[April 16, 2022] – Had the great good pleasure to sit in on a closing keynote at IDC Directions last month. It was led by Benedict Evans. Primarily he discussed Web 3 and The Metaverse – two areas that now vie for attention in the daily cauldron called high technology.
Who is Benedict Evans? A very witty London-based independent analyst who worked with a16z, NBC Universal and others. He has a thoughtful blog comprising essays, and a nifty email newsletter. And his hand is firmly on the pulse of The Next Big Thing.
There are always new upswelling technologies, shifting about like tectonic plates, as Evans’ presentation makes clear. Some will sputter, some will morph, and some will succeed — though few will thrive outright in the way that the PC and the smartphone thrived.
Evans outlines the major differences for the two presently vying Next Big Things: Web 3 and The Metaverse. The former is a new form of data and compute distribution heavily reliant on self-governing subnetworks based on blockchain. Its potential is not as a mere cryptocurrency exchange but as a wide spanning platform.
The blockchain underpinning is key to Web 3.0. It, said Evans, is: “a vision of an open source distributed virtualized computing system in which anybody can contribute, anybody can connect and all of the participants have some share of governance.”
Meanwhile the latter Next Big Thing candidate – the metaverse — is a way of saying that “VR isn’t just about goggles to play games, or do remote surgery … instead, this might be the next universal platform after smartphones.”
Evans points out these are new morphs of former technologies … or as he puts it:
Both of these in a sense are terms that rebrand, re conceptualize, or re imagine some ideas that have been around for a while.
Thus, the two platforms bring together individual techs a’ percolating, at least in the VC community dream.
The Metaverse thesis is the simpler of the two, he said,
VR and AR become the next universal device after smartphones. They break out of games — they break out far beyond games.
Yet, with the Metaverse, Evans said, there is a hurdle it may not vault. That is due to the case that electronic gaming remains a small market in comparison to the markets for PCs or smartphones. I suppose a new generation raised on these things may expand, and thus expand the potential of the Metaverse. Then too, phenomena like Roblox could combine aspects of blockchain-imbued Web 3 community and Metaversian components.
The point he raises on mitigating the Metaverse’s future – which I’d amend to include Web 3, or What Have You — is that it is not so much about whether the technology gets better, but whether,
If it does, who will care? And, will this break out and become a universal product?
There is no future except in use cases, as the saying goes.
My reflection on Evans’ treatise holds that, for today’s exciting assortment of new technologies (IoT, digital twins, ML, Edge, blockchain, quantum computing) to glom into something new and take hold, good large-scale use cases will need to be imagined, created, and promoted.
My experience speaking with chip builders focused on ML on the IoT edge tells me that they are working on this. Smart speakers seem closest to scaling – FitBits less so. Digital Twin makers as well are looking for large markets, but highly vertical uses seem to diffuse their chances there, and the are less likely to find the mass consumer market swath, but it’s not impossible.
*****
Besides being the first chance to get out of the house and to a conference, covering Edge Computing, IDC Directions 2022 in Boston’s Seaport District was also a nice return to something I’ve always enjoyed: the keynote on the future. Huzzah to Evans and IDC! Such Think Pieces were once de rigueur for some events but less so since everyone is in such a damn hurry. Evans’ critique was compelling, and I think his presentation usefully crystallizes constructive modes of technology analysis. Truly thought leading.
RELATED
Ben Evans Site and Presentation https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
IDC Directions Site and Video Replay https://www.idc.com/events/directions/proceedings
Progressive Gauge Podcast Metaverse Ruminations https://progressivegauge.com/2022/01/31/progressive-podcast-digital-twins-meet-the-metaverse/