- It's common to hear the criticism
that the Metaverse is an inherently dystopic ideal.
And the challenge, of course, with that
is while many people are familiar with the term,
there is disagreement over whether
or not this is just some conquest to techno-feudalism,
which is to say if big tech owns the atoms
of the places that we work and, in some regard,
own potentially the cryptocurrencies we're paid in,
that we find ourselves in a form
of 'virtual indentured servitude.'
The fact that the Metaverse is being ushered in-
or seems to be by big tech corporations,
and that the term itself is originated
from the dystopian science fiction novel,
and all of its antecedents were largely dystopic
in tone seem to reaffirm that hypothesis.
I'm not convinced and, in fact,
I would argue that the etymology,
or the history of the term is the easiest one to disabuse.
So you'll find that the essence of most fiction is drama,
and human drama tends to be the most satisfying.
There's a reason why you don't see
many fictional novels set in utopias.
They're not much fun; there's not
much human exploration there.
And so yes, when you take a look
at "Snow Crash," "Ready Player One,"
"The Matrix," most examples like that are dystopic.
But counterbalancing that are the actual experiences
designed to realize the Metaverse.
Not just "Roblox" today, or "Second Life" in the 2000s,
but the experiences that actually date back
into the 70s, what we called,
'Multi-user shared hallucinations'-
text-based virtual worlds.
They were designed for totally different ideals.
And that was fun, experimentation,
exploration, communication-
why?
Because, of course, no one's going to sign up,
least of all stay in a virtual space that is dystopic.
And so, I would argue that no matter how scary
the term's origination is, the soon-to-be hundreds
of billions of hours that have been spent
in metaverse-like experiences spanning four generations
of human history have had a totally different tone.
Real-time-rendered virtual worlds
and 3D simulations are largely limited
to consumer leisure, a tiny portion of it at that.
But that's actually a fun way to talk about one
of the most frequent criticisms about the Metaverse,
and that's that we will find ourselves isolated
from one another, locked away in our homes
with a VR headset strapped to our face,
reluctant to ever do anything "real."
The truth is, the primary draw of time
for the Metaverse is likely to be the dominant use
of leisure time today-and that's television.
In the United States, 300 million Americans watch
an average 5.5 hours per day of TV.
More than two-thirds of that time is done alone.
Almost all of it is done sedentary.
One of the reasons why I think the Metaverse
is likely to have strongly positive impacts
on society is just substituting time
from a disengaged solitary activity to one that is active,
that is social, that is designed for engagement.
One of the most important ways to understand
the positive effects of the Metaverse,
or 3D-real-time rendering is to take a look at education.
It remains deeply unequal globally, largely inaccessible
to most, and geographically discriminatory.
We hope that the Metaverse brings to life much of
what we imagine "The Magic School Bus" to be.
We're visual and experiential learners.
But papier mache, baking soda, and vinegar
for a volcano only goes so far.
We learn about physics today in a textbook.
And yet, in these 3D environments
you can download course packs right now
from Epic or Roblox that allow you
to build complex Rube Goldberg machines,
see how gravity plays out under different Gs.
And these classes can be live-performed,
they're infinitely re-playable, they're available to all,
they have no marginal cost for delivery.
I'm not saying it's a panacea-
inequality of education and opportunity will endure-
but I really do believe
that these capabilities significantly constrain that gap.
At the end of the day, the Metaverse
will be what we make it:
who runs it,
how they run it, the ways in which society is,
and is not integrated into it, it's democratic
and non-democratic nature, those are up to us.
The Metaverse is coming, there's no turning around
on 3D-real-time rendering on graphics-based computing.
If there's an organic desire for a new interface
we're going to go there.
But if we, the constituents, don't want it to be dystopic
but, more importantly, if we want it to be a strong force
for good in a way over the last 15 years maybe it wasn't,
we need to be educated, we need to lean in, not resist.
- Get smarter, faster with videos
from the world's biggest thinkers.
And to learn even more from the world's biggest thinkers
get Big Think+ for your business.