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The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything

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INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ― United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and China ( Wall Street Journal, Associated Press , Nielsen Bookscan, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail , BookNet Canada, Bookseller.com, Bookdao/Nielsen, JD, DangDang)

Tim Sweeney (CEO of Fortnite -maker Epic Games): “Matthew Ball’s essays have defined, analyzed, and inspired the Metaverse for years. His book is an approachable and essential guide to the strategic, technical, and philosophical foundations of this new medium.”

Derek Thompson ( Atlantic staff writer and national best-selling author of Hit Makers ): “This book feels like a rare a definitive statement about an emerging phenomenon that could shape the digital world, the global economy, and the very experience of human consciousness.”

From the leading theorist of the Metaverse comes the definitive account of the next what the Metaverse is, what it will take to build it, and what it means for all of us. The term “Metaverse” is suddenly everywhere, from the front pages of national newspapers and the latest fashion trends to the plans of the most powerful companies in history. It is already shaping the policy platforms of the US government, the European Union, and the Chinese Communist Party. But what, exactly, is the Metaverse? As pioneering theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball explains, it is a persistent and interconnected network of 3D virtual worlds that will eventually serve as the gateway to most online experiences, and also underpin much of the physical world. For decades, these ideas have been limited to science fiction and video games, but they are now poised to revolutionize every industry and function, from finance and healthcare to education, consumer products, city planning, dating, and well beyond. Taking us on an expansive tour of the “next internet,” Ball demonstrates that many proto-Metaverses are already here, such as Fortnite , Minecraft , and Roblox . Yet these offer only a glimpse of what is to come. Ball presents a comprehensive definition of the Metaverse before explaining the technologies that will power it―and the breakthroughs that will be necessary to fully realize it. He addresses the governance challenges the Metaverse entails; investigates the role of Web3, blockchains, and NFTs; and predicts Metaverse winners and losers. Most importantly, he examines many of the Metaverse’s almost unlimited applications. The internet will no longer be at arm’s length; instead, it will surround us, with much of our lives, labor, and leisure taking place inside the Metaverse. Bringing clarity and authority to a frequently misunderstood concept, Ball foresees trillions of dollars in new value―and the radical reshaping of society.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published July 19, 2022

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Matthew L. Ball

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 233 reviews
Profile Image for Roxane.
Author 114 books163k followers
December 6, 2022
It’s a comprehensive look at the origins of the meta verse and where it might be going. Kind of dry and very white make-centric as if women and people of color are elided from the meta verse.
Profile Image for Brian Clegg.
Author 212 books2,842 followers
August 4, 2022
Reluctantly, I have to admit this is an interesting and worthwhile book. My starting position was a sceptic of the claims for the metaverse, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. I'm still sceptical about many aspects, but Matthew Ball convincingly puts across a bigger picture that encompasses far more that the demos we've seen so far.

My initial scepticism was based on experience with Second Life, the 3D virtual environment started in 2003. In its early days, lots of people over-hyped this - big companies set up a presence in it, we were told we would be attending lectures, concerts and meetings this way... but it simply couldn't deliver. My mental picture of the metaverse was primarily an enhanced Second Life, and I think a lot of people see it that way (including some of the big online companies) - but Ball's vision is of something distictly different.

He gives us a picture of a metaverse that, like the internet is universal, not the property of a single company. Everything within it shares standards (again, like the internet) so, for example, an avatar from one company's part of the metaverse can be transferred to another, just as we can move a JPEG picture from, say, Facebook to a Microsoft app. He also envisages having good, real-time rendered 3D worlds that are synchronous (i.e. everyone sees the same things happening at the same time without buffering), persistent (so things are still there when you leave and come back) and have what he calls 'continuity of data' - so things like payments, identity and more are shared throughout.

What he's describing is something more like a three-dimensional visual internet. I say visual, but just as quite a lot of the current internet is not visual, even though we tend to think of elements like web pages and streaming video, similarly Ball's metaverse would have plenty of non-visual components - it's just the 3D visual environment is a key aspect of what makes it next generation. One of my biggest bugbears with virtual reality (VR) is the need for clumsy headsets - I'm not convinced they will ever become mainstream outside of gaming. Apart from anything else, when I sit at my desk with a couple of conventional screens in front of me, or use my phone, I'm also interfacing with the real world - I can see the birds outside the window, the delivery van arriving and pick up my coffee without spilling it down my shirt because I can't see it. Ball thinks a lot will use VR goggles, but points out the metaverse will also work with ordinary screens - and that many may prefer these or augmented reality glasses as and when the tech is up to it.

That 'as and when' is a big proviso that Ball makes. He points out the huge advances required over the current internet. This is partly because the internet is not a real-time system. It uses a packet switched protocol, breaking data up into chunks that are routed separately before reassembling them at their destination. Streaming companies can use this to deliver video because they can buffer information and, in the end, it doesn't matter if you lose continuity for a second or two. But if one member of metaverse situation drops in and out, or falls behind a couple of seconds, the whole thing is ruined. There are also the problems that many still don't have access to fibre optic internet connections, especially outside of the US (this is a very US-oriented book), which are necessary for fast enough data transfer - and even our best servers simply can't store and deliver the sheer quantity of data required at fast enough speeds to make the metaverse feel synchronous and persistent. It would require a huge amount of effort and money - and there is little evidence that the current big internet companies play well enough together to even consider making it happen.

I like the way Ball gives us insights into a lot of the technical issues and the technical solutions (mostly) games manufacturers use to get around those issues (sadly, in ways that probably won’t work for the metaverse). But there is far too much focus in the book on games, other than as the engines that will provide some of the key enabling metaverse technology. Just as the internet is not mostly used for games - and most adults only play non-immersive games like Candy Crush - so the majority of the big picture metaverse would not be about gaming. Ball tells us about millions of new gamers joining the fold, but seems to forget that a lot of us who were gamers grow out of it.

This is not the only fault here. Ball has a tendency to lay out detail ploddingly - he's not a great writer. And his physics can be dodgy. He tells us light's speed is constant, as opposed to constant in a particular medium, and he thinks light changes direction in optical fibres by refraction rather than reflection. The whole metaverse thing still comes across as over-hyped. In his introduction, emphasising our moves forward in tech, Ball writes 'Throughout [the summer of 2021], competing efforts from billionaires Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos were under way to bring civilian travel to lower orbit and usher in an era of space elevators and interplanetary colonisation' - unless intended ironically, given the trivial nature of that civilian travel, the mention of space elevators rings alarm bells for promising far more than can actually physically be delivered.

The other big problem is that although Ball recognises some of the drawbacks and limitations of the metaverse, he doesn't really address these, but rather dismisses them pretty much out of hand. For instance, having mentioned the benefits of video calls during the pandemic, he claims without any evidence that a virtual meeting in the metaverse is more effective. But for me, the huge benefit of a video meeting over a phone call is seeing people's faces and body language. A set of metaverse avatars around a virtual meeting table gives no more real visual feedback than the phone call. Admittedly Ball suggests that in the future they might fully reflect your actual facial expressions, but is that likely in any reasonable timescale? And if it is, it would surely also be possible for the avatar to be AI controlled to fake facial expressions - you have no idea if what you see is real. Ball lets his enthusiasm overcome sensible logic sometimes.

By the end of the book, I could see how different Ball's vision of the metaverse as a revolutionary next-generation internet was from silly little virtual reality meetings or kids' games like Minecraft. But I also understand the vast issues that need to be overcome, which Ball outlines so well. What was missing for me was a cost/benefit analysis showing me what would be gained from making the dramatic investment and effort necessary for Ball's real metaverse to come true. I suspect we're more like to see more silo-based mini-metagalaxies that entirely miss the point.

Even so, the book was an eye-opener, as Ball's picture was so different from the demos we've seen and existing environments, and it is decidedly impressive technically. As such, it's well worth a read.
Profile Image for Drew.
230 reviews23 followers
July 30, 2022
Mathew Ball is a venture capitalist with ties to companies that have deep financial interests for the infrastructure for a metaverse to be built. This book is blurbed by virtually every tech CEO or president you can think of, with the book also being heavily platformed by the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Time Magazine. I've never seen the capitalist class rally behind a single book release like they have with this one.

I read the book out of interest to see where big tech is going to try and influence public policy, and in that regard, I think the book is worth the read. Ball simultaneously says the Metaverse is inevitable but won't come to fruition unless the major nations of the world spend huge sums of money and redo their internet infrastructures to become exponentially more powerful with data sizes and speeds.

This book's ultimate purpose is to get the metaverse into general public discourse so that these tech giants will have an easier time for government funding to build the web 3.0 internet infrastructure needed for these corporations to have more power and money.
Profile Image for Henk.
918 reviews
January 4, 2023
A thoughtful and convincing portrayal of the potential in the next generation internet. Shunning hype and speculation, this book is especially clear eyed on the many challenges still ahead for mass adoption of the metaverse
Computing power is always scarce

The Metaverse (or Metaverses) is a much hyped subject. Matthew L. Ball does a good job unpacking not just the potential but also the impediments to mass adoption.
Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 book Snow Crash, also popularising the term avatar.
In 2021 Roblox processed over $1b of transactions on its platform, making it one of the largest players in the metaverse market. Games seem to be at the forefront of adoption, but also bring with it large challenges, not present in much of the current internet.
The largest obstacles being concurrency and synchronicity, with packets of data being send across ahead of expected usage (like Netflix does) not being possible in games where a user interacts with other users. Incumbents have already achieved remarkable things in the field of rendering the earth in 3D manner: Microsoft’s Flight simulator contains 2.5 trillion real, scanned trees, is 2.5 petabyte large, over 1.000 times Fortnite. But exactly this scale makes the digital world with which a player can interact at any given time manageable and the game feasible.

Other topics discussed are Latency (speed limit) and bandwidth (number of lanes) of the current infrastructure. Here a trade-off is needed between reliability versus immediacy. Only 50 milliseconds in general is seen as being acceptable in the perception of gamers, but 40 milliseconds delay already occurring at 4G translation. Only three quarters of households in the USA with a broadband connection currently fall below the threshold of 50 milliseconds, with the US northwest and northeast being 35 milliseconds removed on regular fibre optic networks, partly insurmountable due to limits in the speed of light. Vast investments in IT infrastructure and more dispersed data centres will be needed to overcome these limitations.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything then turns to how social aspects of games being more important than hardware performance, with winners like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft not being successful due to great graphics.
The pivot to hardware that Meta Platforms is pushing for, is hence just part of the puzzle. Even with the US army buying 125.000 Hololenses for $22b, hardware is only an enabler to the social aspects of games and other applications that will be using the metaverse.

Currently there is enormous market power of Apple and Google through their webstores, taking in 30% of anything sold on their platforms. This might be broken by the Metaverse, with purchases being interoperable across multiple games. However, like at the start of the internet, common standards to achieve this are not defined and are a requirement for further adoption. Also the financial plumbing to support all this across multiple platforms and with much lower per purchase amounts than normal bank transfers, is something only in its infancy.

On the cusp of the metaverse unfolding, large incumbent firms with vast computing power capabilities like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and to a lesser extent Meta seem well positioned to capture value. Game makers, like Sony, and producers of chips essential for 3D rendering, including ARM and Nvidia, plus major fashion and media franchises like LVMH and Disney also seem safe bets that will profit from the Metaverse. Also investment in telecom infrastructure are expected to increase substantially.

I enjoyed reading the book and it gave me the feeling we are at a similar moment as people looking at the internet in 1990. Lots of opportunities and future winners might be a decade away, but this book already provides thought provoking content to keep in mind for the next hype and bust cycle.
Profile Image for C.  Tisch.
6 reviews
January 31, 2022
I read the essay “The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It” - which probably consists the main thesis of this book.

Summing up: Right now, nobody really knows what the “metaverse” really aims to be.
However, according to the author, the metaverse is a new “universe”, which aims to break the barriers between the digital and the physical world. The metaverse will have it’s own currency’s, infrastructure, and so on.

Kinda fascinating, kinda dystopian. I don’t know what to make of the metaverse for now. Exited to see what’s going to happen soon.
Profile Image for Blake.
42 reviews22 followers
August 17, 2022
This book is fundamentally Matt Ball’s blog post series with a book wrapped around it. If you’ve found this book having read his blog, there is nothing new here. If you found this book and haven’t read his blog, save yourself the time and go read the blog.

I fundamentally disagree with a lot of the metaverse / pseudo-web3 boosterism that is prevalent these days, though I read this book expecting a convincing argument for its significance, and came away empty handed.

He defines the metaverse in a way that you could describe the internet of today, save for a 3D gaming UI layer that everyone can exist in simultaneously. He doesn’t really address the notion that if you ignore the 3D gaming UI layer, that notion of decentralized interoperability and persistence is quite literally the internet of today. He fails to address why the little bit more of the metaverse definition matters and why the reader should care.

Most of the book is an actually pretty reasonably well-told tale about the history of technology, how the internet came to be, how advances in technology had ripple effects that paved the way for other innovations that the creators of that progenitor tech could not have foreseen.

What he fails to do is pull this thread through to why the metaverse 1) doesn’t already exist today (I mean after all I have a persistent identity and can “take a trip” from my Gmail inbox to my bank account by flipping browser tabs. Does being able to stroll that distance along 3D representations add a wealth of value?) and 2) why it matters.

He starts with the assumption that “it will matter in ways we cannot foresee” and just kind of runs with it.

There are a few segments of the book that appear briefly self-aware with references to how hilariously dated 1990s takes and theories on “the information superhighway” look, but that’s how this book comes across.

As a VC, Ball no doubt stands to gain from metaverse boosterism and whatever companies try to build things in the buzzword-y space, so that just really adds to the bad faith energy of the book.

Spend your time elsewhere, folks. Learn about the history of technology (it is interesting), but from another book. And go outside and touch grass, don’t pretend to do so in a VR headset.
Profile Image for Richard Thompson.
2,190 reviews106 followers
August 5, 2022
Nope. It's Metaverse 101 for the uninitiated. Nothing much new here for anyone who has spent any time in this area in business or even thinking about the obstacles and possibilities. I would have liked more in depth on the technology and on specific ideas for solving some of the problems. I would have liked a more informed philosophical perspective on what it would mean to have a functioning metaverse that is always available. I would have liked some well-considered speculation about the social aspects of the metaverse and how it could be structured to avoid the horrible dumbing down, destruction of attention span, promotion of extreme views and polarization that we have experienced with the explosion of social media. But none of that. All we get is a lot of talk about laying down the infrastructure for the metaverse with some minor thought about making it open and then letting it self-organize. I agree that it is presently impossible to predict where the metaverse will go and what will succeed and fail, but I fear that this kind of thinking will only lead us down a path where the mistakes of the past will be repeated. As Karl Marx taught us in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, history is doomed to repeat itself - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. God help us if that is true of the metaverse.
Profile Image for Scott Wozniak.
Author 4 books86 followers
July 29, 2022
This is a very detailed, masterful discussion of the current efforts and challenges facing those trying to build the metaverse. It begins with a definition of the metaverse that breaks it down concept by concept. And then continues to talk through the technical challenges we face today (such as latency issues). Continues with the legal issues. And it finishes with the cultural issues all of this stirs up.

It is so specific and technical that it probably is not ideal for someone who is not working in the space. But for those who are working in the space, this is some of the best thinking from a guy working at the heart of this.

One interesting position he took was that video games are going to be the key innovators and creators of the metaverse.
Profile Image for Vicky.
77 reviews20 followers
November 4, 2022
I didn’t know whether to give it one star or five. Five because it’s not an easy task to write a book about a thing that doesn’t yet exist, we don’t know when it will exist or in what form. Still, here we have 350 pages about it. One because the writing style was almost incomprehensible and many parts of the books were way too long (there is a whole page of rhetorical questions that ends with “we don’t know any of the answers”). Some of the technology is discussed in excruciating detail while other is only vaguely described. However, I’ve learned a lot about some of the companies and how some of the processes work. I think it’s a good book to find out what is the debate about and where we’re at with the technology at this point.
Profile Image for Doğa Armangil.
51 reviews26 followers
July 24, 2022
It turns out, making people live in a parallel reality that is not actual reality is fraught with technical challenges. Among these:

* the compute power needed for rendering complex scenes,
* network latency,
* the need for 3D VR (virtual reality) display technologies with large viewing angles and high resolutions.

The consensus is that upwards of 10 years will be needed for overcoming these challenges. And I am not even mentioning motion sickness, which is a big issue even in gaming, but which is mentioned in the book exactly ... once !

The good news is, the Metaverse will/should encompass AR (augmented reality) as well, and many AR display technologies do not induce motion sickness, whereas all VR display technologies do.

On the down side, Metaverse technologies will all be extremely energy-hungry, worse than the worst Blockchain technologies.

Some aspects of the Metaverse that this book is not mentioning:

* A key motivator for wanting to live in the Metaverse will surely be the wish to compensate for the limitations in people's lives. In the Metaverse people can choose their physical appearance, they can choose to live in a mansion etc. So the Metaverse probably won't be only for taking offline lives online.

* Although the book provides a precise definition of the Metaverse, there is no discussion about some key aspects of the user experience. For example, if the Metaverse is a set of connected virtual worlds, then how will the user go from one virtual world to another? How will the user go from a VR world to another VR world, or from a VR world to an AR world or vice versa? Will there be one AR world or many? Will this connectedness be limited to the ability of taking one's virtual goods from one world to another, or will people be able to seamlessly move between them?

When evaluating the viability of a new technology, a key aspect to consider is: Is it going to make society as a whole more efficient? Perhaps the fact that many people will be content with having a mansion in the Metaverse rather than in real life will make the Metaverse a net-positive despite its high power consumption.

Overall, I don't think the Metaverse will be the most wide-spread way of using computers, but it will surely find its niche. So this book is worth a read.
Profile Image for Hamid.
416 reviews15 followers
August 13, 2022
This is rather disappointing book. I'd hoped to finally read something that made a case for all this 'Metaverse' noise and instead this heaps piles of rambling asides on top of his existing blog posts. He meanders where he should get straight to the point. His approach to argument is pouring Lego pieces from a prefab set out and trying to build it without looking at the instructions. The result is a mess. He makes sweeping declarations about both the history and the future with holes vast enough for Jupiter to complete its orbit. He goes all in on examples like Helium which as soon as he went to publish have turned out to be colossal disasters, if not frauds. He spends some 25% of the book trying (but failing) to convincingly shill blockchain for both currency, security and persistence. He leaves so much to 'but developers will sort these problems out' as though fundamental laws are minor hurdles to over come.

But what really annoys me? it's not the rambling. It's not the tempered exuberance for the future. It's not the failures in his examples. It's not the embarrassing gaps in his knowledge while he talks with authority. It's not the lack of citation for dodgy figures while random unimportant fluff gets several. It's not the taking chapters to define what exactly he thinks the 'metaverse' is. It's not the bare contradictions in his arguments. It's not the transparent attempt to write in favour of areas he invests in. It's not that he fundamentally defines the 'metaverse' as 'the Internet but in 3D'.

It's not any of those things.

It is simply that the future he paints is not fun. It's not interesting. There's no joy in it. There's no soul in it. It's an exploitative mess painted as inevitable. Ugh.

The book saves itself from one star because, despite all this, there's some interesting discussion in a few technical areas. Read it if you must but if you find this convincing in any measure, I have a bridge to sell you.
Profile Image for Harrison Dempsey.
107 reviews
September 4, 2022
This was waaaaaaay better than I expected. It's an excellent primer on the idea of a metaverse and the many technical challenges involved in creating it. It answered questions I had like:

How can you 1000x the # of players in a shared space while also cutting latency in half (or more) to provide what will be considered an acceptable experience?

The networking and compute challenges alone are fascinating. And that's before you get into rendering, meaningful applications, and the hardware that may be needed to run it all. The chapter on payment rails and the perverse incentives powering current platforms was really well-articulated too.

Lots of interesting ideas to noodle on further, highly recommend if you're interested in this space minus all the marketing and Web3 cryptobro bullshit.
Profile Image for Nicole.
291 reviews5 followers
September 1, 2022
Initially I had a big chip in my shoulder against this book because I felt it ripped off Terry Winters, The Metaverse, all the way down to the cover - go look, I’ll wait. But Bell does an excellent job breaking down all the technical issues like compute and latency while also imagining the possibilities in a (hard to believe I am saying this) level-headed way. His calm candor is sorely missing among authors in this space. The book is highly readable and at times jaw dropping. I recommend it even if you aren’t all that interested in the topic.
Profile Image for Alina Stepan.
195 reviews11 followers
January 2, 2024
Cele 3* sunt totalmente subiective, caci am citit aceasta carte ca pe o lectura obligatorie la scoala, ca pe un manual de ce va sa vina.
Interesanta mai ales in primele 100 si ultimele 80 de pagini, Metaverse (cartea) poate fi la fel de controversata ca si fenomenul pe care incearca sa il descrie. Lumea jocurilor ma lasa extrem de rece, de aici probabil si mefienta mea si lipsa de interes pentru carte. Simt ca trebuie sa ma informez pe subiect, insa nu inteleg de ce trebuie sa reconstruim in virtual lumea reala si sa avem probleme aproape filosofice cu modul in care randam un copac care cade in lumea virtuala si, daca nu suntem acolo, cum il vom putea auzi si vedea cazand? Aplicarea principiilor koan-urilor japoneze la metavers mi se pare o licenta poetica usor dusa la extrem.
Oricum, mi-am invatat lectia, caci am citit cartea, macar :)
Profile Image for Simona.
119 reviews14 followers
November 18, 2022
The book was simply too technical for me to enjoy it. Some chapters were quite monotonous, like the one on bandwidth and latency. I struggled to finish it, but in the end, I'm glad I did because, ironically, I liked the final chapters the most.

The key takeaways that I agree with are:

The metaverse is not here and won't be here for at least the next few decades.
It won't just suddenly appear. It will take time to evolve gradually. Just like the internet, computers & smartphones have evolved.
There are A LOT of technical challenges to make the metaverse work, from bandwidth issues to payment rails.
Once the metaverse arrives, it will disrupt different industries in good and bad ways.

Personally, I see the most potential of the metaverse in the education sector. I believe it will enable students from all over the world to attend their classes virtually and immerse themselves in different experiences like virtual field trips. I think this should reduce the cost of education and allow it to be more accessible.

I was also surprised to learn how vital gaming is for the evolution of the metaverse. That was unexpected, as I'm not a gamer and didn't see the potential.

All in all, a very technically detailed and well-researched book, but definitely not for everyone. Requires some technical knowledge/background to understand every detail.
Profile Image for Ku.
322 reviews10 followers
July 30, 2023
A masterful and entertaining summary of what it was, what it is, and where we may be headed with the digital economy.
60 reviews4 followers
August 28, 2022
First proper and structured book I have seen about the Metaverse, everyone needs to read this as we continue building our understanding about the "next internet".
I had read some other books on Kindle unlimited but this is the first book I think it's worth reading.
A couple of minor remarks:
- the author sometimes can go down rabbit holes, could be more concise on points that are not central to the chapter's narrative
- as a payments expert, I enjoyed the payments chapter a lot, but couldn't help notice some minor imprecisions about today's payments (e.g. not all cards are called credit cards, the merchant cost of accepting cash is not zero)
Profile Image for Susana.
971 reviews180 followers
August 24, 2022
Una muy completa y clara explicación de lo que pudiese ser el metaverso y, más importante, lo que se requiere para llegar al metaverso, accesible a todos y disgregado en diversas empresas, en un concepto similar a nuestro internet actual. A veces las explicaciones me resultaban un poco ajenas por mi desconocimiento absoluto de los juegos en línea o colaborativos que considera Matthew Ball como los mejores ejemplos actuales de lo que podría llegar a ser el metaverso.

Y una larga explicación de los factores económicos actualmente en ese mundo de juegos, orientados a maximizar la rentabilidad de unas pocas empresas con la capacidad técnico para albergarlos en detrimento de los desarrolladores, que considera debe ser superado, si se quiere tener un metaverso que nos llegue a todos.

Me parece una buena manera de comenzar a entender este complejo concepto, aunque solo el futuro dirá que tan acertada, o equivocada, es esta explicación.
Profile Image for Märt.
105 reviews13 followers
March 8, 2023
This is the definitive book on what is metaverse, and where are we on the journey to get there, written by Matthew Ball, known for extensive past essays on the subject. Let's start with his definition of the metaverse: "A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence and continuity of data such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications and payments."

Below are key takeaways from my notes (of being pretty deep into the subject). Sorry for the length! But he touched on a lot of important and fascinating stuff here.
- Hyperreality is when people cannot distinguish between real and fake reality. In the end, it matters in which "reality" people can derive more value.
- Most dystopian fears of metaverse exist due to users currently not owning their own identity, data, or entitlements online.
- Immersive VR being the requirement for metaverse is the same as arguing that mobile internet can only be accessed through apps. It is just the best way, not the only.
- Almost all today's virtual worlds render and save their textures in different format. They have no systems to share this data to other virtual worlds. Those that embrace the open standards will grow and those who will not will not, the economics will do its work here.
- There will be a need for a company to have a "3D page" just like previously it has needed to have a Facebook page, a mobile page, and a web page before that.
- Metaverse and Web3 are both successor states of nowadays internet. But neither of them require each other, you can have metaverse without the blockchain and you can have blockchain without any 3D environments. It's like mixing together the rise of Democratic Republic with the industrialization.
- Gaming companies have a huge advantage in building the metaverse because they have for decades worked around internet's asynchronous design, as well as building spaces where somebody would actually want to be in.
- Latency is a huge problem. Competitive games have many tricks to get around it. But internet is really unreliable. And in metaverse, low latency is required.
- IVWP are integrated virtual world platforms such as Roblox. All the worlds built in this platforms can only be accessed through it and playersneed to use all their components like avatars, currencies etc. Because of the big cut that IWPs take from the trader payouts , it is reasonable to assume that they will never be used by majority of the metaverse users.
- Think about how much we currently worry about Big Tech controlling our lives, and how little of our lives is actually online compared to what it would be with the metaverse. What happens if a corporation operates the physics, customs, economy, government of another plane of human existence?
- Economics is why metaverse will work. Some players will want to wear a Darth Vader costume or a Lakers jersey or a Prada purse in more than one metaverse and they will not want to pay over and over for them. Liberating purchases from a single title would lead to more purchases and higher prices. Or how much would somebody pay for a jersey that could only be used in the Madrid real stadium, or a Disney outfit that could only be used in a theme park? Expected obsolescence constrains our spending.
- 3D standards are much more complex than 2D standards. NVidia's Omniverse is built in USD (Universal Scene Description developed by Pixar and open sourced in 2016) which is like HTML for the metaverse.
- Virtual goods could have fees for moving them between worlds just like real world has import duties, or you might have to pay more for the interoperable edition.
- Both in consoles and on mobile the operating systems have "payment rails" which are bundled together with everything else.
- Mobile gaming industry was more than half of the total 180 billion gaming industry and represented 70% of growth since 2008. When iPhone launched, Mobile gaming was 1.5 billion out of 50 billion gaming industry. In 2020, it is 80 billion out of 162 billion gaming industry.
- In real world, payments are competed away close to 0% or maximum 2.5%, but in mobile everything costs 30%. Credit cards and other payment services also come bundled but they compete on the specifics of the bundles, which are not available in mobile ecosystems which are fully bundled. Android or Apple.
- Every hardware vendor is fighting to be the gateway to the metaverse. You can see Apple blocking through webgl, nfc, cloud streaming, blockchain. China case study: WeChat only charges 0.1% and then is able to connect directly to a bank account, something that consoles do not allow in the West. For the metaverse to succeed in the west, we would need to find ways around the gatekeepers.
- Blockchains are programmable payment rails. Most NFTs today place the virtual good on the blockchain but not the virtual good data which stays stored onto a centralized server, requiring its permission to query the data. For the next couple years, most NFTs remain useless propped up by speculation and fraud. The potential of the technology is extraordinary.
- Interoperability of items has a range of issues. Popular game assets might be produced by somebody else who does not need to recoup for the entire game development costs. Or items can be bought in one experience but used in another which is not fair to the experience creators. Import duties on using a foreign good in a game is one way to overcome the interoperability issue. Or a gradual degradation.
- Blockchains have baked in economic incentives unlike open source models which are altruism. The only way to fight billion dollar companies pursuing billion dollar opportunities is to include billions of people contributing trillions.
- Transformation is an iterative process on which many changes converge. We cannot exactly define when a mobile era started, it is a 10-year span before the iPhone.
- What drives metaverse growth? One answer is the unbundling of Google and Apple services. The second one is the magical AR/VR headset that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers. Third answer is blockchain based low latency cloud computing and the establishment of 3D scene standards. For these three drivers, the underlying technologies of each are improving every year.
- Second answer is the ongoing march of generational change. More than 75% of American children play on Roblox. 104 million of gamers are born globally each year.
- Thirdly, the new era of the metaverse will be ushered in through experiences.
- Most professions have become a lot more productive due to technology in recent decades but not teachers. We have not cut down the teaching time or to teach better without compromising the quality of the education. However teaching salaries must compete with other salaries for the same people. The manual cost of education has come up a lot.
- Besides education, lifestyle will be altered. Fitness, mindfulness, psychotherapy, physical therapy.
- Dating. Couples can go dating in the metaverse choosing their location, like dinner in Paris on the moon, with optional performers, casual games, etc to get to know each other.
- TV sports watching, through big simulated screen or courtside. Sports experiences especially team games can likely be reproduced in a video game format. This means you can jump into a game that was just finished and see if you could have done it differently, if you say own a 2K game. Sports game is currently separated by watching the game, playing the video game yourself, playing the fantasy sports game, making online wagers, and buying NFTs. Not forever.
- Through creating Mandalorian, using virtual sets called volumes, Disney now has digital version of all the properties and environments of Star wars. They can now license this environments out for a poker game, for a Tinder date setting, for a rally game or for whatever metaverse licensing experience.
- Porn is kept off of app-based Android and Apple. One can argue this affects the income and safety of sex workers. Pornhub, Chaturbate, Onlyfans are top 100 websites.
- Music doubled with CDs but then shrank four times when moving digital. Similarly, metaverse will shrink some parts of the economy but not others and definitely grow in total. Roblox and Minecraft have exactly the kinds of users that Facebook would want for Horizon Worlds.
- For Satya Nadella, Minecraft was one of the first multi-billion dollar acquisition, and he opted against making it a Windows platform or exclusive. Player base has grown from 25 to more than 150 million monthly users. Microsoft flight simulator is a marvel of both technology and collaboration. Microsoft approach under Nadella is to be platform agnostic, this way Microsoft's lost share was made up by the overall digital markets increasing.
- No next generation of Internet should be as constrained as Apple's ecosystem developers. Force bundling of content, distribution, payments, account system, virtual goods have all been the same reasons for Roblox to dominate as they were for Apple.
- In Metaverse people have very little rights at the moment. One ways is to make a blockchain based metaverse, the other one is to extend real world into the metaverse in terms of the legal system. The author's hope for the metaverse is that it would produce a race to trust. In 2022 Microsoft made policy changes which allowed to use other payment methods than theirs as defaults, and for players and developers to communicate directly.
- Misinformation, manipulation, radicalization, harassment, abuse, limited data rights, poor data security, constraints of personalization and algorithmetization, general unhappiness due to online engagement, immense platform power vs regulation. As life goes more online, more of our problems as a society to go online too. Most problems coming with the mobile digital world are societal human problems. Our lives will exist online in the metaverse, as opposed to just be put up there like they are now with an Instagram or a Facebook post.
- The same technology that makes remote learning easier also makes it easier for ISIS to train combatants remotely in their respective countries.
- Should a free service offer the user an option to buy out her data and how it should be valued? There needs to be a legal framework to handle all of this.
- Gig economy like ride sharing or dog walking will also move to virtual world. Like check dealer does not need to live in Las Vegas or near casino to work at a virtual twin. The world's best tutors and sex workers will program and participate in hourly experiences.
- It is natural to worry about virtual reality headsets being used all day, but these fears lack context. In United States 300 people watching average five and a half hours of video per day. None of it is social. It is passively consumed, called lean back entertainment.
- Time for social interactive entertainment is likely a positive outcome not a negative one even if we are still indoors, particularly for the elderly spending. It may not be the same as sailing the Caribbean but manning a virtual sailboat together with your friends beats watching Fox or MSNBC.
- Regulators should force platforms to unbundle identity, software distribution, APIs, entitlements, from their hardware and OS. Users must be able to own their online identity and software they purchase, also how they pay for it, while developers can choose what platform they are available on. Unbundling would cause companies to compete more clearly on their individual offerings.
- Need new laws specifically written for virtual assets and laws. Governments need to take virtual economy legislation seriously if they want it to thrive. Good place to start would be to protect devs who want to export what they have created to other platforms. This is a relatively new problem, pics etc could be transferred so far, code should be too.
- YouTube and SnapChat content creators can easily publish their content on other platforms, which forces platforms to innovate, and gives creators an option to be on all platforms with the same production budget (or get paid for exclusivity). 2D content network dynamics do not easily go over for IVWP because they have not been made using those tools. There are no available hacks available such as using iPhone's screenshot to grab a snapchat story for 3D. Content made on Roblox is Roblox only. Roblox content is not ephemeral like a livestream and is not meant to be catalogued like Youtube vlogs, it is meant to be continuously updated. Consequences are profound. Developers have to rebuild everything if they want to be on another platform, wasting tons of time and producing little value. In many cases, they won't bother. Devs will be less likely to support new IVWPs and existing will not be pressured to improve, and might even become rent-seekers. Like the. change in Facebook feed structure a while ago where page owners had to buy ads to reach people who voluntarily had liked their page.
- Being able to export data doesn't mean it's usable. Governments in this sense have the responsibility to regulate, setting export conventions, file types, data structures for IVWPs. In this way they would also inform whoever wants to import using this data. Ultimately we want it to be as easy as possible to take one immersive educational environment from one playground to another, as easy as it is to move a blog or a newsletter. 3D worlds aren't as easy as HTML or spreadsheets. But it should be our target.
- Govt should take far more serious approach to data collection, usage, rights and penalties. Metaverse data will encompass the dimensions of your bedroom, measure of your retinas, expressions of your newborn, job performance and compensation, where you've been how long and why. Nearly everything you say or do will be captured, sometimes placed in a virtual twin owned by a private company, which will be shared by many more. Today developers decide what is allowed, but Govt should lead here. What should be allowed is to deletion your data, and to download and upload it elsewhere.
- Govt nation-specific regulation leads to splintering. Chinese, European, Middle-Eastern laws are different from those in US, Japan or Brazil. South Korean Metaverse Alliance includes more than 450 specific companies, likely focused on the collective strength of companies in South Korea.
- China's metaverse may be even more different. It might arrive earlier and be more interoperable and standardized. Tencent uses facial recognition software to validate players using Chinese national registry. They are super well positioned to develop the metaverse.
- Tinder was invented 5 years into the iPhone when 70% of 18 to 34 year olds had it. Facebook technology was available before it was invented. Technology constrains what we can invent but so does our imagination.
- By end of the 2020s metaverse will be around in some trillions. We will have multiple hype cycles. Think about the first six generations of iPhones which used skeuomorphic design but then evolved. In the first years, we will be in the similar way doing what we did before, like video conference in a 3D in a simulated boardroom.
- Ending with Steve Jobs quote of how they had no idea app store would be this successful, and how they have been reduced to be the spectators of where it will go. The same will likely be true for metaverse where something trivial will be big and have huge impact, both expected and unexpected.
Profile Image for Alex.
197 reviews14 followers
December 17, 2022
I'm not a big fan of business books. I believe most of them should be restricted to a blog post or a series of posts at most. However, I have to say that Ball's metaverse book was a happy surprise. The Metaverse is such a fud that it's very easy to slide into snake oil territory. Nonetheless, Ball builds up a book that stays away from the bullshit, building up the concept and current situation with great care, knowledge, and strategic insight. I did know about many parts of the story he tells, but I think it's a smart way to pad new disruptions with the backstory or even examples in other domains as to drive the point. I mention this because those in tech probably will find some of his takes on certain areas (i.e. Blockchain) a bit simplified, but in others, he's really knowledgeable and it shows.

If anything, I would have loved for him to include more about the Metaverse in Asia. He touches upon South Korea, Japan, and China (especially at the very end) but I feel it would have improved a bit if it wasn't so Western-centric.

Besides that, it's a great book for anyone trying to get a solid foundation around the biggest challenges around the Metaverse concept.
Profile Image for Edwin B.
276 reviews14 followers
January 28, 2023
Because this book is so technologically dense, I wish I could re-read it to improve my comprehension of its contents. But I know I can’t spare any more time on this book to do that. So I content myself with the sweeping overview I gained about the fullness of the coming Metaverse.

What also became clear from reading this book is that there's a lot of money to be made from the Metaverse. And the tech giants (including Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Sony), and their emerging and hopeful other competitors, are positioning themselves, as we speak, to gain critical dominance over the design, deployment, and devoted use of Metaverse hardware and platforms. One of the larger challenges facing the Metaverse is that it currently lacks governing bodies to establish standard hardware and platform protocols acceptable for compromise between all of the tech giants who currently have monopoly, and up and coming players, in the interest of bringing into being a single Metaverse — instead of an undesirable collection of disconnected metagalaxies — that will be of incomparable benefit to all.

To achieve in behalf of all of us: "A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments." The Metaverse.
Profile Image for Patrick.
339 reviews15 followers
August 13, 2022
A soft 4. But overall solid. Maybe not surprising given the author's background as a blogger but this is really more of a series of survey essays on aspects of the technology industry that loosely circle around something you might call the metaverse some day. Too often these chapters collapse into a litany of facts and figures, some of them repeated across chapters. And the "just so" overconfident lecturing grinds after a a while. But I was engaged throughout and learned a good deal. The kind of book that will very quickly be out of date.
Profile Image for Amit.
157 reviews6 followers
February 19, 2023
A great first book to read and know about the Meta- Verse . Thought provoking, good insights. Good focus on basics, highly effective examples and teaches without being preachy. It is written well, yet can be at times tough on the reader.
Plough through if you are serious and you will come out richer and have more understanding. My only point is , I felt it focused a little more in gaming than was necessary and author could explore other aspect in little more detail.
Should you read it - yes if you want to gain knowledge on the subject.
August 9, 2022
Extensive and complete Metaverse overview, covering all relevant topics. I particularly enjoyed the broad technological and historical background. The last few chapters were less valuable and mostly contained extensive examples and visions for the potential future. Overall a great read and certainly clarified my thoughts about the Metaverse.
Profile Image for Anastasiia.
37 reviews3 followers
August 13, 2022
Good overview of what the metaverse is, what is technically required to build it, and what are the possible use cases in our future.
Profile Image for Elsbeth Kwant.
379 reviews22 followers
Read
October 22, 2022
This is a subject I feel rather strongly about - the next level internet is coming up and we'd better prepare for it, if we want it to be a good place. Matthew Ball has done a great job in writing this book - separating the wheat from the chaff in a knowledgeable and clear way.
The Metaverse will be a parallel world for collaboration and communicating. It will be a place where individuals and groups derive meaning and value. Great about this book is the historical perspective, the multi-decade history of social virtual worlds. Starting of with MUD's (Multi User Dungeon - adventures), progressing to (a new word for me) Multi-user shared Hallucinations, placing it squarely around the 80's. Love the way he uses data to underpin his stories. 75% of children ages 9-12 in the US regularly use the platform. That is amazing - what could we do for literacy using that power? Adopt Me! (part of Roblox) was visited more than 30 billion times by the end of 2021, more than 15 times the average number of global tourism visits in 2019. Travis Scott's Fortnite concert was attended live by 28 million players (though not, as he shows further on in the book in the same technical space). Virtual worlds with their economies and populations now rival small nations.
'We are now at the point when these experiences can appeal to hundreds of millions and their bounds are more about the human imagination than technical limitation.' There is a critical mass of working pieces starting to come together. The mobile internet has existed since 1991, but only in the late 2000's enough working pieces came together to make the smartphone mainstream.
Ball quotes Epic Games Tim Sweeney extensively, who seems to have the most far reaching vision for the Metaverse. Other companies - he shows, predict a Metaverse that is tailored to their businessmodel (Facebook concentrating on social, Microsoft on business (though they have the most advanced virtual world with their Flight Simulator).
The history of the internet shows how mostly not-for-profit collectives focused on establishing open standards - explaining how the internet got to be 'the internet', and not several closed intranets. The Metaverse is pioneered by businesses - which might form its growth. The Metaverse will be 'a meta-verse, 'a parallel plane of existence for millions, if not billions, of people, that sits atop our digital and physical economies and unites both'. We will take our current problems with us to the Metaverse.
Ball's definition: "A massively scaled and interoperable network of real time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments."
3D is necessary for the metaverse, because it comes closest to being 'live'. The biggest issue for the metaverse is standardization 'The process of standardization is complicated, messy, and long. It is really a business and human problem masquerading as a technological one. Standards, unlike the laws of physics, are established through consensus, not discovery.' Complexity is the enemy of real time rendering.
Microsofts Flight Simulator is 2.5 petabytes large and can only be played online, the data is not stored at the user-side (as Fortnites is - explaining the very long updates).
I had not realized that the speed of light would be a physical barrier to the Metaverse - 40-45ms from Tokyo to NYC...

"I am certain about much of the future. It will be increasingly centered around real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds. Network bandwidth, latency, and reliability will all improve. The amount of computing power will increase, thus enabling higher concurrency, greater persistency, more sophisticated simulations, and altogether new experiences (and yet, the supply of compute will still fall far short of demand for it." By the end of the decade it will have 'arrived' (not a 0-1 experience, Ball details).

Exciting times! Glad to have found a good book about it (like 'You Look like a thing and I love you for machine learning).



Profile Image for Mal Warwick.
Author 31 books444 followers
August 24, 2022
Everybody in the world of technology talks about the Metaverse. But no two people among them seem to agree on what it is, how it will be built, who if anyone will control it, and when it will become a reality. Tech investor Matthew Ball sets out to address this problem in The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything. Building on his own tongue-twisting definition, Ball shares his views on all these questions. Just don’t be surprised after reading the book if you still don’t have a clue what the Metaverse will be like if and when it comes into being. And, despite the promise of the book’s subtitle, you won’t know much about “how the Metaverse will revolutionize everything.” But you will know the right questions to ask.

QUESTIONS YOU MAY NOT WANT TO ANSWER
Many readers will confront the same challenge I did when reading this book. As Ball sees it, online gaming will be front and center in the Metaverse. My own experience in this field is limited to a single game. Solitaire. So it’s difficult for me to look toward a day when I will adapt an avatar to make my way through the precincts of the Metaverse. Ball’s account implies we’ll all have to do that, assuming the Metaverse replaces the Internet as we know it today. Why will I need to take on a fictitious role to buy books for my Kindle on Amazon? What’s the point? And will I have to wear a headset or goggles, which seems to be in the cards, too? I’m sure many who read this review will have the same questions. And Ball doesn’t answer them. But he gets credit for raising them.

A TONGUE-TWISTING DEFINITION OF THE METAVERSE
Ball devotes the first third of his book sharing his definition of the Metaverse as he envisions it and then, word by word, unpacking it. In fairness, once you’ve passed that point, the definition makes sense. For the record, though, here is is:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

If you understand all that on first reading, you’re better attuned to the online world than I am. And I began doing business on the Internet more than thirty years ago.

You may notice that Ball’s definition makes no mention of Web 3.0, which many people seem to confuse with the Metaverse. Wikipedia’s definition may help dispel that confusion: “Web3 (also known as Web 3.0) is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics.” As Ball notes, those concepts might be features of the Metaverse. But the Metaverse won’t necessarily displace the World Wide Web.

THE COMPANIES AT THE FOREFRONT IN DEVELOPING THE METAVERSE
As the author makes clear, none of this is possible today. And it may not be for many years to come. However, he describes a mind-boggling array of hardware and software approaches under development to make Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) devices more accessible and less costly. Apparently, dozens of companies are engaged in this work. The biggest players Ball identifies include both the usual suspects (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft) and the leaders in the online gaming industry. Those Ball sees in the forefront are Nvidia (which makes the chips that power online gaming), Sony, Unity Technologies (a leader in online 3D visuals), Roblox (which makes popular online games), Nintendo, and Chinese technology company Tencent.

Another source names an overlapping set of eight companies that are investing big-time in the Metaverse. Microsoft. Meta (formerly Facebook). Google. Nvidia. Unity Software. Shopify (an online e-commerce platform). Roblox. And Qualcomm (a semiconductor company working with Microsoft on Augmented Reality). But, as Ball makes clear, hundreds of companies have set out to compete in this space.

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS
Ball’s account raises several big questions:

** Will the Metaverse swallow up the Internet as we know it today, or simply represent a new, three-dimensional layer atop the Internet? Or, for that matter, something entirely independent of it?

** Will an independent, nonprofit entity come into being to write and administer the standards for the Metaverse, as is the case with the Internet today? Or will it become solely controlled by profit-making corporations?

** Which, if any, of the big companies now investing heavily in the Metaverse will emerge bigger and stronger? And will any of them shrink to second-class status (or even go out of business)?

** Will it be necessary to don Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality headsets or goggles to enter the Metaverse? Or will some form of brain-to-computer interface emerge as a less intrusive alternative?

Ball advances an answer to the second of these questions. “A ‘corporate internet,’ he writes, “is the current expectation for the Metaverse. The internet’s nonprofit nature and early history stems from the fact that government research labs and universities were effectively the only institutions with the computational talent, resources, and ambitions to build a ‘network of networks,’ and few in the for-profit sector understood its commercial potential. None of this is true when it comes to the Metaverse. Instead, it is being pioneered and built by private businesses, for the explicit purpose of commerce, data collection, advertising, and the sale of virtual products.”

A GRIM WORD OF WARNING
Ball is pessimistic about the impact of the Metaverse. “[F]ears of a Metaverse dystopia seem fair, rather than alarmist. The very idea of the Metaverse means an ever-growing share of our lives, labor, leisure, time, wealth, happiness, and relationships will be spent inside virtual worlds, rather than just extended or aided through digital devices and software. It will be a parallel plane of existence for millions, if not billions, of people, that sits atop our digital and physical economies, and unites both. As a result, the companies that control these virtual worlds and their virtual atoms will likely be more dominant than those who lead in today’s economy.” A grim forecast, indeed.

THE ROADBLOCKS ON THE WAY TO THE METAVERSE
The author cites numerous technological challenges that confront those who are now attempting to build the Metaverse. Chief among them is latency. That’s the difficulty of transmitting enormous amounts of data at speeds high enough not to frustrate users. But there are many others. “We are far from being able to replicate the density and flexibility of the ‘real world,'” Ball notes. But he implies that the business practices of Apple and Google today represent a much bigger roadblock. Ball cites Apple’s in particular. “Apple does not want a Metaverse comprised of integrated virtual world platforms, but of many disparate virtual worlds that are interconnected through Apple’s App Store and the use of Apple’s standards and services.” If the former happens, Apple will lose money. A lot of it. If the company instead manages to nudge the Metaverse in the direction of the latter, it will add trillions to its market capitalization and cast an even larger shadow over Planet Earth.

But Ball seems to view it as equally likely that other players will emerge on top. “The Metaverse offers the opportunity to disrupt today’s gatekeepers, such as Apple or Google, but many fear that we’ll just end up with new ones—maybe Roblox Corporation, or Epic Games.” Heaven forfend!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion, a diversified holding company which makes angel investments, provides advisory services, and produces television, films, and video games. He is also a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Senior Advisor to KKR, Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, and sits on the board of numerous start-ups. The Metaverse is his first book. Ball is also an “Occasional Contributor” to The Economist, holds bylines at Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the August 8, 2022 cover story for Time Magazine.
1,377 reviews5 followers
October 24, 2022
Those of us who lived through the transformation from the analog to the digital world never realized how it happened or when it happened. The same is now happening with the concept of the metaverse.

This is part of what Matthew Ball tells us in his book. The metaverse as a practically digital, three-dimensional place where we can share our digital features without friction among many applications; still seems to be very far from existing.

But that's where we're going and it's not something that companies can control, we're going towards that and we lead companies to build that metaverse.

I have a 12-year-old daughter and she already lives in a different universe, just like her friends. Her games are mostly digital. I can criticize her and disagree, but that's how her generation lives.

However, in maybe 5 or 10 years, they, and we, will be living in this metaverse and our life will be completely different than it is today.

Excellent book that doesn't try to predict anything, just describe its concept of the metaverse and what big companies are doing to make it a reality.

I believe that those who deny it will live in oblivion or will not be able to enjoy the great opportunities that this concept can bring us.
Profile Image for Eric Morris.
55 reviews
September 2, 2023
A very accessible, but detailed, look at different visions of what the metaverse could be. In particular, I enjoyed the historical perspectives, the framework for thinking about what would make something “a metaverse” and the summary of current progress/shortfalls among systems (technological and organizational) necessary to create the metaverse.

I did find the last section on potential ramifications of the metaverse rather dry, in part because it lacked the plethora of interesting data and references that made the first two sections so engaging and timely. Overall though, a highly recommended read, especially for folks like myself who are critical of recent hype cycles in tech but want to build a crisper understanding of what problems certain tech (especially crypto) aims to solve for.
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