Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Metaverse Is Not a Place

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

"What if," asks Tim O'Reilly, "instead of thinking of the metaverse as a set of interconnected virtual places, we think of it as a communications medium?" Then the metaverse is "about a time when immersive digital worlds become the primary way that we communicate and share digital experiences." I think this is very much applying a web 2.0 lens to web3. The distinguishing characteristic of the metaverse and web3 is object permanence in a digital space. And yes, we could think of a set of objects as a place, or as a communications medium, and any number of other things. But what's actually new is that we can now use digital objects in ways previously reserved for physical objects only - as keys, tokens, currency, credentials, identifiers, and the like (use your imagination to extend this list).

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 11:41 p.m.

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