Building for the virtual world is hard, but I think it should also be fun!

This is Week 02 of my newsletter where we talk about building the metaverse, together!

There’s Gold in them Hills!

It’s sometimes easy to forget that there were two internet technology booms. 

The second boom of the early 2000’s, yielded the companies that we all now know (Facebook, Amazon). The first boom of the late 90’s, however, was driven by a speculative bubble of investment and overhyped insanity.

Check out this chart (from Wikipedia) on the venture capital spending on internet technology, and see how the boom peaked – and then crashed – all just before Zuckerberg launched his version 1.0 of Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

Despite the fact that many lost their shirts, this wasn’t a waste of time or money.

The companies that did grow out of the internet would not have been able to gain the traction they did if there had not been the wiring, the servers, or the masses who understood it. The second wave only gained traction, because the first wave built INFRASTRUCTURE.

Today, take a moment to think a bit about this opportunistic time and how it is also happening in terms of the Metaverse we are building. We know we can build glorious 3d worlds, but we won’t be able to create those societal structures for commerce or governance, until that network infrastructure, and the masses who understand it, are there and in place.

It’s not here yet!

You may be seeing media posts from everywhere telling us about how we are going to be doing magical things in the metaverse. If you dig just a little bit, you will hear the cryptocurrency maximalists tell you how stable their networks are.I admit that I get on to twitter and feel that I’m behind. It’s easy to feel that the whole world has already figured the metaverse out, and that we are missing it.

Not quite.

So, take a beat and relax, (talking to myself here too) you still have time! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and despite what the news outlets or venture capitalists tell us, neither will the Metaverse.However, just because it’s early, doesn’t mean it’s not moving really really fast.

And that’s why in the next several posts, I’ll be talking about this infrastructure, these basic building blocks for a networked world, that will make up the structural components of the metaverse.

—That’s it for this time.

Remember, you can always reach out to me on @nyewarburton on twitter.

My DM’s are always open.And, hey, if this email inspires you to write or comment? Do it! I hope we can start a dialogue about what you think the metaverse is!

We’ll see you next week for: THE THREE TECHNOLOGIES