that the Metaverse is an inherently dystopic ideal.

And the challenge, of course, with that

is while many people are familiar with the term,

there is disagreement over whether

or not this is just some conquest to techno-feudalism,

which is to say if big tech owns the atoms

of the places that we work and, in some regard,

own potentially the cryptocurrencies we're paid in,

that we find ourselves in a form

of 'virtual indentured servitude.'

The fact that the Metaverse is being ushered in-

or seems to be by big tech corporations,

and that the term itself is originated

from the dystopian science fiction novel,

and all of its antecedents were largely dystopic

in tone seem to reaffirm that hypothesis.

I'm not convinced and, in fact,

I would argue that the etymology,

or the history of the term is the easiest one to disabuse.

So you'll find that the essence of most fiction is drama,

and human drama tends to be the most satisfying.

There's a reason why you don't see

many fictional novels set in utopias.

They're not much fun; there's not

much human exploration there.

And so yes, when you take a look

at "Snow Crash," "Ready Player One,"

"The Matrix," most examples like that are dystopic.

But counterbalancing that are the actual experiences

designed to realize the Metaverse.

Not just "Roblox" today, or "Second Life" in the 2000s,

but the experiences that actually date back

into the 70s, what we called,

'Multi-user shared hallucinations'-

text-based virtual worlds.

They were designed for totally different ideals.

And that was fun, experimentation,

exploration, communication-

why?

Because, of course, no one's going to sign up,

least of all stay in a virtual space that is dystopic.

And so, I would argue that no matter how scary

the term's origination is, the soon-to-be hundreds

of billions of hours that have been spent

in metaverse-like experiences spanning four generations

of human history have had a totally different tone.

Real-time-rendered virtual worlds

and 3D simulations are largely limited

to consumer leisure, a tiny portion of it at that.

But that's actually a fun way to talk about one

of the most frequent criticisms about the Metaverse,

and that's that we will find ourselves isolated

from one another, locked away in our homes

with a VR headset strapped to our face,

reluctant to ever do anything "real."

The truth is, the primary draw of time

for the Metaverse is likely to be the dominant use

of leisure time today-and that's television.

In the United States, 300 million Americans watch

an average 5.5 hours per day of TV.

More than two-thirds of that time is done alone.

Almost all of it is done sedentary.

One of the reasons why I think the Metaverse

is likely to have strongly positive impacts

on society is just substituting time

from a disengaged solitary activity to one that is active,

that is social, that is designed for engagement.

One of the most important ways to understand

the positive effects of the Metaverse,

or 3D-real-time rendering is to take a look at education.

It remains deeply unequal globally, largely inaccessible

to most, and geographically discriminatory.

We hope that the Metaverse brings to life much of

what we imagine "The Magic School Bus" to be.

We're visual and experiential learners.

But papier mache, baking soda, and vinegar

for a volcano only goes so far.

We learn about physics today in a textbook.

And yet, in these 3D environments

you can download course packs right now

from Epic or Roblox that allow you

to build complex Rube Goldberg machines,

see how gravity plays out under different Gs.

And these classes can be live-performed,

they're infinitely re-playable, they're available to all,

they have no marginal cost for delivery.

I'm not saying it's a panacea-

inequality of education and opportunity will endure-

but I really do believe

that these capabilities significantly constrain that gap.

At the end of the day, the Metaverse

will be what we make it:

who runs it,

how they run it, the ways in which society is,

and is not integrated into it, it's democratic

and non-democratic nature, those are up to us.

The Metaverse is coming, there's no turning around

on 3D-real-time rendering on graphics-based computing.

If there's an organic desire for a new interface

we're going to go there.

But if we, the constituents, don't want it to be dystopic

but, more importantly, if we want it to be a strong force

for good in a way over the last 15 years maybe it wasn't,

we need to be educated, we need to lean in, not resist.

- Get smarter, faster with videos

from the world's biggest thinkers.

And to learn even more from the world's biggest thinkers

get Big Think+ for your business.