Technofeudalists and cryptoliberals are struggling over the substance of the metaverse
The metaverse is the next iteration of the internet. On top of still functioning internet protocols, the metaverse is the whole set of online, connected experiences available to internet users that emerges from the convergence of digital media technologies and internet protocols. We call it the metaverse because the collection of online, connected experiences, virtual/augmented realities, gaming, and communities is too diverse to be contained with a single digital universe. So the metaverse is, by definition, a collection of all the discrete experiences, realities, and communities accessible to people using the internet.
Before Facebook’s big announcement, some people had been talking about the metaverse for over a decade. The announcement set of a flurry of activity. Much of it was people hearing about the metaverse for the first time. But a subset of the activity in response to Facebook’s pivot to Meta was concern from those already aware of and working on/in the metaverse because Facebooks’s pivot signaled an intention by dominant tech companies to try and lay claim to the metaverse.
To frame this slightly differently, the word metaverse is ambiguous because different people and companies mean different things when they say metaverse. Importantly, visions for the metaverse are influenced by the interests of the companies and attempts to define the metaverse demonstrate divergences in the interests of companies competing to build it.
Big tech companies like Facebook essentially want to host the metaverse on servers they own so they can develop and monetize it as they see fit. Like their social media platforms, Facebook seeks to own and control all things that happen on their platform. They propose, as they do on social media, reducing those living, playing, and creating in the metaverse to serfs living in Meta’s virtual fiefdom. I am not exaggerating: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, and other dominant tech companies from Silicon Valley desire a technofeudalist metaverse in which most users have no clear property rights, voting rights, or developer rights. I suggest we refer to this vision as a technofeudalist vision for the future.
Don’t take my word on it. Take a look at the patents filled by Facebook to accompany their transition to Meta and its trademark. The patents make clear that Facebook has sovereign ambitions.
But before Facebook was stealing all the credit, a different vision for the metaverse saw it as the establishment of a digital registry for creating and tracking digital assets in cyberspace. This digital registry, aka a ledger, is more popularly known as a blockchain. The goal of this system is to build a reliable foundation for individual to own digital assets. I propose referring to this vision for metaverse as cryptoliberal. The cryptoliberals are in direct struggle with the technofeudalists over the future substance of the metaverse. They see clearly the threat Facebook poses to basic civil rights including individual property rights as we are on the cusp of a world engulfed by the metaverse.
There is no metaverse yet. But as it emerges and takes shape, at least in North America, the two most powerful influences over that shape do not agree over its future and the proposals the two sides are making are mutually exclusive.
