Metaverse
Web 3: What the 3rd Generation of the Internet Brings to the Table
You can be forgiven for thinking that Web3 or Web 3.0 is just another trendy buzzword that lets tech companies sell you the same product slightly upgraded under a cool new façade. For one thing, there is no official definition for Web 3, just a collection of parameters that classifies its general qualities, functions, and components. What most seem to agree on, however, is the decentralized control of digital assets, content, and space.
Many say it is the future of the internet, but much remains to be seen. Technological advancements recently coming into the spotlight are rapidly morphing in new exciting and sometimes chaotic and arbitrary ways, all together forming what we call the third generation of the internet, Web 3.0.
To understand how that differs from previous iterations of the internet, we have to define Web 3.0’s predecessors briefly.
Web 1.0: The Original Network
Web 1.0 can be described as the earliest useful version of the internet we know today. Pretty much a big Wikipedia linked together.
People use the web purely for content consumption, with very limited content coming from a centralized source, the website’s owner. In other words, the only interaction with this type of internet was one way.
With its most common applications being E-mail and real-time retrieval of news, the content produced was made by the companies that hosted webpages, making Web 1 a one-way stream of information.
Web 2.0: The Age of Internet Interactivity
Web 2.0 can be defined by its two-way data exchange system, spearheading the internet into what we know today.
Websites became more affluent, more dynamic, interactive, and complex than before, but more importantly, users could generate and share their content. This is where the internet became a two-way street, in which users create and post content, while platform owners take and store their data both to improve their services and to monetize.
As we all know at this point, centralized data control can be concerning when we think about today’s Big Tech giants, such as Google and Meta leveraging this fact to build their global digital empires.
With that in mind, many began to look for a more decentralized internet to roam.
Enter Web 3.0: Essentially, a Decentralized, Blockchain-based Internet
Web 3 is still an elusive and vague term. Still, it can be confidently referred to as a peer-to-peer network or networks that bypass the need for a third party, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., for governance and ownership of content and other digital assets. It does not rely on centralized servers to relay information and log transactions, becoming inherently ‘permissionless’ at its core, so to speak.
As we head into a digital-driven world, having that much little control over our data will become much less appealing and more burdensome. A web 3.0 ecosystem would enable users to take more control over their financial dealings because every blockchain can have its own rules. It also allows users to have some degree of governance of the web network itself, i.e., proof of stake.
In this method in Web3 application, the back-end infrastructure is inherently decentralized through nodes that maintain the blockchain network. The advantage is that if one of these nodes goes down or is hacked, the system carries on, avoiding a mass blackout situation.
Compare that to the all-too-common server crashes and blackouts that occur every so often, sometimes lasting a few hours at a time. People who have essential work on those apps are left without any other option other than waiting for servers to start running again.
In a truly decentralized network, you don’t need to trust any person or company with your information but the entire system.
The disparity between Web2 and Web3
To illustrate the difference between a Web 2 and Web 3 application, let’s look at any social media site.
- The site owner can censor anything you put up there because, by law, it is their site. In comparison, a web3 site is ‘co-owned’ by the developers and stakeholders, as the user had put a stake in the blockchain, and therefore, is not censorable unless there is a 51 percent vote to the contrary.
- The site owner has the right to prevent the purchases or enforce service fees. At the same time, gas fees are the plague of Web 3 applications and blockchain networks.
- Centralized systems go down and take a long time to start up, whereas a decentralized system will keep going so long as there are the blocks to do it.
Of course, this does not mean that all apps should be decentralized.
Many of today’s Web 3 have centralized components and use centralized systems to run their applications. But this is proving to be a good thing so far, at least as far as safety goes.
Theft and fraud have been constant obstacles in cryptocurrency and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) trade and investment for traders and creators alike. However, well-established sites such as Open Sea have managed to keep a tight ship when it comes to responding to hacks and recovering their users’ assets before they are gone for good.
OpenSea’s use of a centralized security system allows for quick, timely, and accurate responses to a threat, an avenue that a fully blockchain-based internet might not be able to match at the same scale, some critics say.
Web 3 remains, in the eyes of many and especially the younger generations, the next evolutionary step in the history of the internet. Much remains to be seen for when the hype subsides and real polished Web 3 products become mainstream.
The decentralized aspect of Web 3.0 would also be very appealing to those who work in the creative industry and social media. YouTube content creators have long lamented how the platform’s all-mighty and all-knowing algorithm can turn their careers upside-down at any given change to the backend.
A small change in the algorithm, a copyright law update, or any modification to the platform that sees their traffic suddenly slashed by shadow-ban or demonetizations or their content banned outright. The freedom from such infringements looks increasingly appealing as we see more people who want to make sure that their digital business ventures, their copyright, and their content is theirs alone.
However, it is a simple stretch to assume that decentralized networks are corruption-free. In fact, what we are seeing today is arguably worse.
Elon Musk’s DogeCoin cash grab was an obvious one. All he had to do to multiply his winning was release a Tweet; then DogeCoin shot up in value. All a stakeholder has to do is sell their winnings, and they’re golden.
Another example would be manipulating the Cyberpunk NFT market value, which remains widely unknown to those who fell for the scheme, and those who participated – big-time influencers who shall not be named – reaped the benefits.
A new dimension is added to the internet as a whole: The dimension of self-governance. Currently, developers are using a healthy mixture of Web 2 and Web 3 technologies to create the earliest iterations of decentralized applications. Now is the time for entrepreneurs and innovators to stake their claim on a new digital world.
If the internet and the videogame industry have shown us anything, it is that where humans go, human vices follow. Violence, sexual assault, abuse, and more, the internet is home to everything that exists in the real world, accentuated by the anonymity and lack of regulation offered on the web. With that, could we see one of humanity’s worst inventions, slavery, finding fresh soil in the hyper-immersive digital world called the Metaverse? Might we see the emergence of digital slavery?
Metaverse technology has exceeded the ideation stage and upgraded to the on-ground application rather than remaining an innovation, which means the possibility of the Metaverse encroaching on the real world is getting closer. Since the start of the pandemic, a large number of people have gradually shifted to conducting their daily lives online. Bringing these activities together in one cohesive digital environment is not as big of a step as it might have seemed a few years ago because we have gradually grown accustomed to working, shopping, and socializing digitally.
Where the Border Crosses into the Danger Zone
There are several facets of the modern-day that people refer to, although loosely, as slavery. It might be easy to dismiss online activists who scream “modern slavery” whenever their boss asks them to work overtime. While it is indeed unethical to compel workers to work weekends, what we are discussing here is far more sinister and less subject to arguments.
You can quit your job, but can you really throw in the towel on all things digital in today’s world and still be able to function and survive?
Information is Power
We all know by now that our data is not in our hands for the most part. If you interact with the digital world in any capacity, you leave a digital footprint in the form of information. This information is stored and used by the companies that own your points of interaction, both in the form of hardware (your phone) and software (your Facebook account).
Whenever this data is obtained by governments or corporations, whether legally or otherwise, through murky and drawn-out contracts, the user is enslaved in the sense of ownership, the emergence of new categories of information “slave owners” has been made possible by the combination of linked personal data, coercive and automated information gathering, and “forever storage.”
Personal information is extracted, traded, and asserted. The traders contend that all of the personal information they have obtained is “unowned” raw material. Similar to raw materials, those who extract and refine the material own the commercial value and the raw material itself. What is to say that we, as sources of raw material, are not refined, packaged and sold off to the highest bidder in a macabre form of digital slavery through information.
The more reliant we are on the digital world, and the more digitized our world becomes, the closer we draw to such a reality.
Social Credit System and Digital Slavery
This must be mentioned. One of the most effective ways to control a population is to incentivize certain behaviors through rewards and punish others.
Think corporate loyalty programs, but darker, much darker. The Chinese government’s social credit system imposes sanctions for “bad,” or behavior that is not supported by the state—to see where this kind of government behavior might lead. If such systems were to proliferate, aided by the data that every tech giant has on everyday people, you have a groundwork on which to impose control over an entire population and may give the right to digital slavery. At the very least, digitally-enabled methods of control.
Digital Workforce
In a less creepy but equally thought-provoking stance, a company called Soul Machines, based in New Zealand, claims to create AI-driven digital humans for clients to use for things like customer service, marketing videos, and education. According to The Verge, co-founder Greg Cross stated that the company also has its eyes on the future and intends to build a “digital workforce” for a potential metaverse. Could this be digital slavery in its infancy being cast as a cool new techy trend?
The disturbing part is that these concepts are not necessarily born with the Metaverse, still a vague concept without a form, but they are realities of daily life today. With the hyper immersive and deeply seeded technological capabilities that metaverse technology has to offer, we might see these concepts cracked up to eleven.
Inside Telecom provides you with an extensive list of content covering all aspects of the tech industry. Keep an eye on our Technology and Metaverse sections to stay informed and up-to-date with our daily articles.
Two currents that are said to revolutionize the digital world are the Metaverse and Web 3. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is not a fan of either. As the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk’s take on the Metaverse was made quite clear in his interviews and tweets. He couldn’t envision a compelling use-case for the VR-driven Metaverse and mocked Web3, a hazy idea in which internet services are redesigned around blockchain and cryptocurrency, saying “I don’t get it” and calling it “more marketing than reality.”
Musk acknowledged that he might simply be “too old” to comprehend these cutting-edge technologies. He asked, before adding that he was very much one of those people who understood the potential of the internet in 1995, “Am I like one of those people who was dismissing the internet [in] ’95 as some fad or something that’s never going to amount to anything?”
Musk criticized the Metaverse for lacking compelling use cases and providing consumers with a subpar experience.
Elon Musk’s take on the Metaverse came off as a mockery, saying that “putting a TV on your nose does not necessarily put you in the Metaverse. He went on to say that he doesn’t see people strapping headsets to their heads for an extended period of time and never wanting to take them off, Musk said. Musk added that he has yet to see a compelling argument for the creation and proliferation of the Metaverse.
Another alternative vision for the internet’s future is Web3, which has received a lot of support because of the notion that regular internet users will be able to directly profit from their content and online activity rather than having this value captured by a few tech giants.
Regarding Web 3, another term thrown around alongside the Metaverse, Musk didn’t spend much time talking about Web3, but like fellow tech CEO Jack Dorsey, he has previously expressed doubts about the initiative on Twitter. Dorsey’s argument is that Web3 won’t democratize anything; rather, it will merely transfer authority from established incumbents like Facebook to upstart venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz.
Elon Musk’s take on the Metaverse, or what it could become, more heavily leans towards Neuralink. He believed that the Neuralink invention has a better chance of offering a metaverse-like experience than any amount of VR technology. “In the long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully into virtual reality. I think we’re far from disappearing into the Metaverse, this sounds just kind of buzzwordy.”
Musk founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology business with the primary goal of implanting brain implants in people in order to improve and restore their physical capabilities using computers. But in the future, who knows if the invention could be used to drape human perception with digital XR elements.
Inside Telecom provides you with an extensive list of content covering all aspects of the tech industry. Keep an eye on our Technology and Metaverse sections to stay informed and up-to-date with our daily articles.
Since Facebook announced it is rebranding to Meta, the long-forgotten concept of the Metaverse, which first appeared in 1992 in the novel “Snow Crash”, has suddenly become the talk of the town. The concept of the Metaverse is fascinating to say the least, for all the good and bad reasons. It is no longer a question of who owns the Metaverse, but rather what the Metaverse is developed for. As with any technology, the Metaverse does indeed have a dark side with people interacting in the digital world without any proper regulatory measure. However, many other applications are taking the concept in the right direction with a potential to improve many practices and activities. The industrial Metaverse is a concept that merges advances in industrial IoT (IIoT) with the latest developments in 3D representation and the extended reality. While IIoT has been the driver for Industry 4.0, the Metaverse can indeed be the precursor for Industry 5.0. On another note, the industrial Metaverse is a concretization of digital twin solutions applied to industrial applications. Therefore, how is the industrial Metaverse shaping up to be the next big thing?
Industrial Metaverse Use Cases
The industrial Metaverse is meant to change how industries are functioning, both reducing costs and improving performance. The scale of changes is similar to what digital twins in meant to bring to the healthcare sector.
Automation
With the advent of the new virtual world, automation will be taken to the next level. The combination of IIoT and 5G private networks has allowed enterprises to streamline their operations. The addition of an extended reality layer will allow related personnel to visualize how automation is taking effect and identify ways to improve it.
Product Design
One of most time-consuming tasks in industry is the proper design of products. The main issue in the process is how to find the optimal design that meet the defined requirements without any defects or foreseeable issues when it is meant to be put into operation. The output of the design process will have a big effect on the remaining steps including manufacturing and testing. This is why extensive simulations are usually performed to make all variables are behaving as they should. The industrial metaverse will enable a digital twin of the product being designed. The group of engineers responsible for the design can see the product in action before even being manufactured. The extended reality tools will therefore faithfully represent how the end-product will operate in real scenarios.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain
Manufacturing is another key process that affects the whole product lifecycle as involves many activities including the provision of materials, the availability of the required manufacturing tools, among others. Manufacturing is also the central component of the supply chain, in between the sourcing and procurement processes and the delivery process. While it is affected by delays in acquiring in necessary resources, it can itself significantly affect the distribution of the intended product. The beauty of the industrial Metaverse is that it allows the streamline the whole process, reproducing every single step and detail. As in the design process, the personnel can predict ahead of time the root causes of any issue and delay and optimize the supply chain accordingly. Think of it as a virtual Lego where you have infinite resources to choose from to complete your structure!
Training
With any new product and design process comes the need to do a complete training to the different employees involved in the cycle. Trainings are usually costly processes involving the procurement of machines and using the services of specialized instructors. The industrial Metaverse can be used to create a complete lab environment with avatars of the needed instructors and a digital twin representation of the machines, tools, and product needed. The immersive learning experience will provide the same intended result as in a normal physical setup.
Troubleshooting, Testing, and Support
The last advantage worth mentioning for the industrial metaverse is in the testing, troubleshooting and customer support. The ability of future Metaverse environments to faithfully replicate physical entities will make post-production troubleshooting, testing, and support much simpler. For instance, testing new components requires the development of specific tools that will allow the execution of testing scenarios. This extremely costly, yet necessary process, can be greatly streamlined using the future digital ecosystem.
Siemens and the NVIDIA Omniverse
Companies have started going into the new industrial Metaverse ecosystem. Siemens lately announced an agreement with NVIDIA to use its Omniverse platform to create its own industrial Metaverse. NVIDIA’s Omniverse is a multi-GPU (graphical processing unit) platform for 3D simulations with a support to the addition of AI-tools to create virtual movable elements that replicate what is happening in the physical reality. When combined with the Siemens Xcelerator platform, a digital twin for industrial purposes will be created.
The SOLIDWORKS Metaverse
SOLIDWORKS is a platform that is widely used to develop elaborate three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) models. Lately, the company developed an extended reality addition that will virtually bring the developed 3D structure to life thus producing a Metaverse-like ecosystem where the user can interact with the product using augmented, virtual and mixed reality techniques.
Summary
The industrial Metaverse is shaping to be one of the popular and “good” applications of the upcoming virtual world. In a sense, the industrial Metaverse is the industry-specific digital twin solution that is expected to come with future evolutions of the current 5G standard when computational and communications capabilities are enough to produce a seamless lag-free experience. The complete supply chain process can be optimized. The investments towards the construction of the digital twin solution will undoubtedly result in considerable cost savings later on.
“Inside Telecom provides you with an extensive list of content covering all aspects of the tech industry. Keep an eye on our Metaverse, Technology, and Impact space to stay informed and up-to-date with our daily articles.”
Volkswagen to Develop New Semiconductor with STMicro Amid Chip Crunch
Facebook’s Growth Woes in India: Too Much Nudity, Not Enough Women
Exclusive-U.S. Probes China’s Huawei over Equipment Near Missile Silos
What are the Ethical Issues in Biometrics?
NEOM: A $500 Billion smart-city to be built in Saudi Arabia
5 Reasons Why… Telecoms is Important in Society
Advantages and drawbacks of Voice Recognition Technology
SIM Box Fraud – A Growing Concern
Cisco VP highlights need for inclusivity when entering the 4IR
Salt Edge looks to steer digitalization of EU’s banking sector
Ian Terblanche, Global Strategic Sales & Channel Director at Sigfox
