Thread by @danacowley

We’re at #siggraph room 403A/B and to confirm, this is being recorded

A few requirements
1. Industry standards for interoperability
2. Simpler, more definitive file formats, e.g. make USD, GLTF, MDL more conveyable together losslessly
3. Open standards for the identity of people and social graphs, plus ownership of digital objects for economies

4. Standards for client/server comms & server/servers comms - single, huge shared world where everyone can participate together seamlessly.
Federated model, e.g., email vs decentralized model.
Don’t let this be obscured by blockchain hype w/ crypto! Blockchain in theory is good

If we’re ever going to look for a blockchain solution for the metaverse it will need to be radically different from what we have now. Look now to the federation for answers, and possibly to blockchain for solutions down the road.

5. Programming model. The web uses a closed-world programming model but the metaverse will need an open-programming model to enable user-generated objects and spaces of all different types. Crossovers of games and brands are an indicator —> shared 3D entertainment medium

6. Open-world compatibility over time. Guaranteed set of rules for adding classes, functions, etc. without breaking compatibility. Modular open-world evolution must be a first-class design consideration.

7. Seamless participation in an open, shared world. Several competing ideas
Message passing concurrency, e.g., JSON over http (good, not perfect)

We have to implement safe, isolated, consistent, durable transactions.

And this has to scale to world-scale concurrency.

Note that the term here is programming environment, not programming language. Do we need a new one? Maybe. Network protocol is key. It has to be easy to write code for the metaverse down the road. Need a language library that exposes intermediate-level operations.

The highest level language could be a scripting language to ensure security and stability. The heavy metal language will include a lot of C++.

8. The metaverse economy has to be creator-friendly — a trusting, transparent & fair environment with incentives to build content.

There’s a lot of value in monetizing content other than paying for it!

YouTube ads vs. Support-A-Creator

The latter is the tip of the iceberg in terms of indirect economies where people are incentivized to interact with content. Trust is so important!

9. Curation and moderation. How do we mitigate dangers of abusive and offensive content, trolls and bullies?

We have to fix algorithms that are driven by engagement alone. Engagement can be positive or negative. Today’s platforms are built to reward engagement and make money

Think about designing platforms for the metaverse that don’t fall prey to these sets of problems.

s/o to Fortnite for getting some of this right. Most folks are playing with friends and family which fosters positive and empathetic spaces

We need high-empathy platforms.

An hour in the metaverse needs to be better than
- an hour on Facebook
- an hour on Instagram
- an hour on Twitter
- an hour on YouTube
- an hour on Netflix
- an hour in Fortnite
- an hour in anything we have now

We can completely escape an advertising-based model if we take this thoughtful approach in building the metaverse.

If you’re exposed to stuff you’ll see it because you want to see it.

The barriers to success to launching a completely new platform are immense but we’re much closer to the start of an open metaverse than we would be if we had to start them all right now. We have numerous open standards for file formats, voice comms, identities, connectivity

We need to set these open formats as our standard file formats, a little bit at a time. We need agreements between companies so that we can integrate at a much larger scale. Enable players to migrate from world to world using a single identity.

If we could all agree on a standard programming library of some sort then that would set the stage for a standards-based social ecosystem.

Let’s build a positive, global experience that we can all participate in and contribute to 💛🧡💚💙💜

Note from Q&A:

It’s okay if user-created pieces break from time to time. Authors can fix stuff like that.

We should always be concerned first with user privacy and security.