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crypto.news spoke with David Shrier, author of the book ‘Basic Metaverse’, about the future of the virtual world.
The global metaverse market could potentially reach revenue of $1.237 billion by 2030, as projected by recent reports. However, complex security and privacy issues may slow down market growth.
crypto.news discussed these and other concerns with David Shrier, futurist, author and entrepreneur, at Websummit in Lisbon. In his book ‘Basic Metaverse: How Virtual Worlds Will Change Our Reality and What You Can Do to Unlock Their Potential’, Shrier delves into the future of this emerging technology and its potential impact on our daily lives.
During our conversation, we explored the challenges of the metaverse and the possibility of a future where interacting with the virtual world through contact lenses or even brain implants could become a reality sooner than you think.
crypto.news: His book, ‘Basic Metaverse’, was published this year when many say that “the metaverse hype is dead” and the nft market is down. Do you think the metaverse has potential?
David Shrier: “The metaverse is dead” is a catchy headline that does not reflect the economic reality of a vibrant industry. In 2022, the metaverse generated more than $66 billion in revenue.
The first misconception I often have to explain to people is that the metaverse is not Meta, the company run by Mark Zuckerberg, who took the name and is making a lot of noise around it. That’s a small slice of the metaverse market. Augmented reality and the browser-based 3D metaverse like Roblox and Minecraft, these companies are doing well.
No matter what you read about Mark Zuckerberg and his losses in virtual reality, the metaverse encompasses a much broader set of ways to interact with technology, and the market generates tens of billions of US dollars in revenue and it is going well.
The nft market has gone through a healthy correction. It’s the Gartner hype cycle: this invention came, then proliferation came, and then the hype came. Sparkling stuff that has no value attached to it is being left out of that market.
For example, Kaleidoco, one of my portfolio companies, is releasing a game next year called Particle Ink. Kaleidoco did an nft mint recently and they sold out in less than two hours. In this game, your characters can gain unique attributes through their NFTs. That’s what I would call a natural use case for NFTs. So if you have a viable product on the nft market, it is very healthy, liquid and fungible.
crypto.news: Why do you think Mark Zuckerberg’s idea failed?
David Shrier: One reason is that it was too early. The technology curve hasn’t reached that point yet. Virtual reality is just one aspect of the metaverse. It is a premature technology. For example, wearing glasses for too long causes dizziness. It has a name for it. It’s called cybersickness, when moving your head and glasses don’t match.
Women are four times more likely to suffer from cyber diseases than men. Therefore, when you have a gender-differentiated product, high manufacturing costs, and limited comfortable wear time, you create significant barriers to adoption.
crypto.news: His book paints a fascinating future where the metaverse transforms various aspects of life, from dating to medicine. However, this future you’ve described is quite alarming due to concerns about privacy and deepfakes. What do you think about this?
David Shrier: There are a couple of issues you’re raising. One is identity. And how do we obtain a unique digital identity in an anonymous format? That’s something blockchain technology is very good at.
Second, artificial intelligence can create deepfakes, but it can also detect them. So, we need to use ai to defend against ai. We are doing a lot of work on ai safety with Imperial College London and several other major universities. It’s a problem we need to be aware of, but it’s something we can address.
The third thing to think about is use cases. In the short term, most use cases are likely to be corporate. For example, Accenture has trained more than 200,000 people in the metaverse without the carbon footprint of flying them to a training center, staying in a hotel, and travel expenses. All that has been erased. They are simply using a virtualized environment, replicating their offices in this type of metaverse environment.
crypto.news: You also mentioned in your book that developing countries tend to accept metaverses faster because people don’t have access to conferences and other real-life events.
David Shrier: Yes, it’s not just that. They are more technologically optimistic, curiously. G7 countries take technology for granted and are already discarding it. Cultures go through three phases of evolution with new technology: naive enthusiasm, understanding, and then decline. I think many economically prosperous countries are taking technology for granted, finding themselves in this declining phase of technology consumption, while developing countries are finding this metaverse technology attractive as a solution to problems.
crypto.news: What happens if a developing country is also a dictatorship and dominates this technology?
David Shrier: That’s true for any technology, not just the metaverse. Social networks and messaging systems also face controversies regarding government surveillance. Some countries, without naming names, do not allow you to use WhatsApp or Signal due to end-to-end encryption. They insist that you use another platform that has a built-in tailgate. In that sense, the metaverse is no different.
On the other hand, something really disturbing and interesting is happening. In particular, Russia and China, to a lesser extent, but still notably North Korea, have been very active in disinformation on social media. The metaverse provides an even more effective platform for spreading disinformation because it is more emotionally engaging. Metaverse games are 44% more addictive than regular video games, according to HTC research. Therefore, active defense against disinformation becomes crucial. We run the risk that if we do not have an active defense against misinformation, we will see an even bigger problem emerge with the adoption of metaverse technology.
crypto.news: What kind of defense could there be? How do we protect web3?
David Shrier: The best time to fix this problem would have been 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. Regulation can be helpful. Companies and social networks can create disinformation detection and removal groups. Additionally, emerging artificial intelligence technologies developed in university research laboratories can help detect and flag disinformation.
crypto.news: What if this ai technology still belongs to some centralized institution?
David Shrier: Not necessarily. We are big fans of open source. We have an initiative at Imperial College called the Trusted ai Alliance, focused on open source technology. We have collaborators at other institutions with large open source repositories where everyone can view and contribute. It is an answer to this problem.
crypto.news: Could some specific regulation be proposed for web3?
David Shrier: I’ve spent a lot of time working on technology policy. An example of poor regulation would be New York State’s BitLicense, which destroyed New York City’s competitiveness in finance and cryptocurrency for a long time, making it impossible for new companies to enter the market. Gary Gensler, more recently, has done everything he can to eliminate the startup world from crypto in favor of JP Morgan and the Fidelities of the world.
The United Kingdom, Singapore, Nigeria and Kenya have taken a different approach.
Developing principles-based regulation that supports innovation while protecting consumers, incorporating standards enacted in multiple countries, is a more viable approach. It will not be possible to create a world government in which everyone agrees on the same approach to regulating these technologies. But what can be done is to achieve commonly accepted standards and promote interoperability.
I think we can come up with some approaches that preserve personal privacy and data protection, but also allow you to have a portable identity that you can carry across your metaverse from France to Colombia and still have the same digital presence.
Rules-based regulation is not the way because the technology is evolving too quickly. We need to do things where, as technology advances, regulation can advance with it. Elon Musk is working on Neuralink and brain implants. We didn’t come up with regulations to deal with information coming directly into the brain.
crypto.news: In ‘Basic Metaverse’, you predict a “three-stage evolution of access to the metaverse”: lighter, cheaper and faster devices, invisible technologies like contact lenses and implantable solutions. Would you personally implant something in your brain?
David Shrier: Not today, because the technology is too immature, but probably in 30 or 40 years. If I could avoid age-related dementia and memory loss… You know, if I were 80, would I want to be able to remember what I had for breakfast in the morning? Yes. Would I like to remember my children’s names? Yes. The potential of this technology is tremendous, but at this point it is very immature. Something I would put in my brain is decades away.
Everyone will use it to improve performance. You know it’s going to happen. Students will implement it so they can study better for an exam. All this is yet to come.
crypto.news: It might make sense for medical reasons, but what about something that allows you to be in augmented reality?
David Shrier: We’ll have that too: a completely immersive video game or movie experience.
crypto.news: Opens up endless manipulation possibilities.
David Shrier: Just like any new technology. It is a very legitimate concern. But it is not the first time that we have a disruptive technology that could change everything. They used to have riots when the steam engine brought looms into factories. The Luddite movement would storm factories and destroy looms because they were worried that this new technology would disrupt their lives.
crypto.news: When will we, for example, have invisible contact lenses to enter the metaverse?
David Shrier: 10 to 15 years. Right now, they are still dealing with the problem that nowadays, lenses get too hot and cook your eyes. Immature technology. It will take us a while to resolve those issues. Today we have the lens of the glasses projecting something onto your reality. The trick is battery life and connectivity. So, I would say that in five to seven years we will have something more viable in eyewear technology.
crypto.news: Do you think cryptocurrencies will be used in the metaverse in the future?
David Shrier: Yes. If we want to have a portable identity, we definitely want our money to move with us. Cryptocurrencies are not going away. It won’t be a hundred billion in the short term. But it’s a trillion-dollar market. And the fact that there are now institutional asset management companies like BlackRock and Fidelity launching ETFs suggests that mainstream financial services are starting to embrace cryptocurrencies, and we see that trend continuing.
