Very often, when we hear a new technology term that is being repeated in the news or on social media, many reactions arise. Over a decade ago, it was Big Data. About five or six years ago, it was artificial intelligence together with digital transformation — and now it’s the Metaverse.
Figuring Out the Metaverse as a “New Thing”
With every ‘new thing,’ there is a period of ‘freezing’ where we do nothing, just observing what is going on and trying to understand if this ‘new thing’ is something that is going to leave soon or is going to stay. If it is going to remain, then we enter the ‘figure it out’ moment where we start to think about how that ‘new thing’ will impact us and how to adopt it with the least disruption possible. This is the critical moment. This is when we start thinking about what we can do to adopt something new that we didn’t have before.
This is where we all are with the Metaverse. We are figuring out what it is exactly and how it will impact what we do.
In this ‘figure it out’ moment, we usually start confronting the ‘new thing.’ How will it impact us, our people, our colleagues, and everyone around us and the work that they do? However, allow me to bring another element into this scenario: your data.
Adopting the metaverse is not technically challenging at first — not very complex from a user perspective and even less disruptive for a business. Perhaps, some try to spend too much time understanding what the Metaverse is rather than adopting it. Many are just waiting for a real global adoption of the Metaverse. Then, they will adopt it, just when they have no chance, similar to what happened with websites.
Metaverse-Generated Data
Similar to websites, entering the Metaverse may enable your organization to access a good amount of data, such as data generated by the traffic of users within your Metaverse environment. There are many good angles that need to be covered.
Again, consider what happened with websites, specifically within the last five years. All those cookies, data gathering, personal data entry points, legal disclosures, and so much more have been very much on the line. This is all because of how organizations use web visitors (i.e. customers’ data).
Now, let’s bring this same idea to the Metaverse — a 3-D environment where absolutely everything will be measured with data. How much time do you have to move? What areas do you look at? How do you interact with other digital assets? Not to mention, there’s the amount of personal and financial data that can be sourced by adding NFTs (Non-Fungible Token), digital asset exchange, and so much more. This is only B2P Metaverse. Imagine now conducting B2B business in the Metaverse.
Have you thought about how all this data will be stored? Who will own that data? Who is going to be responsible for all of that data? Furthermore, who will govern the data generated by the Metaverse interactions?
Final Thoughts
As we progress more into the Metaverse as the ‘new thing’ in our world and lives, the human element is still critical to everything. Technology plays a key role, but the result of such interaction — humans and technology — is data. Therefore, data has to be protected and properly governed.
To adopt something, like the Metaverse, you need to start small, first by using a controlled environment and becoming comfortable with it. Then, once you start learning from it, you can scale up in complexity and features. The more that you scale-up, the more data will be generated.
