A to give everyone the option to build worlds
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 6:13 am
Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse has recently been under fire from all sides . Those who believe that the Facebook founder's very expensive metaverse is doomed to collapse are no longer keeping quiet (and are even hiding in the very depths of Meta).
Among the doomsayers who sentence Meta's metaverse to death (it seems irrevocably) is the original "father" of this concept, Neal Stephenson , who first outlined this idea back in 1992 in the novel Snow Crash .
“My novel will outlive Zuckerberg ,” Stephenson told Fast Company. “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about Facebook.”
Stephenson is currently focused on Lamina1 , the company he co-founded to make a reality of the idea he so accurately and visionarily conceived in Snow Crash .
The American writer was the first to imagine a three-dimensional digital world where humans could exist and interact as real entities , to the point of being able to decide to live there permanently. The virtual universe conceived by Stephenson, where there are digital currencies and plots, is owned by a large corporation and is only and exclusively accessible through smart glasses. Stephenson's metaverse is paradoxically almost a carbon copy of Zuckerberg's.
Stephenson has a very different vision of the metaverse these days , and it clashes head-on with Meta's. "I don't think most people are going to access the metaverse using headsets or goggles," says the Snow Crash author. "Thirty years ago we were in a very different place in terms of graphics and hardware available," Stephenson says. Back then, it seemed essential to rely on goggles or complex interfaces to enable people to experience the metaverse first-hand. But today things look very different on the technological front, he says.
According to Stephenson, his original vision of the metaverse has become outdated and the glasses that once seemed indispensable for exploring virtual worlds now constitute a very unnatural barrier that will prevent this technology from being embraced to the same (absolutely massive) extent that smartphones once were.
Neal Stephenson believes in an open metaverse, independent of large corporations
Even if the alternate universes overlapping the metaverse are not immersive in nature and are anchored in simple 2D interfaces, it is possible to “feel” them through the characters who populate such universes . Their stories are in some ways our stories too. And if such stories are good, they will be able to attract people like a magnet, Stephenson says.
“It’s best to think of the metaverse as a form of communication, just like television, radio luxembourg number data and the internet are today ,” says Stephenson. “People don’t argue about how cool television is or isn’t, but about how cool the shows on it are,” he stresses. That’s precisely why the metaverse won’t necessarily be beholden to a killer app that eclipses all the others.
The metaverse in its most primitive version (the alternative worlds usually associated with video games) is already very successful. But such universes are not yet interconnected and not everyone can afford to build them because it is both complex and expensive.
That's precisely why Stephenson has created the company Lamina1 and interconnect them with each other using blockchain technology as the epicenter of all their efforts.
According to Stephenson and Peter Vesennes, the founders of Lamina1, blockchain is the only possible way to create digital economies, connect worlds, and make them interoperable with each other. This is a vision radically opposed to that of Meta's metaverse, which seems determined to bring the so-called "walled gardens" to the metaverse.
Stephenson and Vesennes are convinced that the true metaverse will not emerge from the wombs of large companies but from smaller players. Through Lamina1, both want to make the infrastructures necessary to create the metaverse (which are as abundant as they are prodigal in complexity) available to everyone.
Lamina1 also aims to generate its own content and meet the needs of independent developers. Its goal is to equip these independent developers with the right tools to give wings to what they are truly capable of (which is no small feat).
Stephenson's plans deal a resounding slap to Meta, whose metaverse appears to be dead
Among the doomsayers who sentence Meta's metaverse to death (it seems irrevocably) is the original "father" of this concept, Neal Stephenson , who first outlined this idea back in 1992 in the novel Snow Crash .
“My novel will outlive Zuckerberg ,” Stephenson told Fast Company. “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about Facebook.”
Stephenson is currently focused on Lamina1 , the company he co-founded to make a reality of the idea he so accurately and visionarily conceived in Snow Crash .
The American writer was the first to imagine a three-dimensional digital world where humans could exist and interact as real entities , to the point of being able to decide to live there permanently. The virtual universe conceived by Stephenson, where there are digital currencies and plots, is owned by a large corporation and is only and exclusively accessible through smart glasses. Stephenson's metaverse is paradoxically almost a carbon copy of Zuckerberg's.
Stephenson has a very different vision of the metaverse these days , and it clashes head-on with Meta's. "I don't think most people are going to access the metaverse using headsets or goggles," says the Snow Crash author. "Thirty years ago we were in a very different place in terms of graphics and hardware available," Stephenson says. Back then, it seemed essential to rely on goggles or complex interfaces to enable people to experience the metaverse first-hand. But today things look very different on the technological front, he says.
According to Stephenson, his original vision of the metaverse has become outdated and the glasses that once seemed indispensable for exploring virtual worlds now constitute a very unnatural barrier that will prevent this technology from being embraced to the same (absolutely massive) extent that smartphones once were.
Neal Stephenson believes in an open metaverse, independent of large corporations
Even if the alternate universes overlapping the metaverse are not immersive in nature and are anchored in simple 2D interfaces, it is possible to “feel” them through the characters who populate such universes . Their stories are in some ways our stories too. And if such stories are good, they will be able to attract people like a magnet, Stephenson says.
“It’s best to think of the metaverse as a form of communication, just like television, radio luxembourg number data and the internet are today ,” says Stephenson. “People don’t argue about how cool television is or isn’t, but about how cool the shows on it are,” he stresses. That’s precisely why the metaverse won’t necessarily be beholden to a killer app that eclipses all the others.
The metaverse in its most primitive version (the alternative worlds usually associated with video games) is already very successful. But such universes are not yet interconnected and not everyone can afford to build them because it is both complex and expensive.
That's precisely why Stephenson has created the company Lamina1 and interconnect them with each other using blockchain technology as the epicenter of all their efforts.
According to Stephenson and Peter Vesennes, the founders of Lamina1, blockchain is the only possible way to create digital economies, connect worlds, and make them interoperable with each other. This is a vision radically opposed to that of Meta's metaverse, which seems determined to bring the so-called "walled gardens" to the metaverse.
Stephenson and Vesennes are convinced that the true metaverse will not emerge from the wombs of large companies but from smaller players. Through Lamina1, both want to make the infrastructures necessary to create the metaverse (which are as abundant as they are prodigal in complexity) available to everyone.
Lamina1 also aims to generate its own content and meet the needs of independent developers. Its goal is to equip these independent developers with the right tools to give wings to what they are truly capable of (which is no small feat).
Stephenson's plans deal a resounding slap to Meta, whose metaverse appears to be dead