15 Comments
Jan 25, 2021Liked by Packy McCormick

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.

Expand full comment
Jan 25, 2021Liked by Packy McCormick

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.

Expand full comment
Jan 25, 2021Liked by Packy McCormick

I think that it's worth arguing that a solely closed Metaverse is unlikely in the same vein that closed source can't really crush open source. As long as there are standard open APIs for connecting worlds together (REST for Metaverse) literally anyone can add on to an open Metaverse. Even if it took Linux that long, once an open economy really gains traction, its openness removed barriers to entry further deepening its traction. I don't think there's any way to fight that. Much as Windows is in the position where it's making itself more amenable to Linux, I suspect the closed Metaverses would end up plugging themselves into the open, where they can benefit from the extra traffic passing through.

Expand full comment

Packy, you are a genius. Thank you.

Expand full comment

Thank you. This is visionary and so helpful in framing the future of the internet

Expand full comment

Great article. Really informative. How about a deep dive on Roblox?

Expand full comment

JPMC Employee Login is required. You will need your JPMorgan Chase Login and the correct device to log in to this portal. MeJPMC has many ...

CLICK HERE = <a href="https://payoffaddress.com/jpmc-employee-login/">JPMC Employee Login</a>

Expand full comment

Unless I'm missing something, the history of the world is the history of large forces (firms or governments) fighting for control over stuff, excluding individuals. If a group of individuals find something lucrative, somebody comes along and eats their lunch.

In other words, the history shows progress towards intermediation, rather than dis-intermediation.

Is it realistic to believe that the ideal version of Web3—the decentralized one—would ever come even close to passing?

Why?

Expand full comment

I will push Web3D.0 as the name for the tech category involved with Open Metaverse.

Expand full comment

Interesting article. But I still don't get why there is such a demand for these things. In the case of NBA Top shots, why people do buy these short videos for such a tremendous amount of money?

Expand full comment

That is the single most not-boring thing I have read in a long time. Thank you.

Expand full comment

all i could think about was simulation theory, in a sufficiently advanced meta verse enabled by (web3,NFT) will we want to send time in the physical world anymore, would we eventually hit a point where we just plug in matrix style? taking this concept to the limit poses more interesting questions

Expand full comment

Blockchain domain names deserve a mention as well... a sovereign, self-custodied ID for hosting decentralized websites as well as sending & receiving cryptocurrency payments.

Expand full comment