Thread by @nishitaARK

I've been thinking about the metaverse, web3, and our future—as our lives increasingly shift online, what changes about our consumption?

Below, a thread on consumption moving from the physical to the digital & why this shift could have a positive environmental impact 🧵 (1/14)

As a quick framework, I think of consumption in these three buckets:

1. Physical necessities
2. Physical utilities
3. Emotional utilities

Likely an oversimplification, but bear with me... (2/14)

Physical necessities are things your body needs to survive (food, shelter, etc).

Physical utilities are goods you use to operate in today's society (cars, clothing, etc).

Emotional utilities are meant for your recreational enjoyment (toys, luxury items, etc). (3/14)

Physical necessities are relatively straightforward. Unless something super crazy happens, our physical necessities will continue to be consumed physically in the future. Moving on... (4/14)

Jumping to emotional utilities, the third bucket: this bucket has, in recent years, seen a dramatic move online. In fact, I would put most NFTs in this bucket—from the Bored Ape that provides you social utility/recognition to the digital sword you can now use across games. (5/14)

I think the second bucket (of physical utilities) is particularly interesting. Imagine a future in which you spend most of your everyday time online—perhaps on Zoom, possibly in the metaverse, or maybe on Zoom in the metaverse. (6/14)

Why own twenty different shirts that you don't even really wear out anymore? Why own a car when you can digitally dial into any place? As more and more of our activity shifts online, I think many of these physical utilities will start to move online as well. (7/14)

I believe, in the future, we're more likely to own twenty (or a hundred) different digital shirts than physical ones. We're more likely to Zoom into a conference than to drive or fly to it. As we know, these fundamental shifts in consumption are already well on their way. (8/14)

I think such shifts are likely to have a positive impact on the environment, especially on resource use and dependence, for a few different reasons. Let's break down the unique properties of digital goods and their consumption. (9/14)

First, digital assets don't use physical resources in their creation (barring obvious internet/tech use, ofc). You can create a digital shirt without physically extracting cotton from the environment. You can send me that shirt without wasting resources to ship it to me. (10/14)

Second, the concepts of overproduction and overconsumption don't really exist in the digital world. You can produce as many digital shirts as you want. And I can consume as many as I want—all without extracting additional physical resources. (11/14)

Third, unlike physical goods, digital assets don't inherently depreciate in value or utility over time. I can wear my digital shirt hundreds or thousands (or even millions) of times without degrading it. Even after all that wear... my digital shirt will weather no tear. (12/14)

If digital consumption is likely to provide us relatively higher utility (specifically in the second and third buckets of consumption from above), I believe we are likely to both increase digital consumption and decrease physical consumption. (13/14)

Therefore, with the metaverse and web3, our altered consumption habits should, in my view, significantly reduce our extraction of and dependence on physical resources—leaving a net positive impact on our environment. (14/14)