Abstract The Metauniverse is perhaps one of the brightest topics of modern scientific knowledge. Using the means of its immersive interface, the Metauniverse has the widest range of practical applications from purely technical training systems to solving organizational, economic, humanitarian and educational problems. The integrative nature of Metauniverse technology itself combines problems of cognition, human science and specialized formal methods to describe the virtual world. It is well-known that the level of public welfare and educational level of a society are closely interrelated. Therefore, by developing cognitive and creative abilities of the user, additionally with the help of Metauniverse technologies, we provide through appropriate educational programs a high level of the next generation of specialists. We can say with certainty that such specialists will certainly be needed in 10-15 years, possibly earlier. Metauniverse is of special value for educational needs because it allows the user to deepen into the world of socio-cultural processes.
Keywords: Metauniverse, virtual reality, digital technologies, educational space, product avatar, digital value.
For decades, the grandiose potential of virtual worlds existed only on the pages of science fiction novels. Today, "Metauniverse" is one of the trendiest words in technology, and it is enthusiastically accepted by the widest public - from ordinary users to software developers. The number of published scientific, popular scientific and journalistic literature devoted to various aspects of the new reality is also growing. Of course, within the limited scope of one article it is difficult to cover all Metauniverse-related problems in the same depth. Most publications on this subject are devoted to technical means (virtual and augmented reality glasses and helmets, gloves, etc.), various multimedia games and technical applications. However, these topics are beyond the scope of our research interest. The main focus is on problems of practical use and creativity. I believe the Metauniverse, as a technology, can be a powerful means of increasing human creativity on an educational and cultural level.
The Metauniverse is a shared immersive virtual world in which players, usually represented by avatars, can interact with each other, create experiences and create objects and landscapes in the world. They typically have their own internal economy and currency with which users can buy, sell and exchange any digital assets, including digital real estate, items, avatar accessories and more.
Increasingly, the real world is moving tpwards the Metauniverse. A variety of companies regularly host virtual events and festivals that are attended by thousands of people. For example, in 2021, the famous auction house Sotheby's opened a digital replica of its London headquarters in the blockchain game Decentraland. This space has, among other things, a multi-room virtual art gallery that can be viewed by Metauniverse users.
Metauniverses can be more than just an area for some activity - they can grow into entire societies with economies and democratic leadership.
It seems that the Metauniverse is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. Instead of looking at two-dimensional web pages on a screen, users will enter three-dimensional worlds as an avatar (a digital representation of themselves).
The Metauniverse is not just some fancy new way for users to roam the Internet. It is a powerful catalyst for the mass adoption of cryptography and new types of digital assets. Crypto-assets are woven into the fabric of the Metauniverse. They will be cryptocurrencies, coins and tokens, blockchain-based assets linked to virtual worlds.
Today, when most people try to explain what the Metauniverse is, they focus on those three-dimensional worlds that look like computer games. But that's not really the case anymore. Unlike the version of the Internet we use today, most meta-universes will be built on blockchain and feature a dynamic crypto-based economy. Buying land in these meta-universes will be very similar to buying a domain name on the Internet.
Now, if you have a domain name, you can set up a web page and a virtual business at that address. Subsequently, you will have a page within the Metauniverse. If you have a virtual piece of land, you'll be able to set up your virtual business on it. In fact, the coordinates on the Metauniverse map will replace web addresses.
In 2007, I read a story about former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who dismissed the iPhone as a toy - as if the iPhone was nothing but another fad for teenagers. Of course, things look different now. Today, 3.8 billion people use smartphones to find news, shop online, make doctor's appointments, pay bills, post on social media, bank online, watch movies, make dates, do research, and more. Smartphones and the internet have infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Crypto assets in general will likely follow suit.
Today, Technology companies like Google and Epic Games, brands like Gucci and Nike, and even retailers like Walmart are entering or even shaping the Metauniverse.
The Metauniverse was conceived as a new way for people to interact with each other.
One of the main tools of the Metauniverse today are NFTs, which update business standards, providing much-needed transparency and access to asset markets. Because each NFT is unique, Metauniverse tokens and elements can be encoded to easily prove their origin and reliability within the Metauniverse. And while Metauniverses are still in the early stages of development, these new worlds offer intriguing financial opportunities for the future - and new ways to make money from it all.
Ask a member of the NFT community to define Metauniverse or "web3" (a term used to describe the next generation Internet that includes cryptocurrency, NFT, and immersive reality), and you'll likely hear an incoherent answer about decentralization and a future in which digital communities own the Internet. However, put a little more effort into it, and you may discover some truths about the future that the NFT community offers. The NFT is essentially an investment in the Metauniverse.
The NFT community anticipates the emergence of fully immersive virtual worlds that will take precedence over the physical world, or at least exist parallel to it. Soon digital property in the Metauniverse will no longer be something new. It will simply be property. Given that our digital lives are already becoming as important to us as our physical lives, I assume that the market for digital assets may soon become as large (or even larger) than the market for physical assets. This assumption is clearly illustrated by the surge of investment interest in Metauniverse technologies by major financial corporations.
Picture 1. Splash of Metauniverse mentions in annual financial reports of large companies.
Distances can be traveled without losing time. The time factor itself takes on a different meaning because time is easily "rewound" in new environments. The boundaries between real images and fictional images are blurred.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of chip maker Nvidia told Yahoo Finance in an interview in 2021, "The economy of the virtual world will be much bigger than the economy of the physical world. You're going to have more cars built and designed in virtual worlds, you're going to have more buildings, more roads, more houses - more hats, more bags, more jackets. Take the legendary shoe manufacturer Nike (NKE). It has trademarked virtual downloadable sneakers and other digital goods for the Metauniverse. This is a great move. The Metauniverse will become the new center of social interaction. It's similar to what the local pub has been for centuries... TV has been around for decades... early internet chat rooms were in the 1990s... and today Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Soon we'll all be going online in new and transformative ways. Companies like Nike see what's happening and are positioning themselves in advance" [1].
Personally, I am also convinced that because of the exponential growth of technology and the new opportunities these technologies bring, the digital world will overpower the physical world in the next few years.
This means that the speed, growth and complexity of all processes will increase several times.
Naturally, the technologies and tools of the Metauniverse are just as well suited to the needs of education. "In the Metauniverse, a learner can get into the very center of a physical or chemical reaction, influence the outcome of a historical battle, see the fission of atoms and processes occurring in space, or dissect a virtual frog (as the Froggipedia app allows). The use of artificial Intelligence makes it possible to collect data on the success of schoolchildren or students. Big Data analysis helps to choose games or other situations that are optimally suited for training a particular user. In these situations, the person is smoothly led to a practical and interesting application of the acquired knowledge. The assessment of students' knowledge is being seriously refined. On the one hand, it has a gamified, playful, entertaining character, and on the other hand, it is as close as possible to life conditions where the acquired knowledge can be applied (for example, it can be first aid, driving a vehicle or conducting a chemical experiment)" [2].
In this new world, a special place will be given to a new kind of value - digital value.
Digital value creation is any value creation based on the use of digital technologies [3].
In this definition there is no description of the characteristics of the product itself, its target audience, but only an indication of the market category - the context in which it is located, including the channel of interaction (digital technologies). It turns out that all products for all types of potential audience, corresponding to the context of interaction with consumers through digital technologies, have digital value. Thus, we define the creation of digital value not through the unique characteristics of the product itself, but through the context of interaction with consumers. In this case, through digital technologies.
Take Nike, for example. The trademark application that Nike recently filed with the patent office includes the phrase "retail store services with virtual goods." This means that Nike now has a virtual shoe. But what value does it have, you can't put it on your feet and go for a walk around town, can you? As we can see, value is a relative concept and depends on the consumers' chosen point of view. Here we are dealing with a very interesting phenomenon.
"Our view of possible outcomes influences which outcomes we strive for. Thus our ability to solve problems is limited by our own ideas about what goals are achievable", - wrote the guru of modern management R. Ackoff [4]. In other words, our perception of something (choice of point of view) determines our ability to solve problems.
In the example of virtual shoes, we can see that we are talking about a completely different context of interaction. Imagine you leave the virtual conference room where the virtual meeting took place and go to one of the virtual Nike stores. There you buy a new pair of virtual sneakers, then put them on and go to a virtual concert with your friends. This is an example of a Metauniverse, an ongoing virtual space where people can interact with each other and with digital objects.
Compared to established technology trends, the Metauniverse is a small "mustard seed" ready for rapid growth.
By comparison, Apple started developing the iPhone in 2005. And it took the company 16 years to reach 1 billion active users. Apple's market capitalization is estimated at $2.5 trillion, while the Metauniverse market is currently valued at $8 trillion. So Metauniverse is one of the largest markets today.
But if someone had told you in 1993, when the first web browser was first released, that very soon you would be shopping online, video chatting, and posting personal photos on social networks using your smartphone, that would have sounded impossible too.
The fact that the Metauniverse concept is presented as something crazy just means that it is at a very early stage of its development. It may quite possibly become something as commonplace to us as today's Internet in a few years.
The Metauniverse is nothing but a new type of context for interaction between large numbers of people.
Its emergence will inevitably lead to the emergence of new products with a special form of digital value - the Metavieworld. It must be said that digital virtual sneakers are already a big business.
In March 2021, customers shelled out $3.1 million dollars for 621 pairs of virtual sneakers. Virtual sneaker maker RTFKT (pronounced "artifact") sells a limited run of its virtual products designed for avatars. RTFKT's sales for the first quarter of 2021 totaled $4.5 million. And unlike Nike, RTFKT doesn't have to deal with supply chain disruptions between factories in China and Vietnam, as well as markets in Europe and the US.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions that followed have forced all of us to spend most of our lives online. We are increasingly interacting with family, colleagues and friends via Zoom instead of live. Children now learn via Zoom instead of at school.
In many ways, we are becoming a digital species. And just as in real life we maintain our status with the latest Nike products, very soon we will be fulfilling our need for recognition in the virtual worlds in which we spend more and more time.
Nike has registered seven trademarks in the U.S. to sell branded virtual items, including on the checkmark logo, the "Just Do It" slogan and a set of "downloadable virtual goods" that include sneakers, eyewear, sports equipment, bags, backpacks and toys. The company has also opened up a position for a virtual shoe designer. The fact that Nike, which has one of the world's most hyped apparel brands with $37 billion in annual sales and 77,000 employees worldwide, plans to do business in the Metauniverse is proof that the idea is growing in popularity. And Nike is not alone in this. Presently, Adidas, Dolce & Gabbana, GUCCI, LVMH, and many other major brands are on the same path.
In English there are two nouns denoting play - play and game. In Russian, both are denoted by one word, "game", which can cause confusion. Games that are called "play" are usually instinctive and require the most basic skills: running, jumping, pushing, wrestling, throwing, sorting objects, digging holes, as well as caring, collecting, imitating someone, and so on. It's more like fun with implicit rules.
Imagine kids running around the yard playing pirates. One yells: "I killed you!" and the other yells back, "No, I killed you!" Every time there is a need for some rules, the participants agree on them. Exactly the moment an unchanging set of rules appears in this pirate battle, the fun ends and the real game begins. Following this analogy, a product, from the consumer's point of view, can be in two states: product-as-fun and product-as-game. If the customer understands the purpose of the product in his life, then for him it is a game, and it is up to him to participate in it or not. However, if the customer does not understand the purpose of the product in his life, then for him it is fun. "So, nonsense!" - he will say. Here there is no question of any choice and decision making. His attention is concentrated on things that are more important to him.
Based on the above, the most logical step for an entrepreneur in this situation would be to start creating what could be called a "product avatar". I use this name by analogy with the term "customer avatar", already widely known in marketing, which is a description of an ideal representative of a particular segment of your target audience. By its nature, such a "product avatar" would be some kind of product symbol (but not the product itself in the physical sense) that would be easily perceived and recognized by potential customers. This kind of "product avatar" can be demonstrated using the fictional example of a Rolls-Royes automobile (Picture 2).
Picture 2. Product avatar
Right now, we can say the meaning of what we used to understand by the word "product" is changing. We are no longer talking about a product "in and of itself", but about a product that acts as an interface between the physical and digital worlds. These kinds of products represent a new level of products. Now, by "product," we can mean anything: an impressionist painting, a Prada bag, training, a game, a hobby, and so on - anything that exists in tangible or intangible form due to the interaction between different people.
Jaroslav Kaplan Author of the book "Business Incognita. How to push the boundaries of entrepreneurial thinking". Expert in the field of sustainable development of organizations and discovering new sources of growth. Developer of the methodology of contextual market research. Member of the International Association of Strategic and Competitive Intellect Professionals SCIP (USA).
In this light (yet profound) business fable a very magical and sincerely nice goldfish, Goshio, navigates her aquarium and the seas of the Paraquarian world beyond. The heroine's journey is an allegory of the entrepreneurial world (and of life) – based on the author's own research journey to circumnavigate the fascinating World of Entrepreneurship. www.goshio.com
[Electronic resource]. - Mode of access: R. Ackoff. The structure of problems and ways of their solution: Psychology OnLine.Net (psychology-online.net). - (date of access: 20.02.2023).