prologue and reflections

After my last 2 postings on Kabul and Pyongyang (in the broadest sense also a kind of metaverse ) I would like to come back to my personal metaverse today and in the following postings to come. In a first post on this topic metaverse, I presented initial attempts to devote myself to the subject artistically and said that I would still think about making a series out of it.
Now I made up my mind and started to work. I’m very happy about it, because this topic offers a wonderful platform to reflect and play with topics that affect our universe/metaverse – especially mine. Sure you remeber my first steps:

Status quo

With the term metaverse we encounter a phenomenon that is largely new in terms of its development and influence on our lives. I would therefore like to share some considerations, although I am aware that they are not always mainstream.
In any case, it seems important for us to know what we are talking about – or at least partly.

Regarding the phenomenon: as far as I can tell, there are currently these groups of users, hierarchically ordered from bottom to top:
– I never heard of it (small group)
– I know the term, but only roughly know what it means exactly (larger group)
– I’ve already informed myself in more detail
….- nonsense, this is not for me
….- I’m excited, it will be a great thing
– I’ve already started to prepare myself to be able to get involved from the start
– I have already invested in land, infrastructure, NFT… I will be a player from the very beginning
– I came up with the idea and thus I will become very, very rich. (M.Z.)

I just want to talk about the commercial part today. Why the commercial? Because IT IS a commercial project. Since many billions have already flowed into this project, it has already developed a life of its own to some extent. With all its excesses, as e.g. an article in the New York Times shows: “What to wear in the metaverse“.

historical aspect: Klondike – internet – metaverse

What is different today?
When the gold rush began, there was no telling who would get rich and who would die. But you could make a good profit by selling shovels, buckets and sieves – later then whiskey and girls.
The early days were chaotic, a certain normality only began when each of the gold diggers had to stake their claim and the territorial question was basically solved.
In the early years of the Internet, it behaved in a similar way, see “provider“. Many companies, such as microsoft, missed the train and regretted it bitterly for a long time.
My age group still remembers geocities, where you had a “property, a claim” in a similar way. And then came Facebook. Everyone, absolutely everyone, now could have a “claim”. Some use it to earn money, some to exchange photos of grandchildren, but basically it’s the same.

At some point the “man with the shovels and sieves” realized that he had fundamentally overslept a development and that the FB project would be doomed. Hardly any more money to be made with it. A new product had to be created, the choice fell on their own cryptocurrency. (First under the name Libra, then restarted under the name Diem). It would have been an incredibly lucrative business, but as we know, it had to be scrapped. What now?
Below are the charts of the facebook share and the APE coins. (You probably know the hype about the “bored monkey NFT“. The ape coin is closely related to it).

The best thing would be a project that combines all the earning potential of the previous models in one: social media platform, second life project, cryptocurrency, big-data trade, influencer role, financial recording of all activities, but really all of them…
So a kind of – hm, yes, which term fits best? Why not?: Think big!: metaverse!!
From a commercial point of view, this is quite a remarkable move. But now comes the genius: At a time when the concept is still so vague that it can be summed up on the back of a metro ticket, a hype is generated. On a scale that some of us are already familiar with: from multinational corporations to small boutiques, everyone is trying (especially because they missed the internet launch back then) to secure a claim. Hundreds of millions for certain locations, for commercial space in future shopping centers…and that’s only the beginning. The same goes for NFT & Co.
Above a certain investment sum, something will simply have to come of it. But what exactly, in my opinion, nobody really knows by now. But it’s going to be something big.

outlook

As I said, I just wanted to touch on a few thoughts on the commercial aspect today. What the project will do to our society, how we as humans (especially our children) will change as a result, is pure speculation. But if we recall how strongly the predecessor model FB was able to even shape the voting behavior of an entire nation, the amount of big data that is then available in the metaverse opens up possibilities that do justice to a metaverse.

Since NFT already play a big role in the world of the coming metaverse, I created my first NFT for “my metaverse”. If that one is about “bored monkey”, mine is about “bored monk” (Largely abstract, the head of the monk is in top of the painting).

From my next posting I will present my personal “metaverse” in the next few weeks. At worst, you can see it as a kind of panopticon, with views from different parts of the metaverse à la Friedrich. So stay tuned

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