Issue 24: People Already Live in the Metaverse. We Must Improve It.
Building Web3 for God's Glory
Welcome back, Pilgrim. Here’s what’s happened in town since you’ve been away…
Welcome back to the Reformer Newsletter, where we can take a dive into various projects and activities from around web3 and across the Christian community. You have joined this network to contribute to our collective mission of building for Christ’s Kingdom, and we will use this newsletter as a platform to enable that.
One year into one of the largest companies in history rebranding itself around the metaverse, and 30 years after the term was coined in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, we still struggle to define what the “metaverse” is. Cringeworthy marketing aside, we all feel intrinsically that the images pushed from tech giants on-high are an unconvincing option for our future lives in the Matrix.
Quick linguistic aside: meta- refers to “something of a higher or second-order kind”, and the universe is singular by definition. So, the “metaverse” is a higher-order representation of aspects we recognize in the physical universe, with the “higher-order” in this case referring to digital abstractions. So, when people are living parts of their lives in digital recreations of the physical world- socially interacting, engaging in commerce, creating and absorbing information- they are “living in the metaverse”. It is an immersive virtual world and it already exists.
Not convinced? Look to a Twitter thread where a 16-year old living in his parents’ house has engaged in a heroic duel with an equally parent-cohabitating 32-year old about whatever socio-political piece of the Triforce they are trying to claim. Listen up, Link, your battle is not worth the digital ink spilt. A sham union between two people looking for a tax break can be reimagined on Instagram as a fairytale wedding, and every second people press a button to buy things they don’t need, with fiat money imagined into existence, in order to impress people they will never meet in person.
The metaverse is here, and there is infinite room for improvement!
Around Web3
The always-insightful Balaji Srinivasan tweeted how the “metaverse” will be the convergence of gaming, chat apps and social media, cryptocurrencies, and hardware devices. What else might be integrated for the benefit of the Kingdom?
Physical Backed Token: How might we gain value in the real-world from the metaverse? The team with ChiruLabs’ Azuki have just announced this new open-source token standard to tie physical items to a digital token and metaverse experience. In today’s “build market” it is crucial that teams focus on developing infrastructure like this— and we still need builders to create the applications which will sit on top of that infrastructure.
Reality is Just a Game Now: Warning, this one is going to hurt your brain a bit. Here’s our question on finishing this thinkpiece: how is the void left as many exit the Church being so attractively filled with false religions peddling alternate realities? And how might we do a better job of introducing people to the real Reality?
And in international news, police in Firozabad, India have adopted a blockchain-based complaints and reporting system, while Japan has stood up the Minister’s Secretariat Web3.0 Policy Promotion Office to address “the business environment” on the blockchain and metaverse. How does government-level involvement affect interactions in the metaverse?
Around the Kingdom
There is No Other Layer to Life: From the Art of Manliness blog, authors Brett and Kate McKay reminds us to live our life more fully now! This is the first time ReformersNFT has showcased AoM, but it is a resource full of timeless insights and thought-provoking essays on living a truly rich and fulfilling life. Our mediums of interaction will change over time, but the core aspects of humanity for men and women remain the same. The husband and wife team have also written extensively on society’s existential crisis of the modern age, which is fitting with our theme.
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The Call
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