Right now the term "Metaverse" means different things to different people. Objectively it is contested future vision, claimed by different stakeholders with very different perspectives and goals. See [[Metaverse Dissonance]]. The vision usually describes persistent, digital dimensions connected to many aspects of the physical world, including people, places, and things. The goal is to create shared immersive experiences across both the physical and digital worlds, connecting users to others around them, either through augmented physical things or through purely digital experiences. [MUD Wiki | Fandom](https://mud.fandom.com/wiki/MUD_Wiki)[](https://www.raphkoster.com/games/the-online-world-timeline/) [The Online World Timeline](https://www.raphkoster.com/games/the-online-world-timeline/) [Richard A. Bartle: Interactive Multi-User Computer Games (mud.co.uk)](https://mud.co.uk/richard/imucg.htm) Personally, I try to be as inclusive as possible, with the [[#Metaverse Roadmap]] being the best exploration I found. But I'm biased around actuated use cases. [[Metaverse Layers & Components]] assumes a number of technical and social layers that are required for the Metaverse. [[Metaverse Dimensions]] discusses a number of models & dimensions to discuss potential boundaries and [[Magic Circle]] approaches to map the Metaverse. These are a specific form of [[Digital Expectations]], that apply to Metaverse experiences. See [[Metaverse Expectations]]. ## Metaverse Multiplicity The term "Metaverse" refers to a set of technologies, a set of use cases it enables as well as a narrative. This is similar to "The Web" or "The Internet", which describe a set of technologies (for example the [Internet Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol) ), a set of expectations around capabilities ("I can buy dog food online") as well as a narrative ("The Cyberspace connects all humans!"). **Technical, codified: The Metaverse as a specification**: Technical reference materials, usually in the form of defined and standardized protocols or formats. These are targeted at solution builders. *Perspective: "How do we build the Metaverse?"* **Actuation, descriptive: The Metaverse as a trend**: Specific use cases, typically part of the digital transformation journey, targeted at the core business of an organization, influencing profit and profitability. *Perspective: "How do we use the Metaverse to improve our core business?"* **Inspiration, performative: The Metaverse as a hype**: Narratives that are typically part of PR or marketing efforts, targeted at the Beta of an organization to influences the brand, growth and risk. *Perspective: "How do we use the Metaverse to improve our image in the market?"* All have very different intentions, approaches, and usually stakeholders involved. It is also important to understand that all influence each other. Narratives for example drive the [[Future Vision]], which inspire investors, which influences the actuated solutions or the way the standards are written. Likewise demand for solution does the same thing. ## Metaverse as emergent phenomenon based on value within virtual spaces Based on a similar definition of [[Virtuality]] as Bartle, Raph Koster described the Metaverse as a threshold where virtual dimensions matter so much to the physical world that they become part of it: [Raph Koster and Jon Radoff talk about the Metaverse, Online Worlds, MMOs and virtual societies - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfyif5a3PyI) So based on this, the Metaverse is an emergent phenomenon where the "real" and "virtual" become inseparable. ## CIFS Definition The [Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies]([Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (cifs.dk)](https://cifs.dk/)) defines the Metaverse as: > *“The Metaverse overall is the seamless convergence of our physical and digital lives that will bring people, spaces, and things together in virtual or augmented digital worlds. This includes augmented visual layers added on top of our physical reality as well as virtual worlds.”* This is pretty close to my understanding. ## Metaverse Roadmap In 2006 a lot of smart people got invited to an exercise in the institute for the future to explore paths into a 3D Metaverse. Essentially they wanted to know what happens when virtual worlds meet real maps of the planet. What would happen when simulations get real, and life and business go virtual. See [[Metaverse Roadmap]]. ## The Seven Rules of the Metaverse by Tom Parisi Tony Parisi published his Metaverse manifesto on October 22nd titled [The Seven Rules for the Metaverse,](https://medium.com/meta-verses/the-seven-rules-of-the-metaverse-7d4e06fa864c), in which he attempts to define aspects, or rather guidelines and boundaries, to approach the concept of the Metaverse. The seven rules: 1) There is only one Metaverse 2) The Metaverse is for everyone 3) Nobody controls the Metaverse 4) The Metaverse is open 5) The Metaverse is hardware-independent 6) The Metaverse is a Network 7) The Metaverse is the Internet I think the manifesto is as much observation as it is stating desirable outcomes. It's bordering [[Futures Appropriation]] as it states that "*The Rules are already generally embraced by many in principle. They may not be embraced by all. It doesn’t matter, for they describe an inevitability,*" stating them as future facts. I also think that the rules ignore the connection between reality and virtuality. See my response: [Proposing an eighth rule of the Metaverse](https://medium.com/@dirksonguer/proposing-an-eighth-rule-of-the-metaverse-21cbb997531e). ## The Metaverse according to Matthew Ball Matthew Ball wrote a series of articles in 2020 that became highly influential: [The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It — MatthewBall.vc](https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse), which now have been turned into a [book](https://www.matthewball.vc/metaversebook). Matthew acknowledges the [[Metaverse Dissonance]] and instead tries to identify core attributes and properties, based on past and present [[Future Vision]]: 1. **Be persistent** – which is to say, it never “resets” or “pauses” or “ends”, it just continues indefinitely 2. **Be synchronous and live** – even though pre-scheduled and self-contained events will happen, just as they do in “real life”, the Metaverse will be a living experience that exists consistently for everyone and in real-time 3. **Be without any cap to concurrent users, while also providing each user with an individual sense of “presence”** – everyone can be a part of the Metaverse and participate in a specific event/place/activity together, at the same time and with individual agency 4. **Be a fully functioning economy** – individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, invest, sell, and be rewarded for an incredibly wide range of “work” that produces “value” that is recognized by others 5. **Be an experience that spans** both the digital and physical worlds, private and public networks/experiences, and open and closed platforms 6. **Offer unprecedented interoperability** of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on across each of these experiences – your _Counter-Strike_ gun skin, for example, could also be used to decorate a gun in _Fortnite_, or be gifted to a friend on/through Facebook. Similarly, a car designed for _Rocket League_ (or even for Porsche’s website) could be brought over to work in _Roblox._ Today, the digital world basically acts as though it were a mall where every store used its own currency, required proprietary ID cards, had proprietary units of measurement for things like shoes or calories, and different dress codes, etc. 7. Be populated by “content” and “experiences” **created and operated by an incredibly wide range of contributors**, some of whom are independent individuals, while others might be informally organized groups or commercially-focused enterprise I think these are mostly observations without much reflection. He spends a lot of time aggregating visions and ideas to extract commonalities, however the result is thus driven by the loudest visions, including [[Futures Hallucination]] created by investors, PR and marketing. This also includes a lot of visions driven by Crypto-Maxis to drive money into the crypto-space. See also [Web3 and the Metaverse don’t need Blockchains](https://medium.com/@dirksonguer/web3-and-the-metaverse-dont-need-blockchains-d72e030ba91e). In other words, the definition is based on performative and inspirational scenarios, not actually applicable ones. See [[#Metaverse Multiplicity]]. Some break [[Digital Expectations]], for example [[Digital Expectations#Digital Experiences are content-persistent, but time-reactionary]] - it's undesirable to act within a persistent, synchronous digital experience all the time. Interoperability is also undesirable, see [Interdimensionality and Interoperability in the Metaverse ](https://medium.com/@dirksonguer/interdimensionality-and-interoperability-in-the-metaverse-7e9ceb4c487a). The economy thing is also just stating the obvious. As a result these are mostly for marketers / people in the inspiration space, not so much for people working in the space. ## Summary **What it is**: A narrative construct describing the effect of multiple technologies merging with the physical world to augment it with many digital dimensions. **What it enables**: This offers an experience comparable to living in a hyper personalized world where every experience is catering to each individuals needs, feelings and dreams while connecting them to others around them, either through augmented physical things or through purely digital experiences. ## Articles & posts My talk at the [Enter The Metaverse](https://enterthemetaverse.io/) event: [Approaching the Metaverse for Businesses and Brands](https://prod-stitched-screen-recordings.s3-ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/recordings/273e2320-3714-11ec-8e38-d342c180d985/e4f843c2-c0bf-477f-abf4-925d57712d19/273e2320-3714-11ec-8e38-d342c180d985_52cd51d8.mp4) - The Metaverse supposedly is a massive business opportunity waiting to happen – but when will that be? And for whom? This talk explores different ways to approach the Metaverse, outlining the trajectory of different aspects and trends and why the Metaverse will not emerge evenly for all organizations and their customers. [2203.02662.pdf (arxiv.org)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.02662.pdf): Metaverse, as an evolving paradigm of the next generation Internet, aims to build a fully immersive, hyper spatiotemporal, and self-sustaining virtual shared space for humans to play, work, and socialize. Driven by recent advances in emerging technologies such as extended reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, metaverse is stepping from science fiction to an upcoming reality. However, severe privacy invasions and security breaches (inherited from underlying technologies or emerged in the new digital ecology) of metaverse can impede its wide deployment. At the same time, a series of fundamental challenges (e.g., scalability and interoperability) can arise in metaverse security provisioning owing to the intrinsic characteristics of metaverse, such as immersive realism, hyper spatiotemporality, sustainability, and heterogeneity. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the fundamentals, security, and privacy of metaverse. Specifically, we first investigate a novel distributed metaverse architecture and its key characteristics with ternary-world interactions. Then, we discuss the security and privacy threats, present the critical challenges of metaverse systems, and review the state-of-the-art countermeasures. Finally, we draw open research directions for building future metaverse systems. [What is Microsoft's Metaverse? - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw6UCwCt4bE) [Facebook Understands the Metaverse All Too Well - The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-name-change/620449/) ['The Metaverse Primer' — MatthewBall.vc](https://www.matthewball.vc/the-metaverse-primer) [Mark Zuckerberg is betting Facebook’s future on the metaverse - The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview)