 - CleverBot takes the internet by storm

• 2022 - ChatGPT changes how we work and becomes a multi-billion dollar company almost overnight.

• Total: 62 years

How many "AI Coming Tomorrow!" articles between 1960 and 2010?

How many "Just Dumb Robots" articles between 2010 and 2022?

Time and time again, overestimation in the short term and underestimation in the long term.

We went from Google Glasses to this in 10 years.

The Ancient Art of FOMO

But improvement speed is a variable outside of our control.

Think of your favorite hobby.

Building your skills and knowledge took time, and you hit some snags along the way.

Did you know exactly how much time would occur between improvements? Nope.

That's true for any pursuit, individual or collective.

Progress is iterative and variable - you get good by doing.

Technology is just an extension of individual humans experimenting and building. The same rules apply.

But the human psyche is fickle.

Rather than feel excited about technology's newness and potential impacts, we can become frustrated and bored with its current limitations, casting it into the "novelty" bucket in our minds.

We get burnt out from the crash that follows the hype.

Hoping on the hype train can derail our future selves - cleave tightly to your well-reasoned convictions.

Another real-world example:

QR codes were sexy for a brief moment in time.

Then, they became business as usual.

But there's a lot of innovation left to be had.

The few who continued to "innovate in QR" are now having their heyday.

Remember: stand firm in your well-reasoned convictions. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

Or worse, you risk becoming one of the trolls of history: a Luddite.

Spooky Luddite Future

With all the ebbs and flows of technology, it can be tempting to throw in the towel.

To say: "To hell with it." and let whatever might happen, happen.

Some take it a step further and view the fits and starts of technology as borderline evil. From their perspective, each iteration scrubs some of the sanctity from our predetermined ways of life.

So they smash the technology, literally.

Luddites entered English factories in the 1800's and broke the machines they thought were making their labor obsolete.

"They can't fire us if this machine can't replace us!"

There have been exactly zero times in history where Luddies were proven correct.

But fear and confusion make for a hell of a drug.

A World of Opportunity Tomorrow: Starting Today

It's hard to blame people for feeling confused about technology.

Technologies are rarely a single thing.

Cars are a combination of petroleum, rubber, steel, glassworking, and other industrial technologies.

But that's old news. Today's Fourth Industrial Revolution is all about the spatial web.

The spatial web combines virtual and augmented reality, internet-of-things and wearables, and Web3.

Most of this tech is still finding its footing.

Like a good soup, we have to let it cook - only time will achieve the depth of flavor we're looking for.

But that makes it all the more important to understand the landscape of the spatial web.

We have a golden opportunity to find the part that speaks most deeply to us and to help write the story of its evolution.

Blockchain: The Backbone

Blockchain is the backbone of the spatial web. It allows for a bucket of real-world information to be logged on a global computer, one block at a time. This accessibility and censorship resistance make it the tool for the spatial web - imagine Facebook just deleting your entire digital life from their servers. Nobody wants that - blockchain fixes this.

Web3: The Handbag

Web3 refers to all the glittery goods that live on top of blockchain. From NFTs representing your rewards and items to social webs rewarding you for your loyal readership, Web3 empowers individuals. Where do those billions of advertisement dollars go each year? Not to us. Web3 fixes this.

Augmented Reality: The Table

Augmented reality (AR) delivers technology in a way that makes sense for everyone: through reality itself. AR adds a layer to our real world, finally letting us hit CTRL+F in the grocery store when we can't find something. Distance learning, group chats, and art exhibits feel stale online - AR fixes this.

Virtual Reality: The Portal

Virtual reality (VR) has become more than gaming. From medical students performing mock surgery to training soldiers in simulated combat, VR is the next iteration of entering the digital world. E-commerce was laughed at in the early 2000s - now it is commerce. But it's still impersonal - VR fixes this.

Wearables: The Cloak

What we do impacts what we wear—ever seen a monk wearing a hard hat? To blend the physical and digital, we need what we wear to track what we do. Very few people enter codes for free sandwiches - too much time and effort. Allowing our physical lives to inform our digital identities and realities is still disjointed - wearables fix this.

IoT: The Fenceposts

The Internet of Things (IoT) is for everything we can't or don't want to wear. Connected devices are more convenient to use and can influence our digital identities. Digital twins of IoT devices make virtual environments more familiar and tactile. Your physical assets have little or nothing to do with your online identity right now - IoT fixes this.

Still Early

So, technologies aren't a single thing. They're a blend of multiple technologies working together.

The same is true for the spatial web.

When we log into the internet in 2050, the blend of tech we'll use will likely be seamless.

Like how accessing the internet today is child's play compared to the 1990s.

No more annoying RPC issues for blockchain.

No more looking like a baseball team's mascot when wearing a VR headset.

But we're not there yet.

Each of these technologies must follow their natural “adoption curve.” Some are beloved by early majorities, while others are firmly in the innovation phase.

These curves mean that while some of this tech is further along than others, it's still the beginning of the "Internet of Tomorrow" we call the spatial web.

So listen to your gut.

When you put on a clunky VR headset, do you think, "This is it… no improvements to be made here. The pinnacle of technology."

Doubtful.

Imperfections are just opportunities that have yet to be addressed.

Make it Your Own

To be human is to experience bias, FOMO, and uncertainty.

It comes with the territory of foresight.

Bias can blind us to reality.

Naysaying Tesla, as it climbs ever higher, is as baseless as hyping the Cybertruck just because of a few pre-orders.

Stake your claim and place your bets, but make sure your positions are well-reasoned and make sense for you.

After all, people make a lot of money from selling their worldview on technology, society, and everything in between.

Be you.

Stand firm in your convictions and compare them to reality, course correcting accordingly.

Because at the end of the day, as early or late as it might feel, we still underestimate technology over the long term.

Keep building.

-Ray Buckton

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