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youngboose's avatar

I think the distinction between the open and closed metaverse is what will really paint the future of our next generation. I have an 11 year old sister who spends all of her time on roblox, playing and talking with her friends. When she's not on roblox, she's in group chats and facetimes with her other friends. Primarily, she wants to hang out with people. Suburban attitudes exemplified this and quarantine fast-tracked it, but it is less and less common for kiddos to hang out with other kiddos physically. They're moving online, consequences or not. Whether that online world can be owned and created by that generation, or whether an Epic or Unity gets that control will determine if that next generation is allowed to live in a world of boundless creativity and self-ownership, the true anarchist paradise, or whether we get into the world where corporations tell us how to think and live even more so than they do currently. It's the choice between anarchism and hidden corporate fascism. Generally, I think our path will take a middle road, and we'll muddle through, with the metaverse opening up new opportunities for creativity and growth while also cementing a larger corporate influence. In other words, the great human propensity to muddle wins out again.

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Ben Dietz's avatar

Individual sovereign identity across the metaverse will be hell on parents of the future, because every child will have to be named with the idea of having a literally unique name (usernames won't matter, since future kids will need to uniquely own their metaversal possessions). Naming kids will become literal free association. World, meet kindergarten in Williamsburg. Elon was right again.

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