The Metaverse Finally Explained Like Never Before – Techstrong Con 2023

Hi friends, this is Ian Khan right here live streaming with you a Textron con 2023. I hope you've come to this session with a lot of excitement a lot of appetite to know everything that you've always been confused about relating to the metaverse. Right?

It's the metaverse. We've heard about it for the last few years quite quite a bit in the news in you know, technology circles in conversations at conferences. And the whole question is for me at least every time I speak to someone or I meet people is what exactly is the matter worse.

Like what is it? We still don't get it. And I really believe that we're at a time today.

When technology is playing such an important role in our lives from our personal lives to our work and it's not just that but no matter where you are you are you are interfacing with technology. You're using some kind of technology. I know many of you who are part of this session right now possibly work at the back end of everything making sure infrastructure is working making sure you know, your code is perfect and so on and so forth.

I really feel we need to have a broader understanding of Technology just be successful in the world right now in our careers in our jobs then anything else and technology is also evolving at a much faster Pace than it has been before right look at it a few months ago. You had you had Chad GPT three yesterday or this week. We have Chad gp4, who knows when we'll have Chad gbt five and so on and so forth.

So the iteration of Technology the improvements that technology is making is faster than ever. Before in my opinion right as a writer as an author and as a futurist, I really believe it's time to accelerate the pace at which we learn right many of us. We went to we had our Early Education.

We studied we went to University whatever did whatever we have to do to be in the position that we're in right now. And that has to change the way we learn we have to change that. Okay, we have to learn faster.

We have to in some cases learn less but no broader stuff. And so here we are. We're talking about the metaverse.

Here's a quick introduction to me. I am the author of the new book that just launched called the metaverse for dummies and we all are dummies. Everybody's a dummy and that's how the demise books are designed.

Why did I write the book in the first place? Well, because there was nothing else out there that provided a such a broad context and information and depth of knowledge about the metaverse. You've got tons of books on on Amazon as an example or Barnes & Noble.

So wherever you buy books about the metaverse, but nothing that really helps understand what it is and and you know what to do about it. So that's how the Journey of the metaverse for Journey metaverse for demi started for me. And I really wanted to put out something that simplified the metaverse number one, but number two as well provided a bigger picture of the metaverse not just about avatars not just about funny looking images of ours playing video games.

The murderers is much more than that. So in today's session, I'm gonna talk about what the metaverse is. What can it do?

How can we use it? What what is technology doing about it? What are some of the broader implications of the metaphors and the future?

Like there's many many things happening when it comes to the meters, and I'm very excited to be to share this with you. Again, send if whatever platform you're on right now. Send me your comments and feedback ask questions and I'll try to answer them as as best as I can to the challenge through the session.

So the metaverse is not new. Let's start there no matter which is not new. We all know about the novel that started it all snow Crasher in which the the author mentioned the word metaverse in many many years ago and he wrote about this this futuristic technology this futuristic world where people were living in virtual reality and that's where the word metaverse started now many years later.

Let's say four or five years prior to today. The matter was gained traction as a company's like Facebook Snapchat and many others Microsoft Google they all started looking at virtual reality very seriously. Like how can virtual reality enhance remember the days of Pokemon go a few years ago.

Everybody was obsessed with Pokemon that is also a type of a metaverse. The metaphors is a very big encompassing term that has many things in it including games including virtual reality including extended reality and so on. We need to understand.

What does it mean broadly as a technology audience us here you and I we all all in the same boat, but we have many people out there our customers our clients our stakeholders who probably don't want to know the technical definition of the metaverse right for you, and I it might be good, but they want to know the business sense of the matter words. They want to know Where can I take the meta Wars how is it good for my organization? How can I use it to enhance my organization or you know create a new experience for my customer?

So always always for us as a technology audience for you and I and everybody who's attending this session. We have to have a dual understanding of Technology Concepts the technical side of it the nuts and bolts the why how why how does it work? And then also hey what impact does it create for our clients?

And how can we bridge this Gap and how can we transition from this technical stuff to more business knowledge right because imagine this if you're helping your customers your audience is your stakeholders your organization even Take a step ahead and create more value than they are doing right now right engage with more people maybe create experiences that are very different than you're doing. Excellent work. Then you're doing what your mission is is to be a technologist, right?

You're as a technologist your job and role is to help others Embrace technology and get better at it without any friction. Right? We don't want to talk technical.

Jargon with people and confuse the hell out of them. So sorry for the real words that I'm using here. So that's the metaphors for demise and I'll go through some of the stuff here in the book so that we have a realistic understanding.

I wanted the session to be really organic and as a conversation between you and I rather than present a PowerPoint and bore you to death. I really want this a one-on-one understanding of what we're doing. So that's where the meta verse started if we go back to it.

That's where it started Neal Stephenson wrote about it in his book and I highly recommend you maybe read that book. It's called snow crash or I think it's 20 25 30 bucks. Amazon maybe start reading stuff that helps you understand big things watch movies that will help you understand the world you're living in right possibly the stuff you're designing and you're working on it has implications on many things that you don't realize so broaden your horizon watch movies and so on there was another famous movie some time ago Ready Player one, if you haven't seen it then where have you been living right?

I'm sorry. I'm very honest in my opinions. Are not watching content that's immersive.

For example the film I just talked about a Ready Player One. That'll give you a great explanation of what the metaverse can be potentially one aspect of it. Right many things in the film obviously are very futuristic maybe unrealistic but it helps understand where we are headed right when you when you watch movies like The Terminator or her or I am mother right?

This is my recommended list of movie watching you understand the future. And in order to do that. You've you know, you've got to do that.

You've got to immerse yourself in a lot of knowledge. So. A few years ago technology companies said hey, we're going to invest more in glasses in new virtual reality headsets and down.

The pipeline came Oculus Rift and Facebook all acquired them. You had Google Glasses. That was a very early product in the market not really ready for the market because we were still confused about where it's going.

Google glasses came out and many other headsets and virtual reality companies came out with headsets primarily that were used to view things in VR XR Mr. And there's so many different iterations of this. Oh at the same time technology rendering technology also started becoming better.

And this is mostly coming from the gaming industry. The gaming industry is kind of you know, the cheerleader for for the metaverse and gaming companies started building better games started focusing on better graphics higher resolution. And so if you're a gamer and I'm sure many of you are Gamers, then you probably know what I'm talking about or the last 10 years or even 20 years the the level of resolution.

The quality of rendering in video games has increased exponentially and some of this most of this is is being done by companies that are that are creating new software rendering Technologies, and I'll come to the names of some of those companies that are doing that this technology started being used this rendering technology started being used in films. Hollywood films such as Dunes films such as the Avatar Series right and that's why the graphics are so realistic. There's a very specific technology that's helping lead this and it's the Unreal Engine.

The Unreal Engine is a rendering technology that just is years ahead of its time. It's being used in films right now. It's being used in the gaming industry right now, but the way The algorithms it's all algorithm driven, right as you can imagine, not AI necessarily because when it's when we talk about algorithms, we also have talked about AI sometimes not necessarily ai ai I don't want to use hype and buzzword soup here just just to throw everything at you.

But but let's scale it down a little bit. If the algorithms and the programs that render every scene one by one create those pixels one by one and we'll talk about that. I don't know if you've watched a really early movie perhaps in the toy Series, right the toy series films with with the small toys.

Remember the resolution it had right? Remember what it looked like go back maybe five seven years The Lion King 20 25 years ago The Lion King came out and we were all very happy pleasantly surprised on the resolution the graphics back in the day if you were born then so going back from Lion King. I mean I can go back to to the Jungle to the to the Jungle Book the first one where that's how you know film started being created from cartoons and so on so you had jungle king.

Sorry that the Jungle Book Then came Lion King better resolutions and we were loving it. Then came many other movies by Pixar right Toy Story series is one of them and I'm talking about resolution of films right now that has a huge impact on the meters and resolution over the years has started becoming better. We now have games like fortnite we have other games that have such amazing resolution 3D graphic.

They're very very real anybody played FIFA soccer or any of the the games where you have a page where you have a team graphics are ultra realistic UFC and a bunch of those what is powering them at the back end is the same thing that's powering the metaverse in many other ways, right? So, Coming back to present time. All these Technologies Hardware better computer processors quad, you know processors and octoprocessors better Ram better computing speeds now is leading to rendering Technologies becoming better and those rendering Technologies are now being used in films, of course, but now the metaverse many companies now said, hey, let's create this virtual world that's powered by where George reality right?

Let's create avatars. And Pokemon was a big one that made that happen Pokemon created their Pokemon go where you could go and collect points and so on but now that concept has changed and now we have entire world from Roblox to Minecraft to the sandbox to decentral land somnium space and now even actual cities actual real life cities, for example, the city of Seoul the CD of upcoming neon the city of Dubai Singapore is Tonya many others are now creating their Tunes off their own City and You Must Be Wondering Why do we need to like this question is so so important. Why do we need to do it?

Right? Why do we need to do it and I'll give you a couple of examples of why we should do it why we need to do it or write some a company needs to be on the metaverse in the book. I've covered a lot of different stuff relating to business relating to where the metaverse is headed.

What are the business use cases of the metaverse? And I'm not trying to sell you the book. You know, it's 20 30 bucks grab a copy from Amazon buy yourself a copy and I think it's a must read recommendation for me, please, you know, grab a copy from your library borrow it from a friend but go to the book and read it it'll really help you understand the meters just like Neo could fight Kung Fu and Jujitsu in the matrix by downloading that information here.

This is a download for you to be in your head. Okay, please use the knowledge in this book. So in the book I talk about many business cases, but one of the business cases I want to talk about let's talk two things.

Let's talk about because we have limited time. We're going to talk about gaming in general and engagement in general. So all these platforms where land is being sold virtual land is being sold whether you have sandbox, you have the central land you have somnium space.

So what's happening with we are is all these companies in their own way came up with the idea that hey how about we build a virtual world. We build our own virtual world called decentraland The Sandbox the what have you and let's find different ways for people to meet each other for people to engage maybe also for people and users to buy things right think about the changes that digital currencies have brought in the world. For example, cryptocurrencies.

Nonfangible tokens. All of that is a side Revolution that's powering the metaverse that's making a lot of things possible on the matter words without cryptocurrency without nonfangible tokens nfts. The Meters may not have been as juicy and as Commercial then without right?

So it's very that development is very important and hence the convergence of many things that's making the bed metaverse commercially very viable for companies who are exploring it right 10 years ago or 20 years ago. You would not be able to purchase a power pack. In a game in a video game using cryptocurrency or using some kind of a token, right, but now I'm going forward and in the future you're able to get all those Powers you're able to buy something very specific and that thing is now entering fashion, right big fashion houses Gucci's products balenciagas and Adidas and Nikes of the world and now entering the the metaverse as a point to connect with their audiences and take them from that digital Journey to the journey of physical products, right?

That's a whole big stream of Commerce that's powering up because of the metaverse. So if you think of the metaverse as a Channel of Engagement, I really want to think of it narrow down the Focus right now think of it as a Channel of Engagement. This is another way for me to reach my potential audiences.

And guess who's gaming? It's younger Generations. By the way, the average game average age of a gamer is not 14 years.

It's actually around the 38 or 42 years based on some stats I've seen and so it's not necessarily that all Gamers and people on these platforms are very young kids who will grow one day and then you can sell them stuff. No, it's people in their 30s in their 20s and their 40s who are active audiences who are metaverse audiences. And so when when you when they're already there on a platform And their gravitating towards a platform.

They're playing games. They're meeting other people. and Companies manufacturers vendors want to reach them with an offer right whether it's Nike saying hey, here's a new pair of shoes.

You want to buy it. They have to find a way to bring that information to that person who's playing that game or who's in decentraland or who's in the sandbox? And the days of advertising things digitally is is far over.

I mean, yes, we're still advertising things but in a 3D environment in the three-dimensional environment where you have other players where you have a world new mechanisms have evolved and those mechanisms are hey, how about we start constructing things at a building? How about I construct my own Building inside a metaverse and now I can invite other users who are there to come in and experience something that's the fundamental idea behind creating things in the matters and purchasing real estate and doing things in the matter words that we've not seen before so people who ask why are we buying land in the metaverse? I think we have to simplify it and and understand it from this perspective if a metaverse platform anyone of them has you know x amount of users a hundred thousand years a billion users.

How can I as a brand engage with them and the answer for me is how about we sell land the the metaverse? Or platform says how about we create land? Digital land three-dimensional land that can be viewed to Virtual Reality classes and you can feel your in that place and get brand to construct things building stores and all of that and then users can go there and engage with that brand in some way right they can engage to nft's crypto new designs launch events concerts which are all happening on the networks.

And that is where things are headed right now different metaverse platforms have gone through the ups and downs of you know, what land acquisition will mean. Two years ago there was a huge amount of information coming out where Facebook was investing a lot on the metaverse with their Horizon worlds platform and I just wanted to debunk this myth Facebook is not the metaverse Facebook is one player in the metaverse and they're trying to do whatever they're trying to do. But since they are such a big brand and they go through this whole rebranding process of changing their name from Facebook to meta we all feel that.

Oh, they are the metaverse. They are the dominant major big player in the matter verse but they're not there's other players who are equally impactful and will be able to do greater things. So that's kind of the consumer side of the matter is right you and I own cryptocurrency you and I own nonfangible tokens.

We have brands that we affiliate with Nike Vans Adidas Balenciaga Louis Vuitton, whatever whoever it is. We have our favorite performers, Ariana Grande you've got Many others you have Justin Bieber or whatever whoever it is that you like and follow they're all also getting into the matter words and trying to reach their audiences. They're trying to reach Their potential customers.

So for example, if if I if I love let's say Ariana Grande's music and I hear that Ariana Grande is going to be on decentral land and her Avatar. Visually will be performing a song right in a in a in a virtual event that's been organized in The Meadows. Hey, I want to go and watch that.

Why shouldn't I love Ariana Grande right or whoever that artist is and that's how musicians and other brands are trying to connect with their audience is remember again. It's a channel. It's a channel where many people are already there.

They're they're playing a game. They're just excited to be on a metaverse and it's a Channel of Engagement again going. So this is the commercial side.

So the implications of this are in in many many places, you're looking at the the the evolution of the world of digital everything digital products digital Goods where we purchase as users digital Goods on the matter verse and our Avatar can bear them. Why because I got extra money and I want to do that. I want to create an avatar.

I want to create an expression of my life. Want to go out where Balenciaga shoes in my digital world and I want to create my own Persona in the digital world. Right?

I mean can I not have the choice of expression? Of course you can and that's the answer to the why why should my avatar be out there? What will your avatar do there?

I just want to find as a user as an expression a way to express myself in a channel where there are other people right? And that's where the fundamentals of consumerism is and how consumers are interacting with different brands. There's also the industrial side of the matter words and the industrial side of the matter is more around creating digital twins creating.

the exact replica of an environment and Industrial environment but digital so if you're aware of digital twins There are a great way to experiment with actual live things. But without breaking them, right? So let's say a good example of this is Renault the the car company.

So Reno is that one of the first companies that has created a digital twin off their Factory and they've created it in the virtual reality. You can say that it's their own private metaverse, right? It's the their own metaverse and now they're able to visualize their Factory their engineers and their teams are able to visualize their Factory remotely wherever they are and see the processes that are taking place the breakdowns that are taking place.

So instead of looking at an Excel sheet or looking at some other You know CRM system or Erp system. They are visually looking at their Factory in three dimensions, right? And so it's you know, just like they say, you know, a picture is better than a thousand words and a video is better than a thousand pictures virtual reality in many ways is better than a thousand different videos that you can watch right to be immersed in that environment.

It is still early days in the matter worse, and I'm not saying the metaverse has matured that every company of your organization should be on the metaverse. It's very early days. I would be very happy if in the next decade we see an uptake in the matter or as we see many companies investing in it their time energy effort and they they go for digital Twins and so on so it's still very early days.

And this is the time when we can lay down a great foundation for things to come on the matter where so we started with the commercial side of the metaverse. I'm not going to go too deep into cryptocurrency and nfts. It's a totally different topic but it has a huge connection with the matters because many things on the matter was a powered by digital money.

Watch my documentary called the Bitcoin dilemma, which is available on YouTube and some other platforms and it'll give you an understanding of the digital side of money where things are going. What are nfts. Where are we going?

What are we doing with all that? It'll help you connect the dots when it comes to the matter words. We then went from the metaverse to some of the things that are happening on the metaverse.

For example, entertainment is happening concerts are happening. I have a friend and he's actually a surgeon he's a surgeon and they're using the metaverse for training. They're using a private metaverse that's emerging now for training doctors right instead of actually cutting people up and looking into them.

They have 3D visualizations of what people are look like inside what their conditions are. And now the beauty of this is that they can collaborate with other surgeons across the world, which was not possible before right. It's very different sharing and x-ray of a patient with with another surgeon who was thousands of kilometers away or miles away then as compared to both of these people both of these surgeons being on virtual reality and you're right in front of them.

They have a visual 3D representation of the body of a person and conditions that they need to treat and they can zoom in to a specific body part and they can see what's going on. Like that is profoundly powerful. That is so powerful and can be used for so many different things.

But again, it's early days. So right now you're seeing the evolution of many other private meta verses that that everybody doesn't have access to select people can get access to it. So in the next few years I think we'll see a lot more of these industrial professional metaphors whether it's in healthcare.

It's in drug Discovery. It's in the automobile manufacturing Industries and so on so and I think that's the right direction to go into one of the companies that's powering a lot of this obviously again, it's the Unreal Engine and and a gaming companies behind it. I can't remember their name right now.

But also is is NVIDIA Nvidia with their with their chips. And also with something called the Omniverse and Omniverse by Nvidia is a platform to create the matter words to create the foundations of the matter is to be able to design 3d 3d stuff in the matter words, and I really believe Nvidia is going to be a very strong and powerful contributor to the development of the metaverse overall. I know we're running out of time guys, and I have a couple of questions.

First of all come to the live networking. Starting right after my session. I'm going to be in there and I'm gonna answer some of your questions and we can continue the conversation.

I have a couple of questions and and some great comments here. So thanks guys for all the comments that you guys have put in there. I just want to conclude with with one with one thing just to be cognizant of time is that there will be an impact of other Technologies on the meters.

We're hearing a lot about generative AI but think about this scenario that in the metaverse in the upcoming metaverse of the tomorrows. We will have the ability for a user to enter a 3D space in the metaverse, right? Maybe it's a 3D Museum and Based on who that person is based on the user profile there their personality and all the data.

They've already submitted to the platform and what the platform knows about them. AI Technologies and generative AI may be able to display completely different artwork or render different environments based on who they are in their personalities. So when you enter a metaverse, you might see different things in the same space and the coordinates and I might be able to see different things and visuals and Graphics in the same space because now generative AI can create different videos can create different custom personalized offers for individual users in the future metaverse, and that's happening the convergence of AI a generative AI the metaverse in general engagement and so on and so forth.

I think we're out of time today. If you really want to know more by the book get a copy of food from your library steal it from a friend do whatever you need to take do get a copy of metaverse for dummies. It's a really great to read and let me know what you think when you read it.

Thank you so much for your time. Let's jump into the into the networking Zone and let's talk there ask me questions there and All yours, so please see me there. Thank you so much for your time.

And I hope I was able to scratch the surface at least a little bit to get your interest peaked on the metaverse. My name is Ian Khan. com.

See you in the networking friends.