WHAT IS THE METAVERSE?

In August Time magazine had an issue on the Metaverse.  As they will not allow you to read the article, I'll try to crystalize the essence as simply as possible, supplementing as necessary.

• What is the multiverse?
• A hypothetical iteration of the internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality.
• Or a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connections.

• 
  Every few decades, there is a platform shift:  
• I started teaching computer courses when there were mainframes.  That was in 1972, half a century ago.
• Then came PCs and the internet.
• Now mobile and cloud computing.

• 
  The internet today is worldwide with 40,000 networks, millions of applications, over 100 million servers, almost a billion websites and tens of billions devices.

• 
  While everything is theoretically interconnected, just think, whoever controls the system, runs the world.
• That is one way of describing the metaverse, explaining why there is so much interest.

• 
  The origin of the term is ascribed to the 1992 science fiction novel, Snow Crash, written by Neal Stephenson.
• Wired thought this was a Cyberpunk Classic.
• Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian future, where artificial intelligence and cybernetics is juxtaposed with societal collapse, rooted in the 1960's and 70's.  Rather than the utopian tendencies of early science fiction, cyberpunk examines the impact of the drug culture, technology and sexual revolution.  
• 
  One example is Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner (Rotten Tomatoes 89%/91%) with Harrison Ford.  Now 80, he was then 40 years old.
• The book story is of Hiro Protagonist, a sword-wielding hacker and pizza delivery driver who leaps between a dystopian Los Angeles and a virtual world called the Metaverse.

• 
  Snow crash is a digitally encoded virus that infects hackers via the optic nerve, and the same symptoms can be had as a drug where the infected person's blood is chemically process to provide a similar experience when taken.
• Inspired a wide range of high tech entrepreneurs and inventors.

Perhaps too much info about that inspirational book, but what exactly is the metaverse.  Well, has something to do with virtual reality headsets, block chains, crypto, and holograms, with uncertainty about when the synthesis will become truly real.  And surely, by then you won't need to deal with wearing anything particularly clunky.

For one, Facebook became Meta, and there must be something to this because Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and a range of other firms are also into it. McKinsey & Co. estimates that there have been $120 billion in investments just during the first five months of this year.

Mark Zuckerberg's efforts are said to be losing $10 billion/year to develop the metaverse, and Brad Gerstner, who owns only 0.1% of Meta, made a big fuss with an open letter to the board on October 24. The price of Meta has plunged 60% this year.  But this could just be because all social media sites have not done well.  Snapchat has fallen 80%.

Meta has pivoted from social media to developing the metaverse, and investors are worried that they don't see any profitable deliverables, for building the metaverse could take a decade and $100 billion.  The question is whether this potentially game-changing new technology is worth the time and effort.  But social media are in bad times today anyway,

That standard comparison between Facebook-Meta versus TikTok-ByteDance (ByteDance owns Tik Tok) shows Tik-Tok eating Facebook's lunch.  However, keep in mind that last year ByteDance lost more than $7 billion, a drop of 87% in 2021, and losses are continuing to mount this year.  By the way, Americans can't own any shares of ByteDance, a Chinese company, which has no plans to go public.  Of course our Fed gov has been circling this Chinese combo because of national security concerns, and sometimes lobbying works.

And of course you have been watching the face-off between Elon Musk and Twitter, which itself is faced with major problems, with or without Musk.  This will become his supreme challenge in the coming years...if he ends up running the company.  And if he does, shareholders will get bought out at a good price ($54.20), which will no longer be publicly traded.

So, simply, what is the metaverse?  One answer is that it is the future of the internet.  Or maybe a video game, or perhaps something like Zoom.  We know that Meta is building a virtual reality platform capable of attaching non-fungible tokens.  Of course everything is abstruse, just like the internet in the 1970's, when no one knew where it was headed.  You want a bit more clarity.  Read this.  Still confused?  Not to worry...no one is not.

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