Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? Back in October twenty twenty one, we
Speaker 1: Hear It tech Stuff published an episode titled what is
Speaker 1: the Metaverse? So this was back when the metaverse concept
Speaker 1: was really just starting to gain a lot of steam,
Speaker 1: and it was propelled largely by the company Facebook, which
Speaker 1: would actually rename itself Meta before the end of October.
Speaker 1: There was enormous excitement around this idea, at least on
Speaker 1: a corporate and marketing kind of level. I don't personally
Speaker 1: know many people who were or are that excited by
Speaker 1: the concept personally. I just know that from a corporate perspective,
Speaker 1: there was a ton of momentum. Now, part of that
Speaker 1: reason for, you know, like the lack of interest among
Speaker 1: the general public, could be due to my own myopia,
Speaker 1: Like maybe I just don't know the right people. I'm
Speaker 1: also old, so it's possible that very young people think
Speaker 1: it's a really cool idea. I haven't heard that, but
Speaker 1: why would they talk to me? But also it may
Speaker 1: be that there's a lack of excitement around the metaverse,
Speaker 1: partly because we have been really bad at defining what
Speaker 1: the metaverse is. Now we should get some slack for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing doesn't really exist yet, at least
Speaker 1: not in the science fiction any kind of way that
Speaker 1: we see pitches presented to us as. But no, seriously,
Speaker 1: what is the metaverse? Or heck, maybe we need to
Speaker 1: phrase it as what is a metaverse? The answer to
Speaker 1: that question kind of depends upon whom you're asking. Some
Speaker 1: definitions are deeply and perhaps tragically tied to blockchain technology
Speaker 1: and cryptocurrencies and the much maligned NFTs. That's done a
Speaker 1: lot of damage to perceptions about the metaverse overall, because
Speaker 1: the NFT in particular took such a spectacular nose diive
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Some versions of the metaverse
Speaker 1: lean heavily on mixed reality, incorporating either virtual or augmented
Speaker 1: reality or some mixture of the two to describe a
Speaker 1: new way in which we interact with the digital and
Speaker 1: physical worlds, and the two are much more closely aligned,
Speaker 1: so that the things we do in the digital world
Speaker 1: can have repercussions in the physical world, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Some versions eschew the whole mixed reality concept entirely and
Speaker 1: just focus on a persistent online world that continues to
Speaker 1: exist whether you're logged into it or not. Arguably, you've
Speaker 1: got plenty of examples of that, and it's just like
Speaker 1: the real world. You know, even if you spend your
Speaker 1: days cooped up in your own home and you never
Speaker 1: the house, the world keeps moving on. That one hits
Speaker 1: a little close to home for me. Another concept that's
Speaker 1: frequently connected to but not necessarily required for the metaverse
Speaker 1: is one of interoperability. That is, you can envision a
Speaker 1: series of online environments. Maybe they're run by different companies
Speaker 1: or organizations, but there's some level of compatibility between them,
Speaker 1: so that you can maintain a semblance of a common
Speaker 1: experience as you move across different platforms. This one gets
Speaker 1: really tricky. Uh, it's tricky to explain, it's even harder
Speaker 1: to accomplish. So to explain it, let's in first, you know,
Speaker 1: jump into the real world to understand how something is
Speaker 1: pretty simple in the real world but very difficult to
Speaker 1: pull off in a virtual or digital space. All Right,
Speaker 1: So you're in the real world. If you go into
Speaker 1: a real world shoost and you buy a pair of
Speaker 1: real shoes, and then you decide you're gonna wear them
Speaker 1: right then and there, you take the shoes out of
Speaker 1: the box, and you put them on your feet, and
Speaker 1: you stroll right out of the store. Those shoes will
Speaker 1: maintain their appearance, they will maintain their utility, and they
Speaker 1: will do that no matter where you go, no matter
Speaker 1: what other store you walk into, your shoes will remain shoes,
Speaker 1: and they will still look the way they did when
Speaker 1: you bought them. It's not like the shoes will suddenly
Speaker 1: look different as you walk into a different shoe store
Speaker 1: or a home good store or any other kind of
Speaker 1: store you can think of. They're not gonna spontaneously become
Speaker 1: gloves or just a picture of shoes. They will be
Speaker 1: on your feet, they will be shoes. They'll look the same.
Speaker 1: They are consistent, and they only change as they experience
Speaker 1: wear and tear in that kind of thing. But that's
Speaker 1: because reality isn't divided up into siloed experiences. All of
Speaker 1: these spaces we're talking about, they all exist within the
Speaker 1: grander space that is real world. But that's not true
Speaker 1: of the digital world. Right. Let's take some games as
Speaker 1: a subset of the digital world. In order to talk
Speaker 1: about this, let's say that you play an online shooter
Speaker 1: like Call of Duty Modern Warfare, and in that game
Speaker 1: you can earn or purchase items for use within the game.
Speaker 1: You might be able to take those items on future
Speaker 1: play sessions within the game, they are linked to your
Speaker 1: player profile. But then let's say you wanted to play
Speaker 1: some other online shooter like Battlefield, And let's say that
Speaker 1: Battlefield has its own version of the very same weapons
Speaker 1: that you bought in Call of Duty. Even so, you
Speaker 1: can't just port over your stuff from Call of Duty
Speaker 1: to Battlefield. Battlefield has its own in game economy and
Speaker 1: its own method for accessing and earning or purchasing weapons. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you could pull the weapon from one game into another,
Speaker 1: the digital models for the weapons would be different. You know,
Speaker 1: the graphics engines are different from game to game, The
Speaker 1: gameplay elements would be different. The gun might handle differently
Speaker 1: in one game versus the other, or deal a different
Speaker 1: amount of damage in one versus the other. So the
Speaker 1: gun would not look or behave exactly the same way
Speaker 1: across these two game titles. And you know that makes sense.
Speaker 1: They weren't made by the same company or the same team.
Speaker 1: So unless every game is built from the exact same engine,
Speaker 1: with developers all agreeing upon a standardized approach to designing
Speaker 1: stuff like weapons, you're not going to have consistency from
Speaker 1: one digital realm to the next. Some versions of the
Speaker 1: metaverse include an element of interoperability that would necessitate a
Speaker 1: change in that approach, at least to an extent, because
Speaker 1: it's hard to sell users on the idea of getting
Speaker 1: them to go to a virtual realm and to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of real world money to kick yourself out
Speaker 1: in that virtual realm, only to find out that none
Speaker 1: of that stuff is portable over to the other virtual
Speaker 1: realms that you want to visit. Instead, you would have
Speaker 1: to start over from scratch. That's not an attractive way
Speaker 1: to sell the concept of the metaverse to the general public, right.
Speaker 1: But if you can create a framework that allows people
Speaker 1: to pick and choose what they want from various virtual
Speaker 1: environments and then use them across the entire spectrum of
Speaker 1: worlds within the metaverse, you might be onto something. But
Speaker 1: that's not easy to do. In fact, it's questionable about
Speaker 1: whether it will ever be possible to do. Not from
Speaker 1: a technical standpoint, I mean, technically you could get to happen,
Speaker 1: but from a cooperation standpoint, because you've got so many
Speaker 1: different companies in this space, getting them all to agree
Speaker 1: upon this would be very difficult. This is where some
Speaker 1: of that NFT stuff plays in. By the way, NFTs
Speaker 1: have often been positioned as a way to create the
Speaker 1: underlying foundation to allow the interoperability or the interchanging of
Speaker 1: assets from one virtual world to another, without actually proving
Speaker 1: that that could really be accomplished. And also there are
Speaker 1: all these other issues with NFTs. Right This idea of
Speaker 1: linking digital items to non fungible tokens to create a
Speaker 1: foundation for portable experiences regardless of who owns the virtual
Speaker 1: environment in question just hasn't really held up to much scrutiny.
Speaker 1: We are not anywhere close to being able to do that.
Speaker 1: And there was such a huge gold rush on NFTs
Speaker 1: on in the early days that it was so absurdly transparent,
Speaker 1: that it was a greedy, you know, like cash grab approach,
Speaker 1: both on the behalf of speculators and companies that just
Speaker 1: dove headfirst into NFTs. That the general public doesn't really
Speaker 1: have trust in NFTs anymore like any trust that was
Speaker 1: there who has pretty much been eroded away. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: one day folks will be more accepting of NFTs, despite
Speaker 1: their many drawbacks. But it's only going to happen if
Speaker 1: it's evident that the whole thing isn't just some sort
Speaker 1: of digital Ponzi scheme. Most definitions of the metaverse assume
Speaker 1: that it will span numerous virtual environments created by different
Speaker 1: companies and organizations and people, and that you could dip
Speaker 1: in and out of these worlds the same way you
Speaker 1: could visit different websites or use different apps. That the
Speaker 1: experience you have will be dependent in part on the
Speaker 1: equipment you have at your disposal and the folks who
Speaker 1: are creating the virtual world that you're visiting now. In
Speaker 1: that vision of the metaverse, it starts to sound a
Speaker 1: lot like a variation of the Internet itself. While several companies,
Speaker 1: primarily Meta, have pushed very hard to be the metaverse company,
Speaker 1: in its hypothesized form, the metaverse wouldn't be the domain
Speaker 1: of any one organization. You wouldn't say that Google is
Speaker 1: the Internet. Some days it might feel that way, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say it. You wouldn't say Meta is the
Speaker 1: metaverse or that the Metaverse belongs to Meta, but companies
Speaker 1: like Meta are trying to create the technologies that would
Speaker 1: presumably power the Metaverse, and that in itself is its
Speaker 1: own issue. I'll explain more, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. So I said before the break that Meta
Speaker 1: in particular, but other companies too, are pushing to create
Speaker 1: the building blocks of the Metaverse. There's a rush, or
Speaker 1: at least there was a rush. It's debatable about whether
Speaker 1: or not it's still happening, but there was a rush
Speaker 1: to define the standards that the Metaverse would be built
Speaker 1: upon for it to be this interoperable series of virtual worlds.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you can understand why this was the case.
Speaker 1: Because if you build the tool, they every no one
Speaker 1: has to use in order to be part of something
Speaker 1: that is big, or at least it's being talked about
Speaker 1: as if it will be big. Well, that means everybody
Speaker 1: has to come to you first, because you're the one
Speaker 1: who build the tool, and that means you can charge
Speaker 1: folks to use your tools. Licensing fees are a great
Speaker 1: way to generate revenue. You spend the resources to make
Speaker 1: the tool, then you sit back and rake in the
Speaker 1: cash as everyone pays you for the right of using
Speaker 1: that tool, and then they have to re up their
Speaker 1: subscription when it expires. It's more complicated than that, but
Speaker 1: that's the basic idea. That's where a lot of this
Speaker 1: rush in the metaverse was really focusing was how can
Speaker 1: we be the ones to build what everyone else is
Speaker 1: going to have to use if they want to be
Speaker 1: a player in this space. But it's also a very
Speaker 1: unlikely idea because again, it requires the cooperation of tons
Speaker 1: of companies that all want to be a major player
Speaker 1: in the metaverse. And while it's not impossible that we're
Speaker 1: going to see consolidation and convergence over time, the fact
Speaker 1: is any development in the metaverse space is pretty much
Speaker 1: independent of all the other efforts to innovate in the
Speaker 1: metaverse space. This could mean that a realization of the metaverse,
Speaker 1: if in fact that ever becomes a thing, could be
Speaker 1: pushed off several years, not because it's too hard on
Speaker 1: a technical basis, although it would be very challenging to
Speaker 1: get a full realization of some of the more out
Speaker 1: there visions in the metaverse. Technical limitations are one thing.
Speaker 1: It's really because everyone is trying to make their own
Speaker 1: flavor of the ding Dan durned thing, and those flavors
Speaker 1: aren't interchangeable or interoperable, and I lost my metaphor. But
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying, right like, if everyone's trying
Speaker 1: to be the one to define the thing, then you
Speaker 1: just end up with a bunch of different things, and
Speaker 1: that kind of ends up being antithetical to the concept
Speaker 1: of the metaverse, or at least one of the concepts.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you still have a lot of companies
Speaker 1: and platforms referring to stuff as a metaverse, not the metaverse,
Speaker 1: but a metaverse, and that itself is confusing. Really, it
Speaker 1: typically means the term is losing whatever little meaning it
Speaker 1: had to begin with. A company could reference that an
Speaker 1: event that's happening within a game like Fortnite as being
Speaker 1: a metaverse event, you know, or maybe on Roadblocks that
Speaker 1: that is a metaverse event, but that suggests that Fortnite
Speaker 1: and or Roadblocks are a metaverse when really they're just
Speaker 1: it's an online world and it is persistent, but it
Speaker 1: has its own real limitations. It doesn't extend far beyond
Speaker 1: its borders. Right, meta is working to push social interactions
Speaker 1: into a virtual world, and that's probably to do stuff
Speaker 1: like sell us lots of virtual items and costumes and
Speaker 1: outfits and that kind of thing, And that would be
Speaker 1: their version of a metaverse. But that's very different from
Speaker 1: what we're looking at things like roadblocks or Fortnite. Microsoft
Speaker 1: is pushing to create online virtual environments, but for business
Speaker 1: see business reasons. So Microsoft's version is more about like
Speaker 1: virtual conference rooms and virtual seminar spaces and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. The problem, as I see it, is that
Speaker 1: people are using the word metaverse to reference pretty much anything,
Speaker 1: which is the same way as saying the word metaverse
Speaker 1: means nothing. It's like that depressing saying that when everyone
Speaker 1: is special, no one is. I don't buy into that
Speaker 1: particular philosophy, by the way, but that's because I'm a
Speaker 1: gen X guy. We're deeply, hopelessly romantic. Also, we tend
Speaker 1: to overgeneralize. Back on track. While most of the media
Speaker 1: has focused on the metaverse from the consumer side, or
Speaker 1: how companies like Meta have poured and arguably lost billions
Speaker 1: of dollars in development for something that no one really
Speaker 1: seems all that jazzed for in the first place, there
Speaker 1: are other aspects to the metaverse. Microsoft focus on business
Speaker 1: solutions is an example, though again I'm not convinced that
Speaker 1: the average business wants to shell out the money necessary
Speaker 1: to equip all its staff with the stuff they need
Speaker 1: just so that they can attend a virtual all hands beating.
Speaker 1: There's also a concept called the industrial metaverse. Now this
Speaker 1: does get loosey goosey with the details, like any metaverse definition,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, this concept behind the industrial metaverse is
Speaker 1: to create digital virtual copies or twins of real world infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So think of stuff like public utilities, or power plants
Speaker 1: or huge manufacturing facilities. Imagine that. Imagine creating a perfect
Speaker 1: digital virtual copy of one of those, and it's tied
Speaker 1: to the real world version. Right, You've got sensors, you've
Speaker 1: got all these different systems that are creating readings based
Speaker 1: upon what's going on in the facility. Imagine using that
Speaker 1: data to feed into the virtual one, so that the
Speaker 1: virtual one is perfectly copying what's happening in the real world.
Speaker 1: So why would you do that. Well, with this kind
Speaker 1: of virtual construct, you could have experts from all around
Speaker 1: the world convene virtually in a space that's tied to
Speaker 1: a real place on the planet. So imagine that you
Speaker 1: are running a manufacturing facility, and one of your indicators
Speaker 1: is suggesting that there's a potential issue, something that might
Speaker 1: escalate into a serious problem unless you intervene. So you
Speaker 1: tap in by bringing in your top experts in your
Speaker 1: company who are really knowledgeable about these systems, but they
Speaker 1: happen to be in different parts of the world. So
Speaker 1: you all convene in this virtual representation of the actual
Speaker 1: physical space to talk over the problem and come up
Speaker 1: with a solution. That's the sort of use case that
Speaker 1: proponents of the industrial metaverse are suggesting. Companies like Siemens
Speaker 1: have created digital twins of exists sting facilities for just
Speaker 1: that purpose. Now, whether that becomes a practical practice across
Speaker 1: industries remains to be seen. Siemens has spent billions of
Speaker 1: dollars building out facilities, but whether that pays off by
Speaker 1: becoming the way of the future is undecided. Questions may
Speaker 1: arise about whether or not added components of a virtual
Speaker 1: recreation are even necessary, or maybe it just makes more
Speaker 1: sense to depend heavily on sensors connected to your facilities,
Speaker 1: and then those provide data that you could then read
Speaker 1: out in a normal computer display and then act upon
Speaker 1: in some other way, like getting on a phone call.
Speaker 1: A lot of companies that had been investing heavily into
Speaker 1: the metaverse have recently kind of pulled funding for those
Speaker 1: projects and switched resources to other areas, primarily AI. To
Speaker 1: the surprise of no one, AI has kind of taken
Speaker 1: the place of the metaverse as the darling DuJour of
Speaker 1: the tech space. So earlier this year, reports were that
Speaker 1: Microsoft had canceled its own industrial Metaverse division, and this
Speaker 1: was like within four months of them launching the project,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy. Disney shut down its own
Speaker 1: metaverse projects as part of a massive layoff in the company.
Speaker 1: Even Meta shut down a gaming platform called Krata that
Speaker 1: had metaverse connections, and they had just purchased that company
Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier. So yeah, things are not
Speaker 1: going super well. And one reason for this is because
Speaker 1: funding is fickle, and like I said, AI is kind
Speaker 1: of drinking the milkshake of the metaverse right now. All
Speaker 1: that funding is going towards stuff like AI, and even that,
Speaker 1: according to Gardner, anyway, is on the precipice of going
Speaker 1: over the peak of inflated expectations. So maybe that money
Speaker 1: will be going somewhere else pretty soon. On top of that,
Speaker 1: you still have proponents of the metaverse. You still have
Speaker 1: its cheerleaders and evangelists. A lot of those people are
Speaker 1: also tied very closely to the cryptocurrency world, which raises
Speaker 1: some questions as to the reliability of their expertise because
Speaker 1: a lot of the value of those crypto communities is
Speaker 1: tied to widespread adoption. One way to get widespread adoption
Speaker 1: is to convince a bunch of companies that the blockchain
Speaker 1: and related technologies are absolutely pivotal for a new process
Speaker 1: or a new product like the metaverse. And so I
Speaker 1: would take anyone who's really pushing a metaverse narrative with
Speaker 1: some skepticism. Doesn't mean that you know it's not going
Speaker 1: to become a thing. It doesn't mean that they're wrong.
Speaker 1: Just use critical thinking when you start seeing those kinds
Speaker 1: of stories or claims. So, yeah, that's an update on
Speaker 1: the state of the metaverse. I guess I could sum
Speaker 1: it up. And the too long, didn't read version has
Speaker 1: still not a thing and possibly never will be. I
Speaker 1: hope you're all well and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tex Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.