If you would have told me a year ago that by 2022, metaverse would be a mainstream concept I would have “wished that you were true”. Even though I was somebody building a career for this moment over the past 10 years in different capacities - startup land, hacker projects, open source contributions, being part of the decentralised movement etc.. “..you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” -Steve Jobs Over the past 10 years, I stumbled across the web as the most democratic and accessible medium, worked towards making it even more accessible by leading the low code moment with an amazing org (webflow) as an early engineer, invented a browser for 3D web content, shipped the world's first webXR browser to accelerate VR adoption, and started building games on the web etc.. But building was only a small part of the journey, it was about making friends along the way, being part of the early underground community of hackers, philosophers and future dwellers imagining the metaverse, thinking deeply about the future, meeting and having fun in Mozilla Hubs and VRchat. It was about deeply reflecting the choices we had collectively made as a society with the Tech companies of today which were based on business models of data monetisation, locked walled gardens; our lives being influenced by newsfeed of algorithms which we have no idea about, content moderation, censorship - all the social issues we faced as a result, and witnessing larger chunk of value captured by big platforms and not creators. I didn't think it's because the people leading or working in the Web2 companies of today are evil. Maybe, but I don't think so. It's about choices we made collectively, as a society. We chose the supposedly disguised free lunch. We handed our data. We gave up control. We took the blue pill. And we are at the crossroads to make these choices all over again.We may not make the same mistakes again but we may make newer mistakes.
12/6/2021