Jaime McMahon:
Hi folks, it's Jaime here from your LineZero team and I thought it would be interesting to have a continued conversation, around something called the Metaverse. And I think it's interesting in the sense that I've had a number of people ask questions about the Metaverse, both personal and professional, you know - what it means, impact to your work, impact to your day to day, etc. And one of the interesting overtones, if you will, some of those conversations, is almost a sense of fear.
Should we be afraid of the Metaverse?
I thought this was really interesting because I think there's kind of two ways to answer that. I think I'll take a kind of the fear of the unknown and maybe we can have a quick chat around that at the start and then maybe shortly we can have less of an existential and more of a practical conversation like what might be some things that we need to keep our eyes open for in terms of the negative impact of of Metaverse at work.
But, from a fear of the unknown perspective, I think it's interesting in the sense that to me, the Metaverse is really just a new name that's been applied to something that's been around a very long time, arguably for decades. Obviously, most notably in gaming, in areas like valves, ecosystem, Minecraft, there's been plenty of examples of metaverse-like experiences. Although, mostly in a 2D format. And I think really the pivot or the shift that the metaverse is bringing is thinking through what those digital landscapes will be like from a 3D perspective, right?
What happens if you're immersed in it versus kind of just viewing a book, so to speak, what if you're part of the book?
When I think about that, I think that it's this whole notion of the Metaverse and the fact that really, it's been around for a very long time. But there's been some clever branding applied to this old theory brought up again. It's very similar to the rise of cloud from maybe 10 years ago. And I remember having to explain what the cloud was for a very long time and it was very confusing for many folks. It was technical. It was scary, but really, you know, similar to the Metaverse, the cloud had been around for decades, and it went through a similar rebranding exercise. And I think over time I'm not sure that people have really, truly understood what the cloud is. I think people have just come to accept that, you know what the cloud is generally, without truly understanding everything in the background.
For example, where does my stuff really go in the cloud? I know I throw it into the cloud or I put it into the cloud, but I don't know what that really means. I just understand that vernacular or the terms, and I think this is what's going to be, this is what it will be like for the Metaverse, right? For a while it will be scary in there.
There's going to be a lot of people posting numerous definitions and I know my colleague Greg has done that just recently and Mihae around what is the metaverse? Check them out below!
Related blogs:
What is the Corporate Metaverse & Why Business Leaders Should Care
Are You Already In The Corporate Metaverse? Learn How To Be In It!
So I won't kind of get into that, although if it's helpful and I might provide a view of my definition of the Metaverse. But as far as I know, it will be scary and unknown for a while. And I think we're going to be inundated, similar to the way we were with cloud with so much content that we're just going to become used to it. And then one day we're going to wake up and it's like, oh, okay, the Metaverse, I'm in the Metaverse. I know what the Metaverse is and it's no longer scary. It's kind of my new reality.
I might not understand all the details. I mean I understand all of the technical specifics of it, but from a day to day perspective, you know both personal and corporate, or personal and work, I get it, I get it enough to do what I'm trying to do.
Long story short, I don't think we should be afraid of the Metaverse. I think like all new technology, all new paradigm shifts like Web 2.0, Web 3.0, there’s lots of stuff around that I think that we need to tread cautiously. We need to understand what the impact will be to work with and what the impact will be to our personal lives. But I think like everything, it can be a tool for good and a tool for bad. And I think that it's our responsibility to try and emphasize the future positive implications of the Metaverse and really focusing our attention on leading to those outcomes versus to any kind of future negative outcomes that might be possible with the Metaverse. So to that end, my next video, I'll probably talk about some of the potential future negative outcomes of the metaverse and how we might avoid that.
Until then, if you do have any questions, let me know. I'd love a conversation about this. And thanks for reading.
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