NFT Auction of My Essay: “The Metaverse What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It”
One of the reasons the internet has been so transformative is because of how it was created. Throughout the 1960s to 1990s, the foundation of today’s internet was built through a variety of consortiums and informal working groups composed of government research labs, public universities, and independent technologists. These usually not-for-profit collectives typically focused on establishing open standards that would help them share information from one server to another (i.e., messages or files), and in doing so make it easier to collaborate on future technologies, projects, and ideas.
None of the above prevented businesses from making a profit on the internet or building proprietary technology. In fact, it enabled more companies to be built, in more areas, reaching more users, and achieving greater profits, while also preventing pre-internet giants (and, crucially, telecoms companies) from controlling it. Today, the majority of the most valuable public companies in the world are from (or were reborn through) the internet era.
The internet is a miracle. And it’s not hard to imagine how it might differ if it had been created by multinational media conglomerates in order to sell things, serve ads, harvest user data for profits, or control your end-to-end experience. In fact, it’s easy to imagine this “other internet” – because in many ways, the past 15 years has brought us closer to it. Today, the Internet is dominated by a handful of horizontally and vertically integrated giants which control what users can do, using which technologies, and with which rights. They are open when it’s convenient and closed when it threatens margins or ownership of the customer or developer.
As we look towards a third state of the Internet, varyingly called Web3 or the Metaverse (whose states which are distinctive but inevitably intermingled), we need to recognize this shift. The Metaverse will not develop as the internet did. Public institutions, military research labs, and independent academics led the creation of the Internet because they were effectively the only ones with the computational talent, resources, and ambitions to build a World Wide Web, and few in industry understood its commercial potential. None of this is true when it comes to the Metaverse. The largest technology companies are in relentless pursuit of this opportunity, and will use their dynastic resources, reach, and influence over de facto internet standards to win.
To restore the internet to its originating ethos, we need more than desire for a more open and collectively prosperous future. We need a mechanism which can offer developers greater profits than are available via closed platforms, and to users, a healthier and more respectful experience.
It’s on this basis, I’ve been so excited about DAOs. Throughout human history, innovations in self-organization and financing have always led to societal change. I’m optimistic individuals can collaborate and succeed at a scale which can contend with the mightiest companies on earth. We can reset our future path, while fairly, reliably, and considerably rewarding the individuals who enable us to do so.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to auction a single edition NFT of my famous essay “The Metaverse What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It”. This piece has been cited by more press outlets and executives than I could ever have imagined. What excites me most is the way in which its optimism for collaboration and interoperability has resonated.
To that end, I’ll be using a portion of these proceeds to fund a new Metaverse DAO with FWB. This DAO aspires to support responsibly designed, blockchain-based projects built under the spirit of Web3 and for an Open Metaverse.
Auction here: https://gallery.fwb.help/matthew-ball-metaverse-essay
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