The Hype Of The Metaverse: Soviet-Style Propaganda

over 2 years ago

We all heard about the Metaverse. It is all over the place. After all, Mark Zuckerberg decided to build it. But then so is Microsoft. And Apple. And whomever else decided to throw their hat in the hype train.

The reality about this digital reality is we are light years away from it. As is often the case in technology, the hype far exceeds the capabilities. While we are going to see some amazing things over the decades, much of what people are describing is decades away.

Of course, my opinion on this matter was well expressed. Let us gain a bit of insight from someone who is in the technology field and see how he views it.

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Metaverse = Soviet Propaganda

Well that does not leave much room for misinterpretation.

This is the view of Evernote founder Phil Libin. Growing up in the Soviet Union, the present rhetoric about the Metaverse reminds him of Soviet propaganda.

He states this simply because of the idea the Metaverse is not here, but it is coming. This was the promise that was doled out by the Soviets about Communism. It is not here yet but it is coming.

And oh by the way, it will be utopian. Sound familiar?

While it might seem a bit harsh to make this comparison, the idea makes sense. Hype is a powerful weapon which often leads to disappointment. The challenge with the Metaverse hype-train is people are throwing money at it trying to profit off something that is not going to arrive for many decades.

Here is what Libin had to say about it:

"I went to first grade in the Soviet Union," Libin said. "I was subjected to a lot of Soviet propaganda, and I was told as a little kid repeatedly: 'Communism doesn't exist yet. We haven't built communism yet. We're building towards communism. But it's not communism yet. What you see around you, this horrible, horrible place, isn't communism. We're building towards it. It's going to be great when it gets here.'"

Libin continued: "You know, you can smell a bad idea before it's fully built. So I don't want to hear 'Oh yeah, the metaverse doesn't exist yet. No, no, no, all this stuff, all this stupid, useless, crappy stuff that exists right now, that's not the metaverse. The metaverse is coming — it's coming.'"

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The Metaverse Is Coming...It Is Just A Long Way Off

Libin might be overemphasizing the bad idea aspect. There is no doubt the direction things are heading in. However, we have to be careful since we have a history with what technology does.

To start, we have no idea when the technology will meet up with our demands. The ideas being presented today, even if implemented, will take a couple decades from a technical perspective. We simply cannot do what is desired. One of the biggest issues is going to be the radical upgrade to our communications systems. Forget 5G, we might need something like 8G.

Another experience that we have with technology is that it rarely unfolds how we envision. Like the old saying goes, what did people think they needed in the pre-automobile era? Faster horses.

The Metaverse as a concept is in our future. How that looks when it arrives is going to be far different than what we predict today.

Think back to the early days of the Internet. Did the people developing then envision a day when one of the main uses of the Web would be to send 140 characters in a Tweet? It is safe to say they probably did not see that one coming.

So why do we think that we are any better at predicting the timeline or what the Metaverse will look like.

As I repeatedly stated, we are working on building Web 3.0. If I had to guess, at best, the Metaverse will be Web 5.0. In other words, there is another iteration or two to go through before we can even begin to comprehend what it will look like.

Convergence Of Our Worlds

What we do know is that we are going to see the merging of our physical, digital, and biological worlds. We are seeing more of our world essentially turned into data. This leads to the emergence of entirely new possibilities that are not even on our radar today.

Is this Soviet-style propaganda? Not really. We can forecast the future, within a range of possibilities. Extending out 10 years can give us a pretty good idea of what things will look like. The challenge enters when we try to go much past there. Things can get rather murky since technology can change so much in that period of time.

Truthfully, we have little idea where a lot of this stuff will go.

Nevertheless, the digitization of everything already started. We are seeing sensors put into many more products as compared to two decades ago. Everything is becoming a data generator. This is one thing we know about the future: it will be filled with enormous amounts of data.

As the digital layer of placed over our physical world, we will see things such as digital twins. That is a step in the evolution. Of course, there will be many more just like that. In fact, we can expect thousands of moves along the same lines.

Where we end up in 20 or 30 years is hard to guess. Perhaps at that time we can start talking about the Metaverse. However, if I had to guess, we probably won't talk about something we are operating within.

For now, it is just a bunch of shallow promises, ones that could end up like what the Soviets promoted to their citizens.

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