Newsletter 3
The Metaverse and WEB3
Digital currencies are coming they will be an integral part of our gigital futures and what we call “web3” and the “metaverse”
If you don’t understand these two new concepts then I suggest you read more. In this newsletter I am going to give you a short explanation of what “web3” and “the metaverse” are. But before we begin I want to set you a little English assignment.
English Assignment:
CLICK HERE to write your answer
After reading the two short texts I would like you to write a short 100 word summary of each of the two concepts. In your summary I would like you to include one example of the following two grammar concepts.
- Simple present
- Simple past
- Simple future
- and if you can present perfect
When you have completed the assignment simply email it to me or send on my whatsapp and I will mark and send back to you.
If you need help with English grammar I have designed a Udemy course to help you. Just follow the link below.
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Email: steve.bradeley@hotmail.co.uk
“WEB3”
Web3 refers to the next version of the internet, which will focus on decentralization and user ownership. Find out how this future development may impact the internet and investing.
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What Is Web3?
Also known as Web 3.0, Web3 is the next major phase in the evolution of the internet. Much like the foundation of cryptocurrencies, and helped along by IoT ecosystems, the onset of the metaverse and the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) this new internet phase will be based upon decentralization, openness, and greater utilization for individual users.
To better understand Web3, it can be helpful to review current and past phases of the internet. Unlike the current Web 2.0 phase, where platforms and apps are owned by centralized entities, such as large tech companies, the Web 3.0 platforms and apps will be developed, owned, and maintained by users.
The coming Web3 iteration of the internet is expected to be more like the initial Web 1.0 phase than the current Web 2.0. Dating back to the 1990s, Web1 was the beginning of the World Wide Web. Like Web3 is expected to be, Web1 was defined by decentralized protocols and individual users.
Understanding Web3
Put simply, Web3 is a future, decentralized form of the internet, where users become owners. Rather than using free apps and platforms that collect user data, as in the current phase of Web2, users in the future Web3 phase will be able to participate in the creation, operation, and governance of the protocols themselves.
In Web3, ownership can be represented by digital tokens or cryptocurrencies, through decentralized networks known as blockchains. For example, if you hold enough digital tokens for a particular network, you could have a say over the operation or governance of the network. This is similar to the way stockholder voting rights allow shareholders of record in a company to vote on certain corporate actions.
Web2 vs. Web3
Here is a breakdown of Web2 vs. Web3:
- Web2: This is the phase we have been in since the early-2000s, when the emergence of large platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, as well as services like Uber and Venmo, brought a centralized, commercial order to the internet by making it easier to connect, browse, interact, and make transactions online. These large companies capture much of the monetary value created on the internet.
- Web3: This is the future of the internet, where we return to the individualized utility of Web 1.0, but this time it’s based on blockchain technology and digital tokens that can foster a decentralized internet. Rather than the large players of Web2 capturing the bulk of monetary value, Web3 replaces the centralized entities with decentralized networks that distribute the value to creators, users, and developers.
Bottom Line
Web3 is a future, decentralized phase of internet development, where users become owners. This contrasts from the current Web2, which is dominated by large, centralized players that capture most of the internet’s monetary value. While Web3 is still in its infancy stage, it is likely to impact the investment community and broader economy in the years ahead.
Metaverse
Seriously, What Does ‘Metaverse’ Mean?
To help you get a sense of how vague and complex a term “the metaverse” can be, here’s an exercise to try: Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won’t substantially change. That’s because the term doesn’t really refer to any one specific type of technology, but rather a broad shift in how we interact with technology. And it’s entirely possible that the term itself will eventually become just as antiquated, even as the specific technology it once described becomes commonplace.
Broadly speaking, the technologies that make up the metaverse can include virtual reality—characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you’re not playing—as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn’t require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. A virtual world, like aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones, could be metaversal.
It also translates to a digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. And, in the more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it’s interoperable, allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another.
In the real world, you can buy a shirt from the mall and then wear it to a movie theater. Right now, most platforms have virtual identities, avatars, and inventories that are tied to just one platform, but a metaverse might allow you to create a persona that you can take everywhere as easily as you can copy your profile picture from one social network to another.
It’s difficult to parse what all this means because when you hear descriptions like those above, an understandable response is, “Wait, doesn’t that exist already?” World of Warcraft, for example, is a persistent virtual world where players can buy and sell goods. Fortnite has virtual experiences like concerts. You can strap on an Oculus headset and be in your own personal vertual home Is that really what “the metaverse” means? Just some new kinds of video games?
Well, yes and no. Saying that Fortnite is “the metaverse” would be a bit like saying Google is “the internet.” Even if you could, theoretically, spend large chunks of time in Fortnite, socializing, buying things, learning, and playing games, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it encompasses the entire scope of the metaverse.
On the other hand, just as it would be accurate to say that Google builds parts of the internet—from physical data centers to security layers —it’s similarly accurate to say that Fortnite creator Epic Games is building parts of the metaverse. And it isn’t the only company doing so. Some of that work will be done by tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook—the latter of which recently rebranded to Meta to reflect this work, though we’re still not quite used to the name. Many other assorted companies—including Nvidia, Unity, Roblox, and even Snap—are all working on building the infrastructure that might become the metaverse.
It’s at this point that most discussions of what the metaverse entails start to stall. We have a vague sense of what things currently exist that we could kind of call the metaverse, and we know which companies are investing in the idea, but we still don’t know what it is. Facebook—sorry, Meta, still not getting it—thinks it will include fake houses you can invite all your friends to hang out in. Microsoft seems to think it could involve virtual meeting rooms to train new hires or chat with your remote coworkers.
The pitches for these visions of the future range from optimistic to outright fan fiction. At one point during … Meta’s … presentation on the metaverse, the company showed a scenario in which a young woman is sitting on her couch scrolling through Instagram when she sees a video a friend posted of a concert that’s happening halfway across the world.
The video then cuts to the concert, where the woman appears in an Avengers-style hologram. She’s able to make eye contact with her friend who is physically there, they’re both able to hear the concert, and they can see floating text hovering above the stage. This seems cool, but it’s not really advertising a real product, or even a possible future one. In fact, it brings us to the biggest problem with “the metaverse.”
Why Does the Metaverse Involve Holograms?
When the internet first arrived, it started with a series of technological innovations, like the ability to let computers talk to each other over great distances or the ability to hyperlink from one web page to another. These technical features were the building blocks that were then used to make the abstract structures we know the internet for: websites, apps, social networks, and everything else that relies on those core elements. And that’s to say nothing of the convergence of the interface innovations that aren’t strictly part of the internet but are still necessary to make it work, such as displays, keyboards, mice, and touchscreens.
With the metaverse, there are some new building blocks in place, like the ability to host hundreds of people in a single instance of a server (ideally future versions of a metaverse will be able to handle thousands or even millions of people at once), or motion-tracking tools that can distinguish where a person is looking or where their hands are. These new technologies can be very exciting and feel futuristic.
However, there are limitations that may be impossible to overcome. When tech companies like Microsoft or Fa—Meta show fictionalized videos of their visions of the future, they frequently tend to gloss over just how people will interact with the metaverse. VR headsets are still very clunky, and most people experience motion sickness or physical pain if they wear them for too long. Augmented reality glasses face a similar problem, on top of the not-insignificant issue of figuring out how people can wear them around in public without looking like huge dorks.
So, how do tech companies show off the idea of their technology without showing the reality of bulky headsets and dorky glasses? So far their primary solution seems to be to simply fabricate technology from whole cloth. The holographic woman from Meta’s presentation? I hate to shatter the illusion, but it’s simply not possible with even very advanced versions of existing technology.
Unlike motion-tracked digital avatars, which are kind of janky right now but could be better someday, there’s no janky version of making a three-dimensional picture appear in midair without tightly controlled circumstances. No matter what Iron Man tells you. Perhaps these are meant to be interpreted as images projected via glasses—both women in the demo video are wearing similar glasses, after all—but even that assumes a lot about the physical capabilities of compact glasses, which Snap can tell you isn’t a simple problem to solve.
This kind of glossing over reality is frequently present in video demos of how the metaverse could work. Another of Meta’s demos showed characters floating in space—is this person strapped to an immersive aerial rig or are they just sitting at a desk? A person represented by a hologram—does this person have a headset on, and if so how is their face being scanned? And at points, a person grabs virtual items but then holds those objects in what seems to be their physical hands.
This demo raises so many more questions than it answers.
On some level, this is fine. Microsoft, Meta, and every other company that shows wild demos like this are trying to give an artistic impression of what the future could be, not necessarily account for every technical question. It’s a time-honored tradition going back to AT&T’s demo of a voice-controlled foldable phone that could magically erase people from images and generate 3D models, all of which might’ve seemed similarly impossible at the time.
However, this kind of wishful-thinking-as-tech-demo leaves us in a place where it’s hard to pinpoint which aspects of the various visions of the metaverse will actually be real one day. If VR and AR headsets become comfortable and cheap enough for people to wear on a daily basis—a substantial “if”—then perhaps the idea of a virtual poker game where your friends are robots and holograms and floating in space could be somewhat close to reality. If not, well you could always play Tabletop Simulator on a Discord video call.
REFERENCES:
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/
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