A TALE OF TWO METAVERSES
Working Paper No. 21
Exploring five binaries embedded within the Metaverse and five ways we can responsibly participate in and make this fantasy ours.
Preface
As of writing, the market value of the Metaverse is expected to reach $800 billion by 2024, with an estimated addressable market of $8 trillion. While the Metaverse’s definition remains uncertain, its omnipresent development and discourse seem to be imposing a narrative of certainty—one that preaches its inevitability. This paper explores the five binaries embedded within the Metaverse and proposes five ways that consumers, communities, and builders can begin to influence and steer the development trajectory of this seemingly imposed future.
Binary 1: Reality and Virtuality.
The Metaverse pointed us toward a new and unspoiled reality that is the virtual world. A place where physical reality is obsolete, means of expression are infinite, and economic rewards are bountiful. Much of its popularization hinges on the separation between the bad world and the good world. The bad world is the problematic physical world we predominantly live in. The good world, on the other hand, is a new virtual realm with promises of a clean slate, upon which we can dream and build a better life. This ideology unconsciously promotes a rebuke of the present and an erasure of collective accountability.
As the Metaverse continues to dematerialize our world, power individualization, and reward us with financial incentives, it eases our need to reconcile the virtual with the real or the good world with the bad world. The Metaverse discourse in turn risks endorsing the quest for a new realm while distracting us from the needed act of restoring our spoiled reality.
To resist this distraction, as we build our world forward—now with the advancement of the Metaverse—we must acknowledge the only world we share that is our physical reality and pose restorative Metaverse projects. Projects that inspire virtual developments which help revitalize the physical world. Projects that simulate radical socio-political structures whose learnings can pave the way for systemic revolution. Projects that don't deflect, but help us confront our wrongdoings, so we can change ourselves, and in turn, change our world.
Binary 2: Freedom and Custody
The Metaverse’s most prominent and powerful pitch to humanity is the promise of freedom.
In the Metaverse, people have the freedom to dress in physically defying clothes, move freely despite mobility disadvantages, and—with the help of Web3—make a living off of their cultural power. These desirable visions conveniently rid technology of its custodial nature. Roblox avatars, Fortnite characters, digital garments, or even NFTs might be extensions of an individual, but their ownership of these digital artifacts is neither absolute nor fully protected. Not only are extrinsic virtual artifacts kept within this enhanced reality, but something as intrinsic as behavioral, psychological, and biological data can also be held in custody in the Metaverse. Data entrapment, trafficking, and exploitation further personalize our virtual experiences, provide us with relevant content, and heighten our sense of control as our agency diminishes.
In the Metaverse, freedom isn't granted but fought for, so it is our civic duty to move privacy and governance beyond the fine print. We need to treat any form of data entrapment and trafficking as a threat, not an opportunity. We should ask not only for interoperability but also for proprietary-free portability and the ability to meaningfully export our virtual data. Last but not least, we should solicit early and preventative regulations that enforce safe and non-surveilled spaces in our ever-intruding realm of immersive reality.
Binary 3: Money and Power
There have been reports of price disparity based on race, gender, and skin color among the famous NFT collection, CryptoPunks. According to DeGenData, a company that keeps data on CryptoPunks sales, the average weekly minimum sale price of darker-skinned CryptoPunks has been below that of lighter-skinned Punks. In an investigative story by journalist Patricia Hernandez, Fortnite players who couldn’t afford to upgrade their looks are becoming targets of bullying and are being beaten up in the real world by classmates. As more status symbols become available for purchase in the Metaverse, they provide those with the means even more opportunities to assume power at the expense of others’ participation.
The market forces and power structures that exacerbate inequalities in our world will continue to do just that in the Metaverse. If the utopian promise of the Metaverse were to hold any merit, it would need to radically rethink and redesign the relationship between money and power. Instead of seeing the Metaverse as an emerging market to exploit, it is worth thinking about it as an avenue for economic reparations and experimentation. What can a scalable universal basic income look like in the Metaverse? In what ways can we proximate power with new forms of participation?
Binary 4: Abundance and Scarcity
Part of what makes the Metaverse discourse seem enigmatic is the discrepancy between its boasted ideologies and implicit practices. This dissonance can be seen in how the concept of abundance and scarcity flip-flop in the Metaverse.
Consider NFTs, a technology that enables a decentralized system of verified ownership of digital artworks. This system is believed to create an abundance of opportunities for digital artists to make a living. Incongruent to this belief are reports of digital artworks being stolen by crypto-grifters to create fraudulent NFTs. NFTs are also being minted out of physical artworks and sold with no involvement of their artists. Despite its art-led debut, digital ownership today is promoting a world where scams are abundant while creativity runs scarce.
Crypto-art’s value lies in speculative rewards which are often benchmarked by mainstream success. High-speed, speculative consumption can, therefore, unintentionally corner creators into echoing and riffing off hyped aesthetics—such as pixelated, cartoonish, RGB colorwave—in search of market rewards. Speculative consumption and hype-induced participation can also pressure novices into following and buying into nascent and risky technology that they don’t fully understand.
As we navigate the treacherous paths of ownership, rewards, and royalties in the Metaverse, it is important that we stay vigilant. Ask critically of pioneers to do away with jargon and abbreviations that shield predatory practices. Interrogate our motives when participating in hype-induced trades. Expose quick rich schemes and syndicated demands that devoid us of creativity. And perhaps what's most important is to inquire about what is socially and philosophically scarce and what is but an economic instrument to create demand-pull inflation.
5. Redemption and Condemnation
As with the advancement of novel technologies like Big Data, or AI, the Metaverse lends itself into reality through the premise of redemption. Among the many redeeming opportunities in question, curbing fashion’s climate and social impact is often associated with one of the Metaverse's hottest developments: digital fashion. Given the emerging market of “snap and send back” in which people buy clothes just to produce “fit pics” to post on social media and then return them, digital fashion is believed to have both a business and a moral case. While not entirely unfounded, this analysis neglects the fact that pricing and affordability remain the key reasons why “woke” consumers purchase fast fashion. Given the considerable price range and the digital-only utility of virtual garments, the shift from fast fashion to digital might not be as “no-brainer” as some believe it to be.
Another tension of digital fashion, and the Metaverse at large, is the electric waste inherited in the technology of blockchains: the protocol that underlies social and commercial interactions in the Metaverse. The pressure on the waste of blockchains has led to the emergence of more energy-efficient chains and protocols. A counter-argument to this can be made using a case study from the 1970s.
After members of OPEC proclaimed an embargo on petroleum export to the United States in 1973, American car companies embarked on a journey of achieving more fuel efficiency. By 1980, the average passenger vehicle was 50% more efficient, and airplanes, 40% more. As Hope Jahren puts in her book, ‘Story of More’, “Americans could have remained one-car families and continued to shop locally and fly sparingly, and our total energy use would have decreased over the next several decades…” Instead, Americans buy more cars, drive further distances, take even more flights, and travel twice as far by car each year as they did in 1970.
Technical improvement alone cannot redeem humanity from problems that are fundamentally created by us. If we truly seek to redeem ourselves and our world, it is crucial that we condemn ourselves for past mistakes and realize the human flaws embedded in the codes and systems we build to solve our human problems.
Making this fantasy ours
Despite its seeming complexity and barriers, the Metaverse is socially constructed rather than naturally occurring; neither inevitable nor untouchable. It is a work-in-progress human fantasy in which all humans have the power to change its course if we choose to critically and intentionally engage with it. This paper proposes five ways for us to responsibly participate in, and make this fantasy ours.
1. Use The Metaverse to Prototype Radical Systemic Solutions
Rather than seeing virtual worlds as new territories to be conquered and exploited, we can lean on the Metaverse's simulation power to model radical social and political solutions to our rooted, systemic challenges.
2. Demand a Privacy-First, Interoperable, and Portable Metaverse
Freedom of expression, mobility, and connection shouldn't come at the cost of data custody. The Metaverse experience should be free of proprietary formatted assets and allow for seamless data migration, download, and deletion.
3. Prioritize Economic Reparations and Level the Playing Field in the Metaverse
Incumbent power and wealth will most likely continue to control the Metaverse. Builders and community leaders should think about economic mechanisms and policies that favor and put power in those who have always been excluded from the traditional economy.
4. Expose Quick Rich Schemes and Reject Predatory Artificial Scarcity
Pioneers and technically-inclined participants should remove Metaverse jargon that excludes and exploits novice consumers. Vigilantly interrogate each others’ motives and consider unintended consequences when participating in hype-induced trades, creations, and investments.
5. Address Early Signs of Tech Diversion and Recognize Our Roles in Them
Nascent technologies will always ask to be forgiven of their early defects. Metaverse participants and builders should actively criticize any form of early tech diversion to stop it from metastasizing. To redeem our world, we need to confront our wrongdoings and not depend on technologies to solve humanly founded problems.
We are living in and telling the tale of two Metaverses. One Metaverse that is on its way to replicate what it pits against. Another with the potential to change old structures, instill new power dynamics, bring about freedom, creativity, abundance, and just maybe, a chance to right our wrongs. At this juncture of Metaverse development, we can act now with the hope to build a Metaverse of our choosing. Or we can submit to inaction and risk being built into a part of this capitalist-imposed, persistent, immersive, boundless, and "unskippable" reality.