Humans have been fascinated by the possibility of life existing on planets other than our beautiful blue marble. NASA’s exoplanet program is a dedicated resource to explore just that. The search for signs of life on other planets could still take decades. Meanwhile, technologists have created a parallel universe right here on earth, which is up and functioning. Enabling us to be at multiple locations at the same time. ‘Sci-fi max!’ as my gen Z friends may remark. Except that this is not sci-fi, it is sci-fact.
A phenomenal shift in human existence is underway and is bringing along with it, a host of transformations in the way we operate:
- Crafting to Generating – in the physical world, we take pride in craftsmanship – be it when crafting a tagline for a brand or weaving a carpet or sculpting forms out of rock. In the metaverse, craftsmanship takes a back seat. When machines replaced manual labor, it may have caused the same dissonance at first. We are now accustomed to that shift but to this day anything that is hand-crafted holds a phenomenal premium over anything machine made, even if they look identical to the ordinary eye. Perhaps items crafted in the real world will demand a similar premium over items generated using AI.
- Competition to Collaboration – The universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang, but earthlings are still limited to and by earth, at least so far. The metaverse on the other hand eliminates the limitations caused by a depletion of resources. There is no scarcity here. There is room for everyone and everything. This saves people the need to race one another and together focus on outputs.
- Teaching to Facilitating – In most ancient eastern cultures teachers are Gods. To quote a part of a sanskrit mantra “guru brahma, guru vishnu, guru devo maheshwara” – the teacher is Brahma, the teacher is Vishnu, the teacher is Maheshwara. Ancient civilisations understood the value of what teachers offer society. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that education can be accessed easily and repeatedly by knowledge seekers at their convenience from any part of the world. We can pick and choose where and how we learn what. Teachers are voluntarily stepping down from their pedestal. They facilitate, guide and coach from a peer position.
- Action over Perfection – The mechanisms of the digital space minimises the cost of trial and error often to zero. Earlier every hasty camera click meant wasted film roll. Every error in the form meant printing out or buying a fresh form. Missing a turn could mean being completely lost without any idea of the way to get back on track. Ads with slightly wrong details or tonality or media planning incurred heavy penalties. Today, we can and need to keep iterating each day. The mantra of the day seems to be to go for it and learn along the way. Instead of getting it right before publishing something or mastering a skill before practicing it etc. Just like AI, our learning too will tend to happen after we start doing rather than before.
- Fitting-in to Finding-what-fits – In the virtual universe there are no set templates of right and wrong or beautiful and ugly or funny and boring or cool and uncool. There is an audience for everything. We can keep on reinventing ourselves till we find our audience. Yes, it is a troll-happy place but it is as much a place full of supporters. South Indian actress Lena was trolled heavily for sharing about her exceptional memory including that of her previous birth on earth. This attention led her to find a publisher for her own book and also meet her now husband. It is a universe with no wrongs, when it comes to owning who you are.
- He-man to Femme-power – The masters of the virtual universe are all about acceptance of pan sexual identity with a definite admiration for female attributes. In the metaverse, the cat can embrace its identity of Cringer Cat and Battle Cat both with equal pride.
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Pooja Nair has over 20 years of experience as a branding consultant across leading global Ad consultancies. Pooja is also known to be an ex theater performer, actress and model. Since September, 2022, she has focussed completely on her passion for the changing face of business, brand-building and reputation.
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