How to Stop the Metaverse from Becoming the Internet's Bad Sequel | Micaela Mantegna | TED

I hope you like memes,

or the next few minutes will get very awkward.

(Laughter)

Memes are our internet's lingua franca.

So as a video game scholar, but also a geek,

I will borrow them to talk about something you might probably have heard about.

The metaverse.

Dam-dam-dam-dam.

(Laughter)

I'm sorry, I don't have the license for that sound.

I know, I know.

Sci-fi fans will be leaving comments on this video:

“The metaverse is not a new idea.”

In fact, as a TED premiere,

I want to showcase my research on 30 years of the metaverse,

from its inception

to its current trajectory.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

That's right, the metaverse is already on fire,

and we even have not built it yet.

That's efficiency.

How can this happen?

Think of the metaverse as a Frankenstein

made of different parts of current internet

and digital technologies.

Now with 3D visuals and touch.

Between our physical reality and virtual reality,

there are different layers of mixed and augmented reality,

where physical and digital objects blend.

The metaverse will be somewhere across this spectrum

that I call "the reality gradient."

But we shouldn't let the 3D smoke and mirrors

distract us from the fact that the metaverse is the internet,

and as such,

it will inherit the worst traits of its current business models.

With premium access to our bodies,

VR headsets and sensors can extract

huge amounts of involuntary data

that we can't control, like heartbeats or blinks.

This will get even worse with neurotechnology,

allowing to read and modify our brains

creating a capitalism of cognitive surveillance.

We certainly don’t want the metaverse to become the bad sequel to the internet.

So how do we fix it even before we build it?

By avoiding repeating past internet mistakes.

Understanding why we're building it,

who can seize control of it

and what makes it different.

Huge questions and little time.

So let's focus on one key ingredient for metaverse success:

connection.

As a scholar,

connection means that the metaverse needs an architecture

linking all the metaverses together

in a way that we can travel across them.

Seems easy because jumping websites is already an internet feature.

But that is because we don't carry our digital belongings with us.

You can't take your Instagram likes to TikTok

or your Roblox avatar to Fortnite.

To achieve that, we need content portability,

which is a very difficult engineering task,

one that requires an object to function

and look consistently across different software environments.

But guess what?

It's also a lawyering problem

because you need a complex structure of contracts

to legally copy a digital object.

Just between ourselves,

let me tell you a little intellectual property secret.

Our digital goods are treated differently from their tangible counterparts.

Instead of ownership, we have a license to use them,

craftily limited by terms of service.

In the physical world,

something called “copyright exhaustion” allows us to resell our goods.

But courts don't agree if that applies to digital content.

And without this digital exhaustion rule,

exiting one metaverse will be like going through very strict customs,

one that will confiscate all your possessions

if you want to get through.

So connection in the metaverse means interoperability.

A coherent system of legal and technical standards

for true decentralization.

NFTs and blockchain can provide the technical tools,

but they will never work without the legal counterpart.

As an activist,

connection means that the metaverse is the people.

The communities that will breathe life and populate these worlds.

Without humanity, the metaverse will be just a 3D ghost town.

But not everyone will be there

because we are not born equal into the metaverse.

We are promised boundless worlds,

but in fact, we will be as free as we can afford to pay.

We need to find ways to create an inclusive metaverse,

one that keeps the best things of humanity online:

kindness, creativity, cat memes.

This is not wishful thinking.

Kindness is a power house.

There are initiatives like Leyline

creating a blockchain proof of good deeds

or charity marathons like Games Done Quick.

A game about sending anonymous letter to strangers

might seem like a recipe for disaster,

but against all odds,

over one million letters full of kindness were shared.

People want to do good.

And now we have the technical means to escalate it to unprecedented levels.

The metaverse may still be a work in progress,

but that means we still have room and a chance to influence

what it will become... open, accessible and inclusive.

It's not every day that humanity has the chance to create a new reality.

So my invitation to you: let's make it a good one.

Thank you, read you in the comments.

(Applause)