I’m sure you are familiar with the amazing 7 rules of the metaverse. They have been written by Tony Parisi, a professional that works with virtual worlds since decades, and detail what should be the foundational principles of the metaverse. They represent the future vision of the metaverse, the goal we should aim for.
Tony has set the path to lead us to the real metaverse. But I’ve started questioning: we know about the future, but what are the laws of the metaverse we have now? I mean, what are the laws not of a wonderful future vision, but of the metaverse of 2022? My name is Tony exactly like Parisi, so I felt entitled to be the best person to write a post exactly about this.
When I understood I had this responsibility towards the community, I immediately started documenting myself with all the possible sources of metaverse news, so that I could condense all the knowledge into 7 laws. I spent so many days on Road To VR, Forbes, TechCrunch, PornHub, Polygon, the website of Matthew Ball, the Twitter of Tim Sweeney, the Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen video, and many other sources, until one day, after having eaten 1 kilo of Italian Parmigiana, I had a very weird dream in which Denny DeVito dressed as The Matrix’s Agent Smith revealed to me the 7 laws of the current-time metaverse.
The 7 laws of the present metaverse
#1. The fundamental law of the metaverse: No one knows what the metaverse is
The only true knowledge we have about the metaverse is that no one knows what the metaverse is. The funny thing is that everyone (me included) talks about it. We all pretend to know, but we have no idea.
Countless articles have been written about something the author doesn’t know and the readers do not know either. Many presentations at events have been made about the metaverse, where the speakers talked about this future technology while in their head there were just monkeys playing cymbals. Everyone reads the others hoping to understand better what the “metaverse” is, but actually the more you read, the more you get confused.
The metaverse is all and nothing. Mostly nothing.
Corollary #1.1. The “metaverse” has an unknown article
“A metaverse” or “The metaverse”? No one knows. But if you are for one of the two options, you must hate all the others that have the opposite idea. According to the most recent guidelines of the metaverse communities, if someone is using the word metaverse with an article you don’t like on social media, you have the duty of starting a flame in the comments about it.
The consequences of this harsh debate are visible in this recent report from the Department of Police of San Francisco about the murders happening in the Silicon Valley area:
In the meanwhile, outside our bubble, people don’t even know the difference between AR, VR, metaverse, and a potato peeler. But it’s good that we keep the point about the article. And by the way, everyone agrees that the potato peeler is the most useful of the 4 technologies described before.
Corollary #1.2. The metaverse has features not even the metaverse knows
Since no one knows what the metaverse is, you are authorized to say everything when you talk about it, especially when you want to make people dream about the future. So, you can talk about meeting people from around the world every time, everywhere. You can dream about the future of immersive education, when young kids at school will have immersive history classes where they can go see the battles of the Middle Ages in VR, so they can see people dismembering each other and be traumatized forever (but at least they will never forget what they have seen, and this proves that VR has great retention). You can talk about flying cars. You can talk about free healthcare. Giant robots with laser eyes going everywhere.
Everything is allowed. You can talk about the metaverse like a politician talks about what he will do in the next 5 years if he gets elected: say everything with confidence and a smile, knowing that nothing of what you are saying will become true.
At the end of the day, remember that the world is becoming a better place thanks to the metaverse.
Corollary #1.3. The metaverse is everything, everything is the metaverse
There is no definition of “metaverse”, nor of its features, or its article. So everything can be defined as metaverse. Forget all those boring names that identify everything with precision: if metaverse is the word of the moment, you have the duty to identify everything with it. Especially if it is your product: if someone asks you to sell a pen in 2022, you have to say that the pen is a metaverse.
Remember: everything is a dildo if you are brave enough and everything is metaverse if you believe in it enough.
As a good example of how you should perform your speeches about the metaverse, you can take inspiration from South Park, in particular that episode where the kids landed on the planet Marklar, where everything and everyone is called Marklar:
#2. Schrödinger’s law of the metaverse: the metaverse is at the same time dead and making trillions in 2030
When making predictions about the metaverse, all the market analysts and journalists rush to forecast the biggest market possible for 2030. And it is never millions, or billions, it is always TRILLIONS. The metaverse is the gold rush of the moment.
But at the same time, after the latest financial reports by Meta, all the same analysts and journalists have started writing articles about how Meta is over as a company and the whole metaverse is a fad, not worth pursuing. The metaverse is dead.
So we are now in a situation in which this black box that is the metaverse is a fad, is dead, but at the same time will make trillions in 2030. The moment we will open this black box, we will discover, I guess. Or maybe there inside we will find a cat, making us even more confused about what is the meaning.
#3. Vitillo’s law of technology: the metaverse is always coming in 5 to 10 years, every year
I have already unveiled you that 5 to 10 years is always the ideal time to forecast a future technology:
You have depicted this fantastic future and people will want it now, but it’s time that you tell them the truth: “It is coming in 5 to 10 years”. “5 to 10 years” is a common expression we use for things for which we don’t know the actual timing. It has been carefully crafted by scientists this way, because it is a time that is short enough that your readers feel it close enough, but distant enough that your readers would have forgotten your wrong prediction when it actually arrives. So, trust the science, and repeat “5 to 10 years” with me.
The metaverse is so coming in 5 to 10 years, like all the technology we want to happen. And remember: if you keep repeating “5 to 10 years” every year, one year you will finally be correct and will be reminded by everyone as someone that could predict the future in technology and be awarded the title of “futurist” or “wizard”.
Corollary #3.1: Apple is always coming next year, every year
To make sure that the metaverse comes in 5 to 10 years, Apple should release a product for it, so that to jumpstart its ecosystem, as it did with smartphones by launching the iPhone. For this reason, Apple is launching its AR/VR/XR headset next year, since 2015. To celebrate this upcoming launch, people usually like every rumor they find about it, even if it comes from the website electronicscams.com , and share it online by saying “Apple is going to disrupt the market”.
#4. Words about the metaverse are more profitable than the metaverse itself
When you decide to work in the metaverse field, you have two options. One requires that you study for many years, practice the arts of design, development, and management and try to build something meaningful. You will probably be poor for the next 10 years, but 30 years from now, you will be given some plastic-made award to remind you how you were good at what you are doing. Or you can put on your Linkedin that you are a “Metaverse Expert” and start selling books, offering courses, podcasts, and similar stuff about a topic you know nothing about, and starts making money.
If you can, take the second road, and go for the glory and the money. I know about some people that take dozens of thousands of dollars to have an hour of speech about the metaverse at an event. When I got to know it, I was kinda surprised… not even the strippers are paid that much… if I have to pay you thousands of dollars to speak for one hour, in that hour I don’t want a Powerpoint presentation about the metaverse… I expect you to tell me where is located the boss of the Italian mafia or how we can achieve cold fusion!
Don’t do, talk.
#5. The open metaverse is built of walled gardens
Everyone out there is speaking about how the metaverse should be open and interoperable. All the CEOs of the companies, starting from Zuck, spend so many words to tell this and make us dream of a connected future, where we all together work to make technology evolve, while angels play the lyra around us. And then, if you look at the products they are actually building, they usually are gardens that are not simply walled, but they are surrounded by barbed wire, a river full of crocodiles, and snipers that shoot at you if you even think about one of the other platforms. Most of the platforms out there does not even allow you to write the name of a competitor company in the experience you create on them.
This reasoning holds true for a lot of values that have been promised us about the metaverse: safety, privacy, sustainability, etc… It seems that this is the plan: we will arrive at the open and privacy-safe metaverse by building walled gardens full of ads. Or maybe not.
#6. ???
This law expresses the uncertainty of the metaverse, and the process that should lead us from the current situation to the wonderful vision of Tony Parisi. When someone asks you how the metaverse can go from a social VR application full of furries doing the pole dance to the world of Ready Player One, your answer should be this sixth law of the metaverse: by exactly “???”.
It was a successful strategy for the underpants gnomes, I wonder why shouldn’t be great for the metaverse, too.
#7. The Metaverse is the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg, or both.
For some people the metaverse is our future technology, the evolution of the internet, that will paint our world with data useful to us. For others, it is the sick dream of the reptilian Mark Zuckerberg, which wants to close us in VR the whole day, so he can show us his ads about the latest cream to treat hemorrhoids. For others, it is both: the evolution of the internet, which will be made of ads about hemorrhoids always in front of our eyes.
We will discover the truth in 5 to 10 years. As Charlie Fink says, “No one really knows how the next ten years are going to play out”, so we can only wait.
But for sure, if there are so many hemorrhoid ads, we will have to prepare our anuses…
The 7 laws of the present metaverse
Summarizing, these are the 7 laws, in an easy format you can copy-paste into your next Powerpoint presentation (mandatorily in Comic Sans):
- The fundamental law of the metaverse: No one knows what the metaverse is
- The “metaverse” has an unknown article
- The metaverse has features not even the metaverse knows
- The metaverse is everything, everything is the metaverse
- Schrödinger’s law of the metaverse: the metaverse is at the same time dead and making trillions in 2030
- Vitillo’s law of technology: the metaverse is always coming in 5 to 10 years, every year
- Apple is always coming next year, every year
- Words about the metaverse are more profitable than the metaverse itself
- The open metaverse is built of walled gardens
- ???
- The Metaverse is the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg, or both.
Quelle:
