The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies has released an interesting Whitepaper on the concept of the metaverse
The paper explores four plausible future scenarios of the immersive (i.e., virtual reality-based) metaverse
According to the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, the metaverse is the perfect convergence of our physical and digital lives, a convergence produced by a set of interoperable virtual spaces in which we will be able to work, play, learn, relax, socialize, communicate, interact, carry out transactions and own digital resources.
These spaces will create a sense of belonging, bringing together people, spaces and things in virtual or augmented digital worlds.
The development of the metaverse will depend on a set of technologies fully developed, scaled and adopted by the mass market. Critical technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), Web3 and the Internet of Things (IoT) that will enable a smoother convergence between physical and virtual reality.
The Metavese scenarios according to the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies
The whitepaper depitcs four different scenarios, as follows:
The Free Metaverse
in this scenario the metaverse is seen as an evolution (and progressive replacement) of the World Wide Web, a new way of accessing applications, contents and services, decentralized and interoperable, capable of merging the physical world with a shared virtual universe using various XR technologies.
The Nerdverse
In this scenario, stakeholders work on an evolution of the World Wide Web, but the initial interest tends to wane once the curiosity of the first period has passed. In this case the metaverse doesn’t offer anything that most users feel they really need, the technologies around the metaverse haven’t really proven their worth, and the big brands that initially invested heavily to get into the metaverse haven’t actually succeeded to integrate the new Web3 logics in their own solutions, thus failing to take advantage of the new technologies or to understand the new needs of the consumers.
Betaverses disunited
riding the buzzword of the moment a dozen big Big Tech companies come forward each with their own product that they say is the Metaverse. All they have in common is the use of virtual 3D meta-spaces that can be accessed with XR technology as well as more conventional interfaces.
One metaverse to rule them all
as in the previous scenario, many Big Tech companies rush to build their own versions of the metaverse, however one of them quickly becomes much more popular than the others, both for better functionality and for better conditions reserved for content creators and for best marketing ability, or just being a successful first mover. This popularity becomes self-reinforcing as the resulting increase in revenue streams allows for the continuous improvement and extension of their metaverse’s functionality and user experience to a level that competitors cannot match.
The concept of the metaverse as an ecosystem, based on exponential technologies, capable of allowing us to mix physical life with virtual life, with different ways of accessing applications, contents and services, is increasingly gaining ground.
Governments Will Probably Want 3 & 4
What is really interesting here is that the last two scenarios, which are more or less a copy of existing situation, when it comes to search and social, are probably what most authorities will want. Especially democratic ones.
According to another study from Dataethics, government will probably be more inclined to foster scenarios n.3 and n.4.
As the white paper describes on the latter scenario: “The open-source community has fallen on hard times because authorities demand governance and certification that the decentralised open-source organisations find it difficult to live up to, such as checking all content against copyright and trademark violations and policing forums against hate speech and fake news. Most successful open-source systems have been de-facto acquired by commercial interests that can afford to handle the complex and extensive regulations.”
The whitepaper
You can download the whitepaper from CIFS here > https://cifs.dk/metaverse/ . More information on the Dataethics analysis are available here > https://dataethics.eu/the-free-the-nerd-the-disunited-or-just-one-king-of-the-metaverse/
fonte: CIFS I Kenneth Mikkelsen I Data Ethics
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