Many consider it the future of Internet being an immersive experience where you can act into another dimension. Others still remain skeptical about its potentiality and unknown consequences on human relationships and energy consumptions. Surely the Metaverse is now considered a priority on which to invest massive amounts of money by some of the most important Big Tech industries focused on information technology. As for any novelty you need to test and grasp more information about it to be a ‘pioneering’ connoisseur.
“What is curious to understand is that it is going to be a love story between technology and content...and today all of you are actually on a huge roller-coaster ride towards the future", Steven Saltzman, co-founder of the Meta Entertainment World
“What is curious to understand is that it is going to be a love story between technology and content...and today all of you are actually on a huge roller-coaster ride towards the future", have recently stated Steven Saltzman, co-founder of the Meta Entertainment World, the first real-virtual international summit held at the Hermitage Hotel in the Principality of Monaco on the 23rd and the 24th May 2022.
More and more entrepreneurs and multinationals are interested in the Meta world where physical and digital dimensions merge to create unexpected interactions through virtual and augmented reality effects. Basically, each of us could have its own ‘avatar’ which can work, play, relax, transact, socialize in a different way from real life. ‘Avatar’ by James Cameron is no longer a science-fiction movie. Although there is no single definition of Metaverse, the term was used for the first time in 1992 within a science fiction novel, Snow Crash, by the American writer Neal Stephenson. The neologism results as the combination of “meta” (from the ancient Greek: μετά = "after" or "beyond") and “universe”. It recalls then the idea of a comprehensive interaction between virtual reality (VR) and the reality allowing users to plunge them into a new demateralized dimension which is now tangible.
“Metaverse is a digital and physical place we live in: it is a gateway we enter into the digital and we trigger the physical to take us to reaching information behind every object in the virtual space", Doug Scott, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Subnation
“Metaverse is a digital and physical place we live in: it is a gateway we enter into the digital and we trigger the physical to take us to reaching information behind every object in the virtual space…and any single day new brands are coming online in the so called Metaverse, which is not about one company, it is not about one Country, but it is decentralized”, underlined Doug Scott, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Subnation, within Meta Entertainment World. In the footsteps of the Metaverse, in fact, a new digital economy is growing fast grounded on the use of blockchains and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens: non-replicable cryptographic tokens). Not by chance, Tim Sweeny, Epic Games CEO, has recently stated: “The Metaverse is going to be far more persuasive and powerful than anything else”, allowing one company to “become more powerful than any government…on Earth”. What a captivating and unsettling outcome!
Some sectors are enthusiast of that. Fashion industry is one of them. “I consider the Metaverse as a great opportunity for the fashion and retail industry by creating a new real-time supplying blockchain infrastructure which can further develop the on-demand fashion allowing customers to become Web 3.0 stakeholders in order to help brands creating better and new responsible products and services”, outlined at Monaco’s summit Paula Marie Kilgarriff, Web 3.0 & Retail Metaverse Brand Activation Strategist in Fashion, Entertainment and Social Media.
Data seem to speak clearly. Potentially 8 billion people on the Planet, and 4 billion people on the Internet, could be involved in the future Web Free. ‘Access for all’ seems to be the ‘mantra’ of the Metaverse, developing on a 5C Framework basis: Culture, Content, Community, Conversation and Commerce. The market outlook for the period 2020-2024 registers a remarkable jump up to 805 (USD Bn) in four-year time towards further market opportunities by 2030. And the Gaming industry, the Metaverse shared spaces, the Mixed Reality Ecosystems and the Digital Asset Marketplaces are some of major pushing players.
The ability of the Metaverse to be globally comprehensive has already pushed someone to theorize its use linked to the protection of the Planet Earth ecosystem to address this new technology on the road to sustainability. Waiting for its establishment (in about 15 years according to some recent surveys) ‘Naturverse’ is then gaining ground theorizing a perfect symbiosis between financial markets and elements of Nature. In a few words, it would consist of an economy based on a nature-inclusive approach where any natural externality is assessed economically. In this context, all companies, institutions, entrepreneurs, citizens involved in the environment could be part of the same ‘platform’ where financial and nature assets are both side of the same aspect. As a matter of fact, biodiversity big data, indicators and metrics have already being operating for a long time both at micro and macro level, so to envisage the creation of a single Naturverse at global level is not just an illusion.
NBS (Nature-based solutions) would be then the agreed ‘currency’ of that environmentally friendly new dimension aimed at showing that human technology can advance in harmony with Nature, and not against it. In some areas they are already taking about deforestation-linked or blue recovery bonds, providing concrete answers to the long economic debate on how to attribute an economic ‘price’ to natural resources and ‘infrastructures’ (e.g.: wetlands, mangrove forests, rainforest, etc.). Will there be the will to do all this? A lot depends on decision makers and government representatives together with local communities that can make a difference if they act together.
“When you are designing the Metaverse environment you should not consider only the technologic side but also the social part", Manila Di Giovanni, CEO and co-founder of Dworld
The local dimension, in fact, can really become a driving force. Metaverse can significantly contribute to Smart Cities development. “When you are designing the Metaverse environment you should not consider only the technologic side but also the social part, this is resulting from a co-creating process to make the parallel world a better and more sustainable place comparing to what we are really facing in the real world”, highlighted Manila Di Giovanni, CEO and co-founder of Dworld, graduated at the International University of Monaco (IUM), attending Meta Entertainment World.
The Metaverse, and the Naturverse, could be promising lands or a disrupting tools depending on how human beings want to use them. But as every revolutionary innovation it must be known and tested in order to express one’s opinion and foresee its most useful applications. “Over one’s mind and over one’s body, the individual is sovereign”, as John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and liberal economist, reminded us.***
Article By Maurice Abbati