Global Metaverse: Taking Stock of Technology

Yesterday I wrote Taking On The Metaverse Roadmap, which was critical of the Metaverse Roadmap (3 meg, PDF). Because of that, I decided to write a bit of where a true global metaverse can and would be useful.

Since most of the people who are interested in the metaverse seem to consider Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) to be some sort of religious text, I haven't read it and still view it as a cult. I write this since a cult has a perspective outside of the mainstream, and while people writing of the metaverse seem to all have a template based off of Neal Stephenson's book the majority of people aren't talking about the metaverse. Indeed, there are some parts of the world that consider running water to be the most useful technology. Thus, the basis for the metaverse as I see it would incorporate all that are not in the mainstream of the minority - a dangerous basis, since no one can truly incorporate what would be needed on a global scale. However, I can try.

Taking Stock: People and Technology Access

Before we go running off and making the world a better place, we should probably take a good look at where we are now. This means looking at the backbone of what the metaverse would have to be - the network across which all this information would flow. The Internet, which you are likely using now (unless someone printed this out), is the major aspect of the backbone. We who are on the internet typically forget about those other people who do not have access. But we who do have access are among the elite 17.6% of the world¹.

We're a minority. I'm reminded of that when I talk to my neighbors and relatives on a daily basis. So we have a minority of people discussing the future of the entire planet using technology that the majority of the planet doesn't have access to. Further, while there may be - at a very generous guess - 50 million people using virtual worlds or 3D web related technologies. Out of 1,154,358,778 people, that is 4.33% of the people with access to the internet. Or, globally speaking, that is 0.7% of the entire world.

And not all of the 50 million people are taking an active role in discussing the metaverse. If we say that there are 50 experts (the number the Metaverse Roadmap used) out of 50 million people, the representation there is 0.0001% of the 50 million people. More easy to grasp, every million people gets an expert who they may not have even heard of.

That's what we have. So the first objective I would undertake for the metaverse would be boosting internet access and more importantly, broadband levels of access (since broadband penetration continues to lag internet penetration significantly). As of June, 2006, the OECD reported 181 million broadband users. 181 million of 1,154,358,778 people with internet access is roughly 15.679%. And globally speaking, that 15.679% is only 2.753% of the entire world.

On the plus side, mobile phones are a boon of technology throughout the world - so much so that mobile phone penetration supposedly has surpassed the global birth rate. In 2005, it was reported that there was a mobile phone for every person in the developed world, which isn't too much of a big deal. After meeting Bukeni Waruzi² at the MobileActive Convergence in 2005, mobile technology usage became more clear in my eyes - but charging the mobile phones was a problem.

Computers seem to pop up wherever someone summons one, but there are still a lack³. This is where mobile phone and related technologies seem to have their greatest leverage toward anything resembling a 'metaverse'. In essence, before a metaverse can exist in the context of technology, it has to exist in the context of people.

All of this should show that there is a technology imbalance, and if we want a vision to meet reality we have to address that. Is it a digital divide? Yes, in a way, but more often than not, it is a policy divide - policies which affect economic ability and technology adoption and use. That comes tomorrow.

¹Previously 16.9%. Markedly better than 6 months ago, but some hold the ITU statistics in question.
²A friend tells me that Bukeni is in New York (political asylum) nowadays where he has less issues with internet access and mobile phone usage. Maybe that movie on the child soldiers hit a few nerves. Eat a bagel for me, Bukeni, and keep landing on your feet.
³ Don't get me started on the OLPC. Seriously.