Tom Boellstorff: We Need to Define the Metaverse Before Moneyed Interests Define It For Us

Really good essay from Tom Boellstorff, a professor at UC Irvine and a longtime researcher of virtual worlds. While the definition of the Metaverse might seem, well, academic, Tom points out how corporate and moneyed interests are already trying to define it to conveniently suit their own interests:

For instance, many pundits define the metaverse as based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. But many existing virtual worlds use means other than blockchain for confirming ownership of digital assets. Many use national currencies like the U.S. dollar, or metaverse currencies pegged to a national currency.

Another such rhetorical move appears when [Meta communications head Nick] Clegg uses an image of a building with a foundation and two floors to argue not only that interoperability will be part of “the foundations of the building” but that it’s “the common theme across these floors.”

But Clegg’s warning that “without a significant degree of interoperability baked into each floor, the metaverse will become fragmented” ignores how interoperability isn’t prototypical for the metaverse. In many cases, fragmentation is desirable. I might not want the same identity in two different virtual worlds, or on Facebook and an online game.

Much more here. I am in fierce agreement with this point. (See my own take on Clegg's Metaverse vision statement.) In my view, Tom's take is yet another reason for adhering to a definition that's as close as feasibly possible to the one from Snow Crash:

Not only was the novel a direct influence on Linden Lab and other metaverse companies -- Lindens even cited the book when thinking through issues like user teleportation and the like -- the novel has little to say on anything even vaguely resembling cryptocurrency or interoperability as Clegg describes it.

More key, the Metaverse as Neal Stephenson defines it works: Platforms which roughly fit the novel's conception of the Metaverse already have at least half a billion active users. So what is even the point of glomming on new features to the idea, when the original one is very much working already? Especially when the term itself is from the novel. Maybe Clegg and crypto bros should just call whatever it is they want some other term that's not The Metaverse?

 

More Tom wisdom below:

"This Is Who I Am": Why A Woman With Parkinson’s Sees Both Her SL Avatar & Her Physical Body As Real (Excerpt, Coming Of Age In Second Life)

Comments

[Adeon]

Too late.

The internet has already defined it as a meaningless buzzword that can mean whatever you want it to mean.

Using it will at worst make you sound like a scam. At best, you'll sound corporate and entirely out of touch, you might as well be saying "Cyberspace" or "Information Superhighway" or "Dot Com".

[Adeon]

Make no mistake - we will make what what people used to be called the metaverse - it just won't be called one.

Just like no one calls the internet cyberspace.

[sirhc desantis]

One of the joys of life is a satisfying clegg sometime after a hearty meal.

[Martin K.]

The confusion about the term "metaverse" reminds me of the confusion about the term "mixed reality": nowadays, the latter can mean anything from virtual reality (as in Microsoft's "Windows Mixed Reality headsets") to a broad definition of augmented reality (as in the academic definition of "mixed reality") to keying footage of VR users and compositing it with computer graphics (a popular meaning in the VR industry).

Is that a bad thing? It doesn't have to be if it reminds people to define technical terms that they are using - and exposing people who don't define them as ignorant or intentionally vague.

[Rin]

We can come up with any description or definition that we want. It wont matter. For once, because "We" is not a unified group and no one will manage to get all groups together to form a "We" that will agree on anything but the most basic level of definitions ... and also, because the corproations claiming to build it, will do it too and they are for sure more interested to create something they have full control over and that is in no way shared with others.

I fear that we might have to take the definitions as they develop and have to deal with a lot of them being guided by corporate marketing divisions.

[Tom Boellstorff]

Thanks for the shoutout! It really is worrisome how Meta and other folks are trying to set forth their surveillance capitalism model as "interoperability"... more to come!