(2021-06-29) Ball A Framework For The Metaverse

Matthew Ball: A Framework for the Metaverse. We need to think of the Metaverse as a sort of successor state to the mobile internet.

When did the mobile internet era begin?

Most would say it’s the iPhone

In truth, there’s never a flip. We can identify when a specific technology was created, tested, or deployed, but not when an era precisely occurred.

technological change requires a lot of technological changes, plural, to all come together. (Technological Revolution)

critical mass of interconnected innovations

The iPhone feels like the start of the mobile internet because it united and/or distilled all of the things we now think of as ‘the mobile internet’ into a single minimum viable product that we could touch and hold and love. But the mobile internet was created — and driven — by so much more. In fact, we probably don’t even mean the first iPhone but the second, the iPhone 3G (which saw the largest model-over-model growth of any iPhone, with over 4× the sales). This second iPhone was the first to include 3G, which made the mobile web usable, and operated the iOS App Store, which made wireless networks and smartphones useful.

But neither 3G nor the App Store were Apple-only innovations or creations.

We must also consider the role of changing user capability

With the above in mind, let’s turn to the Metaverse.

The Metaverse is often mis-described as virtual reality

And certainly, the Metaverse doesn’t mean a game or virtual space where you can hang out

Instead, we need to think of the Metaverse as a sort of successor state to the mobile internet.

Fortnite and Roblox feel like the Metaverse because they embody so many technologies and trends into a single experience that, like the iPhone, is tangible and feels different from everything that came before. But they do not constitute the Metaverse.

I’ve written before that the idealistic vision of the Metaverse (which is defined by characteristics such as infinite persistency, ubiquitous synchronicity, unlimited concurrency, wide interoperability, etc.) is decades away. But we will get there through sustained, interconnected, and cross-affecting improvements in numerous areas

Personally, I’m tracking the emergence of the Metaverse around eight core categories

Hardware:

Networking:

Compute: (2021-06-29) Ball Compute And The Metaverse

Virtual Platforms:... large ecosystem of developers and content creators which generate the majority of content on and/or collect the majority of revenues built on top of the underlying platform. (2021-06-29) Ball Virtual Platforms And The Metaverse

Interchange Tools and Standards:... These standards support activities such as rendering, physics, and AI, as well as asset formats and their import/export from experience to experience, forward compatibility management and updating, tooling, and authoring activities, and information management. (2021-06-29) Ball Interchange Tools Standards And The Metaverse

Payments: (2021-06-29) Ball Payments Payment Rails And Blockchains And The Metaverse

Metaverse Content, Services, and Assets:... digital assets, such as virtual goods and currencies, as connected to user data and identity.

User Behaviors:

You’ll note ‘crypto’ or ‘blockchain technologies’ are not a category. Rather, they span and/or drive several categories, most notably compute, interchange tools and standards, and payments — potentially others as well.

recent history warns us not to be dogmatic about any specific path to, or idealized vision of, a fully functioning Metaverse.