“The next chapter of human existence is being formed right now, and as you ‘step into the metaverse’ you’ll fully understand the power of the convergence of technology, consumer trends, brands and reinvention of personal self expression.”
—Justin W. Hochberg, CEO & Founder, Virtual Brand Group
Step into the Metaverse
How the Immersive Internet Will Unlock a Trillion-Dollar Social Economy
Mark van Rijmenam
About the Author
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker. He is a future tech strategist who thinks about how emerging technologies change organizations, society and the metaverse. Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is an international keynote speaker, 4x author and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Datafloq, and he hosts the Between Two Bots podcast with Dan Turchin, covering the cultural, technological, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence, technology and the metaverse. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Technology Sydney. His research was on how organizations should deal with big data analytics, blockchain and AI.
The Digital Speaker is available for in-person keynotes as well as holographic presentations, and Van Rijmenam's avatar delivers talks in virtual reality. He is a recognized speaker by the Professional Speaker Association Australia, and he is a member of the Global Speakers Federation. He is the publisher of the ‘f(x) = e^x’ newsletter, read by thousands of executives, on the future of work and the organization of tomorrow. The Digital Speaker has spoken in 20 countries across the globe and collectively inspired over 100,000 managers, directors, and C-level executives.
Foreword
Science-fiction stories such as Snow Crash or Ready Player One have described the metaverse as a virtual world of unlimited potential for entertainment and value extraction. In the metaverse depicted in these books, a centralized entity controls the metaverse, including all data, digital assets, and the people entering it. This is a dystopian future that by no means is impossible to happen in the real world, given that we have already built a centralized, closed, proprietary, and extractive internet. The current Web is governed by shareholder supremacy instead of user centricity, and we all have become addicted to “free” access to these platforms.
The downside of all these “free” services has been the degradation of privacy and the lack of control over our own data and identity. That is why I started Outlier Ventures in 2014, because I felt the need for a different story. It is a story where end users can regain control over their digital lives, driven by the convergence of technologies such as blockchain, crypto, artificial intelligence, and mixed reality, among others. Over the years, we have invested in dozens of companies that are building Web 3.0 technologies across all three key layers of Web 3.0 innovation: infrastructure, middleware, and applications.
Web 3.0 technology will enable a decentralized, permissionless, open digital economy centered around the user and identity and data portability. It will allow us to create a fairer, more inclusive internet. It is vital that we embrace this paradigm shift toward decentralization, especially now that we are at the dawn of the metaverse, or the next iteration of the internet.
If Web 2.0 and the social Web enabled data harvesting at a large scale, imagine what can happen in an immersive digital environment. The possibilities to collect and analyze our data will grow exponentially, enabling corporate or state surveillance at unprecedented levels. That is why we need an open metaverse, owned and controlled by users instead of a select group of tech elites.
When I first heard about Step into the Metaverse, I appreciated the vision of Mark van Rijmenam to write a blueprint for an open metaverse. The metaverse will unlock an entirely new economy, where the lines begin to blur between the physical and digital worlds, or our virtual lives and physical lives. Looking at the metaverse from an economic perspective raises important questions about how inclusive it is and who can participate in the digital economy and who cannot. Van Rijmenam does an excellent job discussing how we can ensure an open metaverse economy, where interoperability of digital assets, a self-sovereign identity, and cryptocurrencies play a vital role.
Web 3.0 technologies are vital for an open metaverse, and the companies we are supporting at Outlier Ventures are all contributing to this. In an open metaverse, everyone can finally contribute to and benefit from the first truly universal and permissionless economy humankind has ever known. In Step into the Metaverse, Mark van Rijmenam succinctly explains how we can build this immersive internet that can deliver magical digital experiences while incorporating a fully open economic system, enabling the interoperability of digital assets and changing our society from one of value extraction to one focused on value creation.
—Jamie Burke
Founder & CEO
Outlier Ventures
Preface
On October 28, 2021, the digital world stopped when Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was pivoting Facebook from a social network to the metaverse—the future of the internet. At the same time, he claimed the next iteration of internet and rebranded Facebook to Meta. Although Zuckerberg said all the right things—we need an open, interoperable* metaverse powered by the users—few believe him. In fact, there was a Forrester survey that showed 75 percent of the 700 respondents not trusting Zuckerberg with building the metaverse.1 Research by WSJ showed that of the 1,058 US internet users interviewed, 72 percent do not trust Facebook much/at all. This matches my own simple survey on LinkedIn, where 78 percent of the 469 people indicated that they do not trust Zuckerberg with building the next iteration of the internet.2 Time will tell how successful he will be, but if users and content creators can choose between a world owned and controlled by one person or a world owned and controlled by those creating it, I think I know the answer.
In the past months, I have gone down the rabbit hole of the metaverse. As part of my research for the book, I have spoken with almost 100 creators and creatives all involved in building the metaverse and another 133 completed a long survey about the metaverse. They are the pioneers of this new internet, and they are all building an open, decentralized, inclusive, and interoperable metaverse.
I hope you will enjoy this journey as much as I did uncovering this magical world where we are only bound by our own creativity. In this book, I will share my vision for the metaverse, what it can become, and how it will change our identity as well as how we play, socialize, shop, and work. If we manage to develop an open metaverse, the trillions of dollars generated will be shared with all creators and creatives. But beware, there are dangers lurking on the road ahead that we need to think carefully about to avoid making the same mistakes as we did when building Web 2.0 or the social internet. I realize that every chapter of this book can be an entire book by itself as there is so much happening when it comes to the metaverse, and the world is constantly changing. However, I tried to keep it brief while covering as much as possible. I will start with offering a glimpse of what the future might look like when the metaverse is here, in 2032. Enjoy!
Note
1 * Interoperability is a crucial aspect, and I will discuss it in-depth. It basically means that you can take your data and digital assets from one platform to another, something that is not possible today.