Jozwiak recently called the metaverse ‘a word I’ll never use’.

Now that’s not really fair. Sure, Jozwiak may not personally use that term, but it’s a very useful term.

Because I’ve seen the Metaverse. And it is beautiful.

What Is The Metaverse?

So we start, as always with a ChatGPT summary for people that don’t know what the Metaverse is yet. So according to ChatGPT:

The metaverse is a term used to describe a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual reality. It is a shared space that can be accessed by many people at the same time, and it can include virtual representations of the real world, as well as entirely fictional worlds. The metaverse is often imagined as a kind of virtual world that can be accessed through the internet, and it is often associated with the idea of virtual reality and augmented reality technology.

It’s been gaining a lot of attention lately. Companies are investing heavily in the metaverse, seeing it as the next big thing in technology and a way to engage with consumers in new and exciting ways.

Think Ready Player One but real. Now you may think this is a stupid idea. Like, it wouldn’t actually work in real life. But I’d argue the metaverse solves a very real problem.

The Problem

OK, think back to GPUs. We have GPUs that can run at 4K perfectly well.

Do we need more? Of course we need more! We’re not running a charity here. So we invent ray tracing. Now ray tracing you’d expect from Hollywood blockbusters because they’re competing with live action. In real time games? No one’s going to care. In fact it will cripple even modern systems. But here’s the thing: it’ll cripple last generation’s cards worse. See where I’m going with this?

Same with the headphone jack. Do we need to remove it? No. But will we remove it? Well, these overpriced wireless earbuds aren’t going to sell themselves you know.

So it’s clear that the way forward in this economy is to continue to remove more and more stuff. So we asked ourselves: how much stuff could we remove without people complaining too loudly? Simply put, all of it.

What Is The Metaverse?

The metaverse, simply put is a way to restart from scratch. Think of real life. You have a car, a house, and a computer to read this on. Well, what if we took that all away? I mean not literally, we can’t legally do that.

But what if we forced you to buy all that stuff again? How much is that? Well your home can easily cost $1000 a month. Maybe $5,000. Or you could own. And have you seen housing prices lately? They can easily go into the 8 figures. And that’s not even getting into your car or your computer.

Now I’m not [too] greedy. We’re obviously not going to force you to buy back everything for market rates. That would be insane. But what if we just sold you that stuff back for… maybe 1%. 1% of one million dollars is $10,000. $10,000 from every man, woman, and child… well…

And that’s only for your home. Maybe we can’t sell you things like a car or computer, but we can sell cosmetics. We can sell furniture for your home. We can sell emotes and other things. And we have seen time and time again in video games people will pay to look cool.

This money will all be flowing to us and we can get away with this because we own a monopoly. Out in the real world you have tons of different vendors all competing. In our world there’s just us so the prices we set you pay, no ifs ands or buts.

And Then There’s Data

In the real world tracking is inherently limited. There aren’t cameras watching you at every second and every day. There are laws.

But in the Metaverse? It’s uncharted territory. We can do whatever we want. We can watch every single action you take, we can eavesdrop on every single conversation, and then we can put it all in a probabilistic model.

And not only will this allow us to sell you more stuff more efficiently in the metaverse, but it can also be used to reduce churn and improve the user experience. We’ve never seen data collection at this scale. It truly has unlimited potential.

Conclusion

After reading this I hope you will agree that the metaverse is truly a game changing technology, definitely not deserving of most of its criticism. Although some of it is deserved. Because it is risky. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. There is no precedent.

But if we can pull this off, if we can be the first to market with a metaverse, then the reward is almost infinite.

https://andrewzuo.com/ive-seen-the-metaverse-and-it-is-beautiful-d1d7cf37c5d0