Issue 94: Will the Metaverse be better?
Welcome to Backstory, a weekly newsletter turning global technology shifts into a three-minute read. This week, we’re thinking about the metaverse – Mary Ames, Director of Strategy
THE BIG TAKE
Will the Metaverse be Better?
The world has seemed like a bleak place over the past week. Given the conflicts, the rising cost of living, and the Covid-19 pandemic, the news cycle feels oppressive. In the near future, such tangible events like the increasing cost of goods might not affect us in such a profound way. That’s because the leading minds in technology are working hard to build a metaverse that could be a massive part of our lives.
Fact and fiction: Before we go any further, we don’t think that we will all be living in a simulated version of Ready Player One any time soon. The metaverse is the concept of a persistent, online, 3D universe that combines multiple different virtual spaces. It will take decades to build. Don’t be alarmed. Instead, we need to think about the moment we are in collectively. Just like the early days of the internet, systems and infrastructure are being built as we speak that will define the next chapter of humanity. From the way we interact to how we spend money is all changing at this very moment. Large multi-national corporations like Facebook (which even changed its name to Meta) are aggressively looking for ways to change their business models to stay ahead of these changes.
Thinking about the future in the present: These historical changes are a good time for reflection for the average person. How has the internet changed your life? Do you feel like you already live in some form of a metaverse where most communications and interactions take place online? Similar questions can be put to national and city governments. What opportunities exist for a city like Dubai in the metaverse? What are the options for innovation? There is nothing to fear about the metaverse. Instead, we need to embrace this shift and ensure that we have the clarity of vision to flourish when the metaverse becomes a dominant form of reality.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The Metaverse is not magic, it is a new world created by aliens from planet Earth to give an infinite experience of the existing world.”
– Anjul Jasani, entrepreneur
OUR VIEWS THIS WEEK
Is wellness the new GDP? Economists love growth, and GDP measures growth. That explains why the somewhat archaic measurement is so popular. But what counts as growth anyway? We investigate whether wellness and happiness should be the new benchmarks for growth in the international economy.
The future is urban: Africa is home to the world’s smallest number of internet users thanks to poor infrastructure and the rural nature of many communities. The problem facing Africa, the thinking goes, is fundamentally a rural one. While this might be true for the time being, Africa’s challenges are on the verge of becoming decidedly urban. We explore Africa’s urban future in detail this week.
SPOTTED ELSEWHERE
Is reality real? The esteemed neuroscientist Anil Seth is a thinker that we should be reading. His bold claims are the subject of an engaging piece in the New Statesman this week. Seth believes that consciousness itself might be little more than a programmed hallucination. The most radical part about this theory is that he doesn’t think this is bad. Maybe we already live in the metaverse, and we just don’t know it.
Are notes apps bad? We love all manner of note-taking applications. From storing links to simple to-do lists, notes applications are a significant part of the smartphone ecosystem. But what if they are bad for productivity. In a bold piece, the technology writer Matthew Guay argues that we use notes apps all wrong. He makes compelling points.