Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Elena Montrasio
I'm wondering, by show of hands,
how many of you over the last ten years
have considered leaving everything and moving abroad?
Well, you might be surprised
that more and more people in the last decade
have been travelling for extended periods
to experience new lives or periods of life
somewhere else.
Perhaps there are fewer and fewer people who take three days of vacation,
while more and more people
start working in smartworking
and say, Why not?
Because I can't start working from a place that's not home.
Because maybe I have to pay a rent
in a very expensive city like Milan, Amsterdam or London,
when I can spend the same money
and stay in a Airbnb
in South Italy, Portugal, Costa Rica
or other places in the world where I can spend a lot less
enjoy different experiences
maybe even a better quality of life
then they were used to?
“The quality of our life
is defined by the sum of the memories and experiences we have been though."
This is a quote I can always relate to.
Travelling, for me,
meeting new people, exploring new places
has in fact always been a recipe for my enthusiasm,
satisfaction and happiness.
And that's exactly why a few years ago,
back in 2019,
after leaving my permanent job,
I started my start-up
and decided to leave everything behind,
to no longer have a home.
So I left my city, Amsterdam, after more than four years,
and decided not to have a fixed abode anymore;
and for a few months I kept living and traveling as a digital nomad.
At the end of the day,
my experience was as intense as it was brief.
In fact, my journey ended with the COVID-19 broke out.
But that's
when I temporarily stopped travelling in the physical world,
and like so many others, I began to immerse myself more and more
in what we may call a digital world.
But how would you feel
if I told you that for more than 20 years now
we have been living in a world that is precisely partly digital?
People born like me in the '90
know this world, this digital universe,
because we are ourselves the first generation of digital natives.
We are the first generation
to learn not only from school books,
but also from YouTube tutorials.
We are the first generation
that has gone from playing outside, in the open air,
with friends on the park near home,
to connecting online on consoles or computers
to play with perfect strangers on the other side of the world.
We are the first generation to look for people like us,
first online
and only later met them in real life.
I mean, think about how the advent of technology
has effectively revolutionized everyday life.
Waking up in the morning, for example,
the first thing we do is looking at our phone.
Most of us then spend
the next 8/10 hours working in front of a monitor.
Moreover, in the evening maybe we go home
and turn on the television to inform or entertain ourselves.
The digitization of everyday life
is therefore inevitable and everyone is talking about it,
but only 25% of Italians know what it is.
I am talking about the Metaverse.
This neologism comes from the sales fiction of the 90s.
His first appearance
was in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel "Snow Crash".
The word “metaverse”
is the result of the union of “meta”,
a Greek word that has acquired the meaning of “transition”
and "Universe".
However, the Metaverse is an evolving concept,
which has not yet been born but is already making noise.
Let's just think about the evolution and the advent of the internet itself.
The first Internet, that of the 90s,
is called Web 1.0
and is based on static contents
such as the first websites,
the first blog sites, the first search engines.
The second Internet, the current one,
was born in the 2000s
and is instead called web 2.0.
It's driven by users interaction
that takes place through social networks
and the various apps that we can find online.
Therefore, if the first Internet is based on the concept of information
and the second Internet is based on the concept of interaction,
then the Internet of the future will be based on participation.
And it’s precisely at this moment that the Metaverse comes into play.
So imagine the Metaverse
as a large interactive and immersive digital universe,
a real virtual extension of the real world,
in which every citizen, through 3D viewers or other devices,
is represented by an avatar.
The real and the virtual world come into contact
to create a personalized, immersive experience
with a high level of involvement.
The lens is a real hybrid between physical and virtual,
now increasingly indistinguishable.
The Metaverse, however, won’t be limited to a single experience,
it's pervasive and will touch almost all aspects of human life.
Persistence will therefore be the key feature of the Metaverse
that will offer and ensure a continuity of existence.
Life in the Metaverse
won’t stop the moment we don't put on 3D glasses
or a smart suit.
There will be no on/off switch.
In addition, there will be no reboot.
Each action will have a consequence and you won’t be able to go back.
Life in the Metaverso won’t be reset as in a video game.
The actions and behaviors of each user
will then have a real effect, an impact on everyone else's lives.
And it’s precisely in the Metaverse
where the concept will evolve of virtual socialization
that we nowadays attribute to interactions on social media.
Not only will we have to deal with a given contact network,
but we'll approach people from all over the world
who we will be able to see in 3D as if they were in flesh and bone.
The Metaverse, therefore,
could become the fundamental building block
that allows the Web 3.0, this new Internet era,
to materialize.
In conclusion,
we are going through a historic moment from a technological point of view
that is revolutionizing the concept of Home.
Earlier, we started
from a continuous expansion of - and into - the physical world
through opening borders, travelling and moving abroad.
Then, because of Covid, we experienced a real implosion,
a quarantine that limited our borders and redefined our idea of home.
Expansion first, implosion after,
can only lead to a future Big Bang-like explosion,
a real transition
from the physical world of everyday life
to a virtual digital world without limits and borders.
This is the Metaverse.
(Applause)