Thinking on the Metaverse has become clouded by Web2 thinking and the app paradigm. Web3 seems designed to fix some of the issues with Web2 but these issues never existed with Web1.

This is where the future of the platform lies, pulling data on the fly from the network of IOT sensors embedded beneath our feet. You only have to look at Amazon’s ‘Sidewalk’ network penetration to see how this would work in practice. An AR device would parse this IOT data into something useful in the same way a web browser does with websites.

This would mean that AR technology would remain as open source as Web1 tech remains and anyone could build hardware for a common platform. It would never need an OS because it wouldn’t work on an app paradigm, mimicking Google’s app streaming idea. And because the device itself would also be a node on this network social media would disappear as the only people you would be flexing those NFT sneakers to would be the local IRL community also engaged.

This also has the big advantage that unplugging is as easy as removing some spectacles.

I’ve written more in-depth about it here examining how the Focus device from Horizon Zero Dawn is the true endgame for AR:

https://carlst-james.medium.com/the-impact-of-horizon-zero-dawn-part-2-9cef292e3ad4