Spatial News™ #012
This week we're all about virtual economies, avatars, NFTs, and more.
Welcome to Spatial News™ 012, Spatialists! There’s so much going on in this space that I literally started writing this newsletter the same day I posted the last newsletter. “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” -Helen Keller (How is this the first time I’ve ever seen this quote?)
The Problem with NFTs
It seems like criticisms of NFTS, cryptocurrency, and Blockchain seem to be reaching a crescendo. Take the YouTube creator Dan Olson’s viral critique Line Goes Up: The Problem with NFTs, for instance.
Referring to any Blockchain, but having just spoken about Ethereum in particular, Olson makes the sharpest point yet, in my opinion, about the centralization vs. decentralization debate.
“If you take all these different things, all these parts of your identity, all your economic activity, all your video games you play, all the groups you join and stick them into one system that’s a central system.
It doesn’t matter how many different servers that system spans or how many validators need to agree before changes can be made, you’ve pooled all that data in one place…”
He continues,
“The primary use case of tokens, beyond speculation, ultimately, is to function as access passes… [These tokens could act as] the mother of all cookies… ensuring a continuity of tracking across all web activity.
The future version of the web built on the back of cryptocurrency and mediated by financialized tokens is a… privacy disaster… a dystopia.”
Yikes. Put this way, the tech sounds like any Web2 social network-cum-advertiser’s dream come true and what well-known economist Yanis Varoufakis would call a “digital fiefdom” (read more about Yanis V.’s views below).
Agreeing with Olson’s criticism while not giving up on the potential of the technology, Casey Newton’s recent Verge article, adds that there are “three things crypto people should actually work on in 2022”
“Make crypto transactions safe, reliable, and approachable to normal people.”
Make a blockchain that is faster, less expensive, and less wasteful (because Solana isn’t it)
“Develop technologies for mitigating harassment and abuse.”
Like I’ve said in earlier newsletters, let’s see where the current influx of investment and energy actually goes this year (and, hopefully, not into creating a future Xenomorph Queen that breeds predatory cookies).
Put Your Avatar to Work
“[W]ith the metaverse making a comeback [Second Life being the first iteration, according to the Fortune article], so too is the virtual economy. Companies [like OWNFT World and Genies] are letting individuals create and own [NFT] avatars that can apply for jobs and build careers in the metaverse—and earn real money for their owners.”
Are there currently enough well-designed metaverse(s) that support NFT-infused virtual economies, or will we see hard-luck avatars in semi-abandoned virtual worlds holding “Will work for crypto” signs?
(Disclaimer: I honestly can’t wait till my AI-powered digital twin can go to work for me while I learn the ukulele on the beach. And I don’t even like ukuleles or the beach, but I’ll do it just because I can.)
With founder Philip Rosedale returning as a strategic adviser to Second Life, where billions (!) of dollars have already been made through the buying and selling of virtual land and architecture by avatars, I’m curious to see if and how Linden Labs, the parent company of Second Life, can not only reinvigorate the platform but further innovate its virtual economy. (I just broke the rule of sentence length with this last one.)
Thanks to Debra Stewardson, Director of Hology, for bringing this article to my attention.
A screenshot from Second Life. Courtesy Linden Lab
6 Lessons to Learn from Second Life
According to Time, there are six lessons that we can learn about the future of the metaverse from Second Life now.
“People will stay in virtual worlds, even without an explicit mission [so it doesn’t have to be a game].
People will spend money on digital goods—but very few creators will actually make a living [can Web3 actually change this for creators?].
Ease of use and technological challenges remain a huge roadblock for mass adoption.
Virtual worlds might always struggle to appeal to certain demographics.
Identity is tricky, and so is rule-making.
The metaverse doesn't need to be ubiquitous. In fact, it shouldn't be [for example, MMOs accessed only via consoles].”
Yanis Varoufakis on Blockchain and Techno-Feudalism
Former economist-in-residence for Valve and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis shares his views on everything from virtual economies to Blockchain to “erratic Marxism”. Here are some insights from his time at Valve.
“The key insight was that observed behaviour utterly demolished some key neoliberal fantasies: Barter does not give way to sound money, in the form of some digital gold simulacrum… Selflessness is always present (evidenced by substantial doubly anonymous gifting). Social relations emerge (even in these faceless digital worlds) which then ‘infect’ prices and quantities…
Today, a decade later, it is clear that gaming communities like the one I studied at Valve have been operating as fully-fledged metaverses…
Gamers were drawn to them by the game but, once ‘inside’, they stayed to live out a large part of their life, making friends, producing goods for sale, consuming entertainment, debating, etc.”
The article’s on the longish side but worth a read. Dig in.
Gartner asks,‘What is the Metaverse?’
Image Credit gartner.com
Gartner is now in the field, hoe in hand, preparing the ground for one of their Hype Cycle reports. As you can see by the image (also making the social media rounds), just like Tony Parisi’s “Seven Rules of the Metaverse” Gartner’s description of the metaverse includes Web3 technologies like digital currency and NFTs. Louis Rosenberg also includes this tech in his article “Metaverse 101: Defining the key components” pointing out that “metaverse platforms of decades past didn’t involve recent concepts like Web 3.0 or NFTs” though they “are now part of the conversation”. While from the perspective of gaming and XR industry insider Rafael Brown,
“Open Worlds as Virtual Worlds… are frankly the closest thing we have to an actual proto-Metaverse experiment… $100 Million plus projects [like the upcoming GTAVI and other Quad A games] are the path towards the (future) Metaverse.”
Continuing in the comments’ section, he predicts that
“GTA6 alone will engage more consumers than every NFT/Blockchain projects combined… by 2-3 orders of magnitude.”
What would a metaverse look like that is not a second Second Life or an MMO or even a digital twin of the world? How will we experience it?
Talking to Fast Company, Timoni West, Unity's AR/VR chief, seemingly responds to my questions,
“So I think right now we’re trying to envision what we’re going to do with this genuinely exciting tech. I think it’s really ramping up on what Web3 can mean and what “immersive” can mean, etc… we’re assuming we’re going to take this way of doing things, and it’s going to be like this or that–but it won’t. It’ll be something completely different. It’s particularly hard to predict.”
Wowsers, this week’s newsletter was so long that I had to use two pictures to break up the text. To all readers of this week’s Spatial News™, I salute you!
Joh, looking forward to Web4
Spatial8
P.S. Don’t forget to take our Future Technologies Usage Survey 2022 for a chance to get some random NFTs! Ends in February.