We saw that the Metaverse redefines Identity and Access. It also redefines value. 

The core promise of the Metaverse is a seamless transfer of items, services across multiple realities. To do that, we need an exchange system,  exchange units with a series of fundamental qualities. There is no universal solution as yet. Blockchain technology is  a strong basis to build on, the core transferable units will probably be time in some form, but we will still need a real global exchange system. 

The metaverse will ultimately referee where you can go, what you can see, what you actually see. This means defining our multiple individual layers of reality, physical as much as digital. This means our individual reality, as well as how much this will be a collective reality.  

The metaverse is not virtual meetings between avatars. It is the technological, financial backbone that underpins the merged reality today. For it to exist, it will define your identity tomorrow, that is for yourself and for others.

Generation Z in China. 254 million strong, disposable income, technology, infrastructure. They have the potential to create a new global youth culture (cf. my previous article). A live observatory of Gen Z, at scale. The 3 underlying core trends. 

Cultural shifts used to happen in London, New York or San Francisco. It has moved East, to be led by the youth of Shanghai and Beijing, after Seoul. 254 million Gen Z in China with a high individual disposable income. A preview of the future?

We can access an unprecedented amount of information, freely and openly. The catch? Given the amount to dig, we need help to free-dive this ocean, hence the search and selection algorithms. This means that the help comes at a price, and the risk is to be caught in a digital loop endlessly refracting our own choices back to us, trapping us in a sterile self-serving vortex. The only viable solution I found is to create our own clear personal analytical protocols based on what is underlying the choices of information presented to us; no-one else will have any vested interest to do it for us.  

So, the metaverse a meme, a tech hype, a viral buzzword? Or is it the very fabric of our world? The choice is yours, but this is too big a topic to pass on. Weary of yet another one of these cyclical Next Big Thing? Then lets define what it is not.

Picking up from where we left in [part 1] …

Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta, as in metaverse. For his new stock filing, he claims the name metaverse (MVRS) itself. For such a novel concept, Wii-like avatars and VR goggles meetings is rather underwhelming? What is actually the metaverse? What is at stake?     

Over the years, we have lost the implicit trust in intellectual authorities. This erosion is not primarily due to social media, internet, conspiracies or fake news, but to the failure of the reference authorities themselves to live-up to and live-by the expectations they created.       

Our perception of time has changed over the past years, partly because the disappearance of the cultural and political narratives of the 50s (cf Fukuyama) but as well because technology enables us to recreate and seemingly improve on past created contents: how many more remakes, retakes, prequels, documentaries and author recycling of the 19th and 20th century do we need to try and get on top of this time loop we have entered?