When Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, the company, was changing its name to Meta, and that the aim was to better position the company to develop the Metaverse, critics were quick to pounce. This was bound to be a bad, bad thing. Writing in the New York Times Jill Lepore, an experienced tech-hater, proclaimed that “The metaverse is at once an illustration of and a distraction from a broader and more troubling turn in the history of capitalism.” Another writer warns that we must be on guard: “The Metaverse is Coming and the World is not Ready for it.” In its news coverage the Times solemnly declared that “As Meta and other companies bet big on an immersive digital world, questions about its harms are rising.” But we can all save ourselves a lot of time if we want to hear about dystopian technology and proceed immediately to The Atlantic, which titled an article “The Metaverse is Bad.”

These responses are understandable, if predictable, as a global consensus has emerged that Facebook is responsible for much that is bad about the world: every day over one billion people log onto Meta/Facebook’s services in protest. The company has contributed to everything from the rise of Donald Trump to breakneck neoliberalism, racism, sexism, autocracy, the collapse of civil order, and the insinuation of McDonald’s Happy Meals into the American diet. Meta/Facebook’s initiative must be stopped now. We were all such good people before Mark Zuckerberg entered our lives.

3d rendering of a face wearing vr goggles in the metaverse

Of course, for every action there is a reaction, and we see The Economist adopting a cooler tone: “Don’t Mock the Metaverse.” In a rare bylined article (Herman Narula) we read that “The metaverse will contain environments where we will earn real money, forge deep relationships and have experiences that enrich our lives. This will have a profound effect on how societies function and on how the world’s economies and democracies work.” And if you are mostly interested in making money and are willing to ignore the nasty stuff, the Metaverse could be big business as virtual worlds align with cryptocurrencies: “The Metaverse Could Bring in $1 Trillion Annually.”

The commentary about Meta/Facebook and the Metaverse reminded me of an anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, attributed to Henry Kissinger: When asked by Kissinger what he thought of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai replied, “It is too soon to tell.” We would do well to think of the Metaverse dispassionately and put aside our hatred for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. A more useful set of questions might be, What is the Metaverse? What are its properties and how is it likely to evolve? And not incidentally, how can the Metaverse be used in scholarly communications?

For my part, the most interesting news article to appear about the Metaverse appeared in the New York Times, but not on the Op-Ed page, with its thundering moralists. It was in the Fashion section, where we read about having a virtual wedding celebration. Want a destination wedding? Well, why restrict it to a Caribbean resort or Hawaii? You can go anywhere and do anything. Wedding planners are not spending time on the Big Questions of Good and Evil; they are trying to come up with new ideas for their clients. The Metaverse, in other words, is a tool, and the important thing about a new tool is to have a lot of people experiment with it to see where it can go. This is where innovation happens, not among the gods on Mount Olympus but in small, tangible ways where people go about their lives and try to improve them a little bit at a time. We all work together, unknowingly, making things better, faster, cheaper.

We would do well to think of the Metaverse dispassionately and put aside our hatred for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

Predicting where a new tool will take us is a fool’s errand, of course, but practitioners of scholarly communications may want to consider the Metaverse as a new medium, comparable in some respects to audio or video or the networked worlds of Twitter or Pinterest. When Twitter came along, the right question was, What can we do with it? Some people are dismissive about any medium for scholarly communications that is not as good as, or a substitute for, the formally published article. But the formal article is only one aspect of scholarly communications. Twitter, for example, is very good for discovery and certain kinds of discussion. Facebook–yes, Facebook–is very good for shared spaces. Every medium has its own properties, and the point is to explore them. I anticipate, for one example, that we will see a lot of experimentation with virtual worlds and scientific methodology. Why read a description of a method when you can, virtually, “be” there?

Yes, the bad guys will be asking these questions, too. But do you want them to take the lead in a new medium? Do you want theirs to become the dominant voices? The fact is, unfortunate though it may be, no management team has the luxury of not experimenting with a new technology, for the simple reason that someone else will. The question is not whether to experiment or not but what kind of experiment makes the most sense and is likely to lead to new directions for the business?

For people working in scholarly communications, the first set of questions about the Metaverse may be these:

  • What are the properties of the Metaverse? What does it do? What can it do?
  • What examples of the Metaverse can I find (an environmental scan)? Do any of these examples have implications for my own area?
  • Will there be multiple platforms for the Metaverse or will one come to dominate? Has Meta/Facebook already taken the lead, or will it face serious competition?
  • Is it likely or possible that a platform could emerge solely for academic activity, or will Metaverse platforms cross multiple areas of activity, as Google does?
  • How can the Metaverse be monetized (but don’t get stuck on this question too early)?

As the Metaverse becomes more established, if it becomes more established, the questions about its utility will permeate every department of every organization. It is easy to forget that it is not so long ago that we thought of a job as a place where we went. Now it is a set of digital identities and tasks, mediated by any number of virtual platforms (Zoom, Dropbox, Slack, etc.). We will be asking, How can the Metaverse improve the number and quality of submissions to our journals? How can the Metaverse help identify new vendors? How can the Metaverse assist in recruitment? And since this is a publishing enterprise, all hands will be focused on the most important question: Should we capitalize “Metaverse” or spell it lowercase?

 

Joseph Esposito

Joseph Esposito

Joe Esposito is a management consultant for the publishing and digital services industries. Joe focuses on organizational strategy and new business development. He is active in both the for-profit and not-for-profit areas.

Discussion

11 Thoughts on "Make Way for the Metaverse"

Many thanks, Joseph!
You’ve got a really good opinion on the subject matter, and… I believe it’s about time we capitalized “Metaverse”.

The third possible argument about the alleged Zhou quote, other than “meaningful” or “apocryphal”, is that due to a failure of translation, Zhou thought that Kissinger was talking not about the 1789 Revolution, but about the 1968 unrest in France, which was still quite recent at the time.

Forget the coined phrases and petty grudges against technologies and against those who put forward visions of the direction in which they would like to take the rest of us.

Think instead of imagined virtual worlds where there are new ways of immersing yourself in “content”! We want to be leaders, not followers!

Content is our business, after all, and we need to adopt new paradigms. It won’t be long before artwork NFTs (non-fungible tokens) will be bought, sold, and viewable in an immersive digital art gallery environment. Music will be streamed along with “real concert” immersive experiences. And yes, research libraries of digital content in the form of journals, data, 3-D reconstructions, e-books, and research methodologies, will be loaned, rented, bought, and sold via blockchain mechanisms of copyright (and other digital rights) management systems.

Buy yourself an Oculus at COSCTO… or whatever platform and retail outlet you choose, and start to understand what is being built. Our kids already understand it and are engaging with it — linking their interactive experiences through it; they are already figuring out the interconnectivity and social paradigm. Even I have been trying to spend about 30 min/day doing exercise in my virtual worlds, since Santa gave me a headset at Christmas.

Embrace the future!

When someone gets all excited about the Metaverse as the wave of the future, I ask them how this will succeed where Second Life failed. They give me a blank stare because they cannot remember the fantastic hype surrounding that immersive virtual reality environment that was all the rage a dozen years ago. Don’t forget 3DTV was a real technology even more recently (circa 2012), and it was predicted to revolutionize the TV world. Tech companies love a public with a short memory: they can sell the same stuff over and over.

I don’t know that anyone is predicting that the Metaverse is the wave of the future, but it represents a possible future. Why not jump on the horse and ride, see where it takes you? As for Second Life, the world is littered with failed and obsolete technologies (consider the horse). What of it? It takes time to get things right. Remember those crummy handheld music players before the iPod came along? Or those flip phones that preceded the iPhone? We could have stopped then, but we were wisely foolish and kept trying. The future is invented by crazy people.

One of the reference librarians I supervised created a Metaverse app for a library orientation over 2 years ago. She did not use post-Facebook software and I wonder why there has not been a conflict (at least a publicized conflict) over the name and idea.

I don’t see how the idea is patentable; it’s been floating in the environment for a long time. As for the name, it’s a matter of prior use. The name was original to Neil Stephenson, so no one else could trademark it. Your friend is in the clear! Or is your friend thinking of suing Meta???

My staff member did not create the Metaverse platform she used to create the app and did not name the Metaverse platform. I was wondering whether the developer of the Metaverse platform she used might see a conflict. I did not know about the history of the name, so thank you.

Mr.Jeoseph E. I am glad for you 😊 took time to show the possible likely outcomes embracing the rather new and uncharted paths the Metaverse or immersive digital engagement and experience will present… However we are yet only looking at the good sides, what about a balance report round 360 degree view…a diverse possible outcomes were the Metaverse is used wrongly or with errors as part of the packages. Then touching on the indifactible and possible outcomes prepare your readers for the best outcome and truths about these next wave of technology and how best to own an edge over their family and loved ones on the 1st basics needs for real life useful cases of the metaverse…..leave out the clutters use the just the contrasted facts, benefits and demerits.

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