Deconstructing the ‘Metaverse’ – A Strategic Pathway for Separating Hype from Reality!

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Back in 2007, I had an avatar and spent some time exploring the virtual world known as SecondLife. If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember it – it was supposed to be the next big thing!

Except, it wasn’t.

There are a lot of next big things in our world, and right now, there is no bigger ‘next big thing’ than the so-called Metaverse.

So what is the metaverse? The funny thing is, if you look at Facebook (oops, the company now known as Meta), it looks suspiciously like SecondLife – only better with better graphics!

But for a world that has become numb from the incessant virtual life of the pandemic and is crying out for real human interaction, do we really want to subject ourselves to some sort of weird, cartoonish, virtual life?

Not really.

Does that mean we should discount the ‘metaverse’ trend?

Not at all.

A great first step would be to get some clarity on what is really going on.

From my perspective, think about the ‘metaverse’ this way – we are on the edge of an era in which a vast number of trends are coming together all at once that will provide for a new, complex, and very different future. As these technologies mature, they will reshape existing business models, streamline business practices, and lead to the birth of all kinds of new industries and opportunities. Broadly used to describe a collection of continually emerging technologies and concepts – generally, virtual and augmented reality, non-fungible tokens, Web 3.0, blockchain, and cryptocurrency, decentralized applications – the phrase has business executives excited, confused, apprehensive, wary, and strategizing, all at the same time.

As I often say on stage, we find ourselves at a moment in time where no one is quite sure where we are going, but we’re certainly making a great time.

The challenge is figuring out what to do. With that in mind, let me give you another guiding phrase: “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the future. It takes an idiot to deny it.”

Hype, fiction, reality?

One thing is for certain – the ‘metaverse’ is a minefield for hype.

We’ve been here before, and from that perspective, history provides us with a path for going forward. There are enormously important trends at work, but determining what to do with which any part of the trend at any particular moment in time is critical. Jump in too soon, and you’ll waste a lot of effort and money. Get involved too late, and you’ll become an also-ran. Focus on the wrong aspect of a series of extremely complex series of trends and technologies, and you can end up going in the wrong direction.

In that context, when it comes to the metaverse, clarity is critical, while confusion is rampant! And history helps us understand that we’ve been here before, so let’s start looking into the future by looking back into our past.

As the saying goes, “I’m old enough to remember” when the phrase “Information Superhighway” was tossed about with abandon in the early 1990s. Nobody really seemed to know what it was but were very busy making grand pronouncements as to what they were going to go do with it! Meanwhile, I was busy pointing out that the Internet was going to take a significant role in the global economy, and we had better pay attention to it.

Something big was happening, but while clarity was critical, confusion was rampant.

Fast forward – by the end of the 90s, we had the explosive growth of the so-called dot.com companies with the era of Internet startup hysteria. I had a lot of fun around the time on stage and in media interviews that for many of these companies, the business model seemed to consist of selling stuff at a loss and making it up in volume. At the same time, my co-author and I were busy writing our book, Selling Online: How to Become a Succesful E-Commerce Merchant, which spent a fair bit of time pointing out that over time, e-commerce would become a significant business value proposition. Fast forward to our pandemic times, and online shopping has taken on a seismic role in our economy.

Something big was happening, but while clarity was critical, confusion was rampant.

Then, in the mid-2000s, SecondLife and virtual reality and social media, and other trends exploded into our world, and we saw similar levels of hype and hysteria. Some of these trends were significant and far-reaching; others were not. Twitter has forever changed our world; SecondLife was but a blip of hype.

Clarity, confusion!

Get my drift? What’s my point? It’s this – the future that is inevitable is always accompanied by breathless hype and extreme predictions. Separating reality from fact becomes an art form, and from a strategic perspective, critical. And that’s where we find ourselves today: certainly, there is hysteria and hype:

It’s Time to Focus on the Metaverse: Virtual worlds will be the most transformative technology in the next decade. Prepare your strategy now. 1 March 2022, CRM Magazine

and

The Metaverse is a $1T opportunity after users increase 10x: 25 November 2021 The Cointelegraph

Hype? It’s so big that entire nations need to have a strategy for it. They’re not sure why, but they doo need to have a strategy!

Erdogan demands a comprehensive study of the Metaverse,IntelIiNews, 27 January 2022

Clarity? How about this: even a perusal of the headlines can provide a pathway to a minefield of confusing expectations and vague understanding of what’s happening:

Social Media Study Finds Only 18% Of Brands Understand What The Metaverse Means27 January 2022, MediaPost.com

Of course, clarity and confusion should not deter the stock market and investors from exploiting opportunities! Consider these two contrasting headlines which appeared back to back within a few days last September:

Could the “metaverse” be the next big investment theme?, 2 September 2021, MoneyWeek

followed shortly by

‘Metaverse’ stocks tumble on media report, 10 September 2021, Shanghai Daily

One week up, and one week down!

The thing is, we’ve been here before, and many of the same mistakes are being made. So let’s deconstruct the reality!

“78% of those who are aware of the metaverse feel it is simply marketing hype — with 30% saying it is definitely hype and 48% saying it probably is.”  Younger Consumers Have Little Faith In The Metaverse, Study Finds – 7 March 2022, MediaPost.com

Confused? Clarity? Yup!

A Path Forward

And so here we find ourselves again, in that bizarre situation.

 ‘No one knows where we are going but we are making great time.”

So it is with the metaverse

Separating hype from reality is the challenge for any business executive today. That’s why any time I am providing guidance to my clients on the reality of future trends, I try to provide a pathway for interpreting our future, a pathway for action, a runway for strategic thinking. This has worked quite well – with clients such as NASA, Disney, Pfizer, I’ve spent a lot of time interpreting the future for senior executives.

Here’s what iti will often tell them.

  • behind every trend is a potential reality
  • when it comes to the future for business there’s always a difference between the reality that is presented and the reality that results.
  • interpreting any trend often requires cutting through the Silicon Valley hype machine to determine what is real and what is not
  • that includes an honest assessment of the timing of when any particular trend will mature
  • not only that, but it is critical to parse any broad trend into the many of the different sub-trends that are a part of the overall trend
  • and it is important to do that in the context of an ever-increasing acceleration gap – our future is becoming faster, and so we must be prepared to do all these things at an increasing velocity
  • any trend must be examined in the cold, harsh reality of the real strategic opportunity it might present

This too is the case with the meta-verse. It’s real, but it’s not. It’s important, but many parts of it are not. It is critical, but the timing is uncertain. There’s hype, and there’s reality.

So what do you do? Begin to take it apart: here’s an extremely simple (and small!) take on this incredibly complex topic.

  • what we have happening from one perspective is a number of companies building their version of a ‘metaverse’ that seems to involve some type of more sophisticated virtual reality world – Facebook’s Meta comes to mind. Virtual reality headsets, online virtual events, collaborative meetings in a virtual space, stuff like that. I’m not terribly excited about that, and neither should you be.
  • On the other hand, there is no doubt that we are seeing significant advances in virtual reality and augmented reality software, heads-up display technology, and the linkage of these emerging technologies to just-in-time knowledge. I’m tremendously excited, for example, about the potential use of smart glasses and heads-up display technologies to aid in surgical procedures and manufacturing activities, and we are seeing many such real activities today
  • cryptocurrency? It’s a minefield of hype with little immediate return other than for aggressive investment opportunities (with massive downside risk) and massive potential for fraud and scams – it’s like the dot.com years all over again, and much of it is not going to end up well.
  • on the other hand, blockchain technologies and concepts behind crypto have enormous future business implications, such as smart contracts that will become the backbone for many supply chain activities, extended warranty and repair services for product management, and new forms of digital business interaction between organizations that is secure and reliable.
  • non-fungible token artworks – NFTS – are a current investment craze are an amusing distraction and ripe for investment scams, but aren’t requite for real
  • but I’m VERY excited about the potential for NFT tech to provide new business models for digital rights ownership and management as we continue to transition to a fully digital world

That’s how I deconstruct the future. This is but a short list – but its a start to get your thinking firing!

I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but that’s why I’ve decided that in my role as a futurist I will spend less time explaining what meta is, and more time helping people to interpret the many different things that it seems to be, settling on the keynote description below.

This is what I’ve been doing throughout my almost 30 years carer and a keynote speaker, and I think this type of guidance is more important now than ever before.

KEYNOTE:

Deciphering The Disruption: Deconstructing the Metaverse, Blockchain & Crypto, NFTs, Web 3 and More – A Reality Check for Humans!

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

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