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It’s 2042, and the human experience is transformed by the metaverse. Schoolverse, gymverse, workverse, dinnerverse, movieverse, etc. are common now with none of the dystopian apocalypse baggage. Electric flying cars and drones are mainstream, with commercial jets transitioning to renewables. A pair of glasses enhance your real world view with emails, games and music that your smartphone currently does on a tiny screen. E-commerce, work, movies, etc. are no longer restricted to a tiny smartphone screen but unique universes. Your art collection at home is virtual with an NFT gallery of paintings, 3D sculptures, and other abstract art that you flaunt with your friends while experiencing movies with the protagonist, making decisions for him that determines the outcome of the movie.

Like the infinite virtual real estate of the internet, every person, business, and enterprise on the planet has infinite meta-universes generating terabytes of data every day. This data is owned by the same people, businesses and enterprises instead of governments and institutions, giving power back to the people. And each person has their own server farm for their metaverses, data, and their digital twins. And that is not limited to their internet data footprint, but also their medical records and personalised genetic treatments, 3D LiDAR/holographic memories, food/dining, sports, and the list goes on. Great sci-fi predictions have come true in a path much different than expected.

Understanding the “meta-ecosystem”

The metaverse is a part of the meta-ecosystem, specifically the experiential part of it. There are other components that we overlook – like data footprint, and ownership, security of all ecosystem components and supporting hardware for computations and storage. To set some context, every user today generates at least tens of megabytes of data everyday through email, social media, content consumption, and communication, and this is independent of metadata generated by the user’s device. This is from a 2D screen of your smartphone or laptop. Replacing this with the 3D metaverse will generate 10x-100x more data everyday. This data:

• should be stored.
• should be secured.
• should be controlled by the user.

To set a bit more context, three billion users on Facebook generate 10mb data a day on an average –that’s 30gb of data stored with Facebook only everyday – or roughly equivalent to an iPhone SE (32gb). On the metaverse, this will be 3200gb or 3.2tb of day everyday that’s no longer stored with Facebook, but stored with the users. This data should be secure to ensure it is not compromised in any way, and simple enough at the same time so that users understand what they do with their data – unlike complex legal language of end-user license agreements of today.

2021 is the turning point in these discussions, and startups who will lead the meta-ecosystem of the future already exist to build their solutions on new distributed frameworks – alias Web3. This is the promised land from the current centralised management of the internet to a future decentralised internet.

The mindset change

Recently, I was in a panel discussion, and there was an interesting point about people’s mindset – they should be comfortable with having decentralized authority. We have always looked up to centralized authority figures for our welfare. But the meta-ecosystem attacks the existing order of things where power, users, data, and authenticity is all decentralized with collective frameworks to determine the future of the collective. If done wrong, the meta-ecosystem will be controlled by a corporation or a handful of corporations who run the infrastructure and we are back to centralized authority. I’m not sure if we have ever achieved decentralized authority at a scale as large as we are today at any point in history – this is the first time humanity will be embarking on such an experiment at this scale.

The next steps

Today’s users will need to be aware of the technological changes that will drive the meta-ecosystem and try out Web3 applications. This is still years away from becoming mainstream, but we need to pick up the skills today, and build the ecosystem for the world. We will start seeing many job roles in these areas in the next few years, and it is wise to pick up the skills right now and be pioneers in defining the future of connected communication. At the same time, today’s millennials should pick up skills, invest and actively participate in Web3 discussions to shape the future. The previous generation should run experiments, quickly see results, and course-correct, but not delay decision making. It is best to be a part of this global movement rather than playing catch-up.

To be sure, technology is not the panacea for all social ills and societal challenges we face today, and those will continue to exist, but hopefully to a much lesser extent than current times. As we relook at our reality today, key ecosystem partners like NetApp are providing the scaffolding for future applications like Fabrik to create categories that were in the realm of scifi just a few years ago. Fabrik, a Bengaluru-based company, is a Metaverse Apps Platform for individuals, businesses, and enterprises to create their own metaverses with a few clicks. It runs on the browser, and is XR-ready out-of-the-box. Ranging from critical components in the aviation industry to experiential products like wireless earphones, Fabrik has worked with multiple sectors with global customers on interesting visualisation solutions.

As we look forward in time, does the future look scary, underwhelming, exciting, or overwhelming from this side of time?

Cohort 9 of NetApp Excellerator

At Fabrik, we consider ourselves fortunate to be a part of cohort 9 of NetApp Excellerator in our journey to achieve scale. With a partnership with NetApp, we are able to level-up their customers across multiple sectors into the Metaverse with use-cases that have real business impact today. Banking on many years of relationships with NetApp, customers find Fabrik reliable and become our partners in utilising immersive capabilities at scale across multiple geographies.

NetApp Excellerator’s Demo Day is scheduled to take place on January 20, 2021. Don’t miss it. Click here to register