Forget the Browser Wars. Get ready for the Metaverse Wars. Mark my words. The Metaverse Wars have already started. The battle for who gets to make the rules - to set the standard - is occurring right now. And if you think that’s a trivial thing, you don’t know your history. The right to ‘set the standard’ was something Bill Gates was willing to nearly destroy Microsoft for. He conjured up Internet Explorer as a brazen response to @pmarca at Netscape, and then used it to commit digital war. In the process he got deposed by the US government, called ‘evasive and unresponsive’, and we got a glimpse of the true Bill Gates. But, Microsoft survived and won the Browser Wars, and as a result, they ended up with a commanding position for the Web1 era - the benefits of which were felt across all lines of their empire. When you are the standard, you make the rules. Sure, other companies might also participate. But just as in the aristocracy, when a Duke was always ‘at home’ in any lesser nobleman’s house… the benefits of being the incumbent are real. So with the stage set, let’s take a look at the emerging factions in the upcoming Metaverse Wars, their actions so far, their possible strategies, and the chances of their supremacy. Let’s start with team Meta. Led by the brisket smoking, cage fighting Mark Zuckerberg, they were first to strike their colors, changing their company name to Meta, and spending billions on the Oculus Quest and Horizon Worlds. Despite being first to the scene, with infinite money and a user base that includes literally everyone and their gran, so far their product appears to be a hot mess that no one really likes or uses. VR pioneer John Carmack left Meta citing slow progress and internal confusion. Notable with Horizon Worlds, is the fact that you need to be logged into your Facebook account and using your Quest. It’s not browser based. Quite the walled garden - no doubt, it’s because Meta wants its 30% on all transactions done on its system. It's tithe, if you will. While the general trajectory of Meta as a brand of late has been to get more byzantine, more filled with censorship and not better, only a fool would write them off. They’re likely to strike an Unholy alliance with Unity, to make games for the Quest. They’ll be able to bring substantial entertainment force to bear, to create traction - plus the ability to target almost every person with a smartphone with their offers. The Quest 3 drops later this year, which will offer blended ‘Mixed Reality’ experiences.But will that be enough to lure a critical mass to don expensive Oculus headsets and dwell in Zuck’s walled garden? We will have to wait and see. Next, is Apple and their Alliance for Universal Scene Description. (My first thoughts - holy shit that’s a name as boring as the Bank of International Settlements, which means they’re not fucking around.) And, just like the BIS, theirs has been a more guarded approach. At WWDC we had the launch of #SpatialComputing as a term- a strategic shot across Meta’s bows, presenting an alternative to the Metaverse concept. Together with their high end Vision Pro headset (snorkel sold separately), Apple are presenting an initial offering aimed at those with the money to live futuristically. What’s more significant, is who else is in the Alliance. Adobe? Autodesk? If you’re a designer or creator reading this in your co-working space, sit up and take note. Because my hunch is that before too long, you’re going to be recruited to join the Metaverse War on the side of the Alliance for Universal Scene Description (Glory be to USD! Hoo-ra) Yes indeed. I imagine the USD will make a play for the creatives, the ones who grew up in Apple’s walled garden using Illustrator Photoshop and Autodesk, and enlist them to make the slickest Metaverse with glossy production values. And honestly, that strategy might just work. If there is one walled garden that I still can’t quite quit, it’s Apple’s. So expect to see Adobe updates that offer spatial computing functionality, as well as seamless cloud uploads to the USD compliant metaverse. Will you be able to upload your work elsewhere? It remains to be seen, but my hunch is that it’ll be a lot less seamless, so just be a good creative and stick with your tribe. We’ve explored the two emerging factions in the Metaverse War. We’ve conceded that both will have very credible offerings. But the one thing that neither faction will be able to truly offer? An actual Metaverse. A true metaverse is a single, universal virtual world. Interconnectivity and open-ness is key to the entire thing. I don’t think that either Apple or Meta will be able to share users. Each of them views us as users on its system. It’s their turf, where they get to impose their tithes and their TOS. No matter how slick the package is, they will never be able to offer us the real deal. We’ll have to see how many of the dev community choose to bend the knee and swear fealty to one of these Centra-Metaverses. We certainly won’t be. Which leads us to the third faction in the Metaverse War, and likely the one that the Boardrooms in Silicon Valley are most afraid of. Us. The Decentralized Metaverse. Built by struggling artist devs, doing it for the love, not the money. This Metaverse is more likely to be made using true universal standards for practicality’s sake. It will use distributed peer to peer frameworks like @holochain from @artbrock to ensure democratic principles and data integrity are baked in, and without the tithe to the overlord. To get there, we might well need to do some jerry rigging - (it’s possible to build an affordable browser-based VR headset these days ). We might need to do without the Zuckerbucks, and without the slick production values us Apple / Adobe folk have come to require. It’ll be hard, but it is so important that we make the effort early on, to create a decentralized and open Metaverse. It’s a chance to restart the internet project, in line with the beautiful VR cyberdream we’ve all shared since the late 80s. A chance to throw off the yoke of Big Tech, who want us to rent their Metaverse like share-croppers, and use technology to mould and monitor us in ever-more intrusive ways. This is a call to arms, and if you’ve got this far in the article there’s a good chance you already know which side to choose.

RT @PalmerLuckey: The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did…

@DavidCantoneX @stats_feed Yeah, I was thinking “is there a part that I don’t know about”?

Has anyone checked on @RaoulGMI ?

@undertbleacherz @DAKKADAKKA1 Thank you for your service

@RealCoffeeChoco @elonmusk Is the increase in VA related to increase in healthcare costs?

This is football. Man I love this.

Phil, go back home and do it again!

I don’t think Canadians drink American beer. But when you mess with Seltzer it’s like dissing Don Cherry. AmIRight?

RT @Lions: The New York Jets have hired Aaron Glenn as their head coach.

Great seats, eh buddy? He missed the tag!

@samswoora This sounds like a Frank Zappa song

Check in on your #Skol people today.

Sam Darnold did that PSA during the break and took a sack.

@JRKudlick77 @woodwardsports @Lions @NFL This is the answer. Unless Ben somehow steals Tanner.

@henrythe9ths AI Guide please and thank you

RT @henrythe9ths: There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 wee…

@FUCKJREYNOLDS You obviously haven’t watch him this season. Might have true at Bama. But you might want to watch some tape

Kelvin Sheppard is DC in 25 with Dennis Allen as a Senior Defensive Advisor. AG is Saints head coach. Tanner is the OC in 25…of the Patriots under Ben Johnson.

Hate to say it, but it checks all the boxes. Ben Johnson $6M and control of the roster means he is the new Patriots head coach.

@skol_jake We’ll see you in 2 weeks. Yawn.