Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. We wanted to change things up a bit in this episode because we saw a question on a social media channel, posted by an influential businessman. The question was “why are more people not raving about the Metaverse?”.

There was a series of responses, most of them negative.

Therefore, we wanted to do this episode to give a different perspective. Prior to starting this podcast, we had done a lot of research because we were interested in this whole digital universe. Then after starting, Women of the Metaverse, we have, between us, put in hours and hours and hours of research and expanded our knowledge. So we feel we have a certain level of comprehension on this subject.

We have one purpose for Women of the Metaverse and that is to give women a voice in this space. But in order to have this you need to understand it, hence the past 31 episodes, but you also have to understand the importance of this evolution of technology and the opportunities that it opens up for you and your brand.

We urge you not to listen to the negativity, to ignore those that show a reluctance to change and to do your own research.

We hope you enjoyed the show and that it inspired some ideas. Join us next week to delve further into the Metaverse

If you have any questions, comments and/or want to become part of our community join us on our Facebook group and/or on Discord.

Or visit us here:
Website: www.womenofthemetaverse.co.uk
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
This podcast is for entertainment and education purposes only. We do not give any investment or financial advice and we strongly recommend you always DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Enjoy learning.

Show Transcription 

Cheryl00:03

Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. I am Cheryl Laidlaw

Angela00:08

I am Angela Harkness. We have been and are still on a journey to discover the Metaverse with 3.0 NFTs and anything that we are required to know to join this world. Swells

Cheryl00:21

from this podcast, we will help you to unlock how the metaphor is going to impact your brand.

Your business and even your personal

Angela00:30

life. Join us as we take the mystery out of this new digital universe. Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. We are changing up a bit in this episode. As we come to the end of our first season, we wanted to go over some questions and comments that we hear often with regards to Web three and the Metaverse, and just to give you our perspective about it.

The idea for this episode came about because an influential businessman asked a question on one of his social media accounts. They asked, why aren’t people raving more about the metaverse? And there were a number of responses. On top of that, Cheryl has done a couple of talks and there were questions and comments that came out of that, and we just wanna talk through it in this episode.

Yes. Well, we

Cheryl01:22

haven’t yet done an episode purely on web free, but we will do, but to explain it quickly, web one is known as the information economy. The time period for this is about 1990 to 2005. You could read websites, but not much else. For small businesses, they were an expensive investment, not just from the initial setup, but also because any or large change required either in depth knowledge of coding or paying for an expert to make the changes.

Web two, which spans from the period of 2005 to 2020 is now. As the platform economy, which enabled us greater ability to control our own websites. So WordPress, along with other content managed systems were revolutionary and they created opportunity for us to add, update, and sell from our own websites.

Angela02:25

So this is a perfect example. You know, when you sort of see something that’s new, I remember seeing WordPress websites and thinking, oh God, that’s not a real website. I’d paid a fortune for my website. But, and seeing WordPress and thinking, well, that can’t be as good. That’s not real . Yeah. Yeah. And now it wouldn’t even cross my mind to get something.

Cheryl02:46

I, I remember when shopping carts were added to websites, they said that it wouldn’t, there’s no way that people would put their credit card details into a, yeah, an online payment gateway.

Angela02:57

So it just shows you, doesn’t it? Absolutely.

Cheryl03:00

On top of this increased website technology, cloud computing smartphones with their apps and social media came along.

But the problem that came with that was platforms and the huge companies that grew from these platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, who own your data, they took away our privacy and they therefore controlled how you make money via their algorithm. Now there is web three. It is the coming together of many technologies new to us, including ai, vr, ar, blockchain tokens, and 3D technology to name it for you.

The important factor in all of this is the decentralization and how much more control you will have over your data and your

Angela03:47

digital. The Metaverse is a little harder to define because there seems to be a fight to the top to define what it is. To me, I think of the Metaverse as virtual worlds, like having a meeting sitting next to Cheryl by the beach.

But in reality, I think it encompasses all of the technology that we talked about for web. Let’s just get into some of the comments and questions, and then we will give our views on Web three and the Metaverse, and also sort of people’s attitudes to it as well. It’s quite common, isn’t it? What came

Cheryl04:24

up?

Angela04:26

Yeah, it really coming

Cheryl04:26

up again and again. Yeah. So the first one is, has anyone accurately defined the metaverse? Or does it appear to many as just a mass of techno jargon and gobby goop, smoking gleefully by people who haven’t identified a customer need they’re trying to meet yet.

Angela04:48

Okay, so this is a constant theme, and as we said earlier, it is a race the top.

I sort of think maybe it was a mistake to actually give it a. And this name actually comes from a science fiction novel called Snow Crush. That’s where the Metaverse was first mentioned. And it may continue to stick or it may just get rolled into web three, but I think often people get too stuck on what it is and focus, and the focus more on what the technology enables us to.

The technology being, as we’ve already just said, AI A R V R, 3D blockchain and tokens, rather than just trying to figure out what the metaverse is. Cuz I think people are getting stuck there, don’t you? Yeah,

Cheryl05:38

I, I think people got excited about the word metaverse. Lots of blog blogs were written on it and before we knew it, it, people thought it was a separate entity altogether.

Angela05:50

Yes. So that’s where we, that’s our view on that. Yes. So anyway, next question. I think this is it. It’s not to my knowledge anyway, a single thing people can buy into, yet it’s a concept and an idea. Mm-hmm.

Cheryl06:09

, uh, as we said, it’s still not very defined, but to say that it’s just a concept or just an idea, we are further on than that.

You can go to events in the meta. We have done episodes on that you can hold meetings. Just go to our YouTube channel and see us in our studio. You can have incredible 3D experiences. You can go to work and you can build your own world in meta. Will it be the same in a decade? Of course not. Some companies and people will have massively been successful and some will have failed, but the technology is not going anywhere.

For example, more than 54 billion is spent annually on virtual good. That is not just an idea, is it

Angela06:52

Angela? Mm. No. And you also have to think about the experiences. So we spoke about this in another episode where, um, Kathy Hackle, I’m gonna mention Kathy Hackle. Um, she was talking about her, about the experience of going to a concert.

So for those of us, gen X, um, millennials, we go to a concert, it’s a physical thing. You get in a car, you get on a train, you go to. Arena and you go to a concert. But she was talking about her son seeing someone like Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande, I can’t remember. But because he went to this concert in the Metaverse, he would still say he went to a concert.

For him it was an experience. He was really there. Yeah. Yeah. So people do think they go into the metaverse and do something that’s so, it’s not just a. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Cheryl07:49

Okay. The next question. What was that social network everyone talked about a few years ago and now we don’t hear it mentioned anymore.

Do you think it might be one of those new social networks because it’s not solving a real need for the mainstream.

Angela08:05

Okay. , so I’m not sure what social network they’re referring to, but we’ve had quite a few social networks and they’re pretty successful. Did we need social media? Did it solve a problem? Did we need apps on a phone?

Did those solve a problem? Maybe not, but do they now? But this is an advancement in technology and it helps our lives. Yes, there are negatives, absolutely. But there are many, many positives that to this as well. And there is actually a quote attributed to Henry for. Where he said about inventing the car.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses. Sometimes we don’t know what we need and we don’t know how something will help us and change our lives, so to say at this point, well it’s, we don’t need it. You don’t know what we do and don’t need. So I think it’s, again, it’s sort of a lack of maybe looking to see how it is being used.

Thinking forward to how it could be used.

Cheryl09:14

Yeah. It’s all our research though, isn’t it? Yeah. People haven’t seen small snippets and

Angela09:22

made decisions, made decisions based on it. Okay, so this is the next question for you, Cheryl. Okay. This is a good one. I honestly believe that VR will never take off. Then someone asked Why not, and the person.

I think it will be massively developed and utilized for gaming, but never for productivity or human interactions. We just aren’t made for it. Off you go,

Cheryl09:53

. The global virtual reality market size was estimated at 21 point 83 billion in 2021, and expected to reach 28.42 billion in 2020. So I think to say it won’t work is not true , but this shows human nature and whatever we have evolved or not evolved, people are so ready to forget how much technology and change has happened already in their lives and how long it takes to get to that point where you can take it for granted.

For some listening, you will know the time when the phone was attached to the wall in your. There were very limited number of television channels to watch when you couldn’t record TV shows and when. The only thing you could do on a mobile phone was make a call when in order to move from one phone to another, you had to manually retype in all the numbers when you had to dial up your internet.

And you couldn’t use the phone at the same time.

Angela10:58

totally. When you think back to that, you just think, oh my God, all the hassle. We’re laughing now.

Cheryl11:05

I’m hoping we’re gonna laugh at our be, you know, sets at the minute. Yeah. Time and time again, newer technologies have been introduced and thereby today’s standards poor in the first version.

Even though VR is in its infancy, people expect it to be perfect from the get. The VR of today is not the same VR that will be in place in the next decade. It’s already being used in education. Student doctors are learning how to operate using vr, and just recently across two continents, surgeon used VR to separate conjoined twins.

Only time would tell the success of the technology is not going away. How it will evolve or yet to find out. Mm. Okay, this is another question because people don’t understand what it is. The definition changes based on what the company stands to benefit from it. It’s more than just vr, and because it’s not standalone product like Facebook or TikTok, there’s no obvious on ramp.

Angela12:12

Okay? Again, a point we have made a lot is not to get hung up on the thing and look into what the technology can do. But there is an obvious on ramp. In fact, there are several. You can take a look around, for example, the and the sandbox on your pc. You can buy a pair of VR glasses and take an incredible look around as what you can do.

You can hold meetings in a rise, work rooms, and you can do research on what is coming. So I. When people think, I dunno, if people are just being told it’s not there yet and not looking for themselves, or they’ve never tried it, or they’re a little nervous to try it cuz they don’t understand it. But

Cheryl13:00

there are, there’s lots of hype about how unsuccessful Zuckerberg’s been actually.

But

Angela13:05

Yeah. But actually if you, yeah, I mean, whether people deem it successful or unsuccessful, if you put on a pair of Quest two glasses, Are amazing experiences you can have wearing them. And it’s not just gaming. So I think you need to have a go and then say, yeah, no, this doesn’t work. I mean, we, we’ve had this experience and there are certainly the downsides to VR and the movement at the moment.

Both you and I can come out a bit queasy, but Yeah. I

Cheryl13:40

actually like your idea that you, that you said, oh goodness, probably about six months ago, Angelo, you said for coaches or someone in this world, when they buy the service, you could, as part of the service, you could also purchase them, their VR headset and they would be, you know, then you could actually interact with each other.

Yeah. The sake of 300 pounds on top. On

Angela14:05

top of your invoice. Yeah. You know, I think you have. Yeah, I think you have to give it go. And you have to remember what your first mobile phone was like for example, mine was a rubbish little thing that barely did anything compared to what you hold in your hand now.

That’s where VR is at the moment. Mm-hmm. . So it will develop, and there is a way in which you can see what it might develop into by having a. Okay, next one. So this is the exact question. Okay. That was written, you said it. It’s a gaming platform Who’d want it for meetings?

Cheryl14:47

. We do, and many people we do. We love holding our meetings in Horizon Workrooms, and there are many others that do too.

I think 10 years ago, if you’d have said to most people that instead of holding a meeting face to. You’re going to stare into a little tiny dot on your computer while sat in your kitchen and hold a meeting with people from around the world. Most people would thought you were crazy. Uh, so for using Zoom, it’s all been a standard for a long time.

For others, not a regular occurrence, but covid hit and most people realize that they can work from home and hold a face to face meeting. In Zoom, VR meetings can actually be. So for those of us that have experienced them, they feel real and it hits the census more. So you feel as if you are in the room with the person and again, this technology improves, so there will be a better experience coming.

Angela15:45

Yeah. Okay. It’s, it’s so in its infancy and, but I, oh man, I’ve said it time and time again. I love meetings in

Cheryl15:55

my groups. . Okay, next on next. Again, this is the question, how it’s written out. I feel like it’s got something to do with trust. Before I didn’t need to know that much about something to dive in it, but I feel more informed and I don’t trust these companies or understand the intention.

Angela16:15

Okay, so we know more because the evolution of technology has enabled that in fact. The intention of the Metaverse Web 3.0 NFTs blockchain, dows and smart contracts is to be more decentralized and put the control back onto the owners. Decentralized social media is an example of this, to stop large social media corporations from owning your data.

Whether that will work or not. The intention is to create environments where the ownership is put back on the actual owner of the content and the data. So it’s another fear one, I guess. I don’t know whether someone will rise to the top and we’ll have another Facebook, mark Zuckerberg. I don’t know. But it, it seems that the values in all of this are for it to be more on the owner and more decentralized.

But again, time will tell, I guess.

Cheryl17:15

See, I mean, if we don’t start creating our own platforms, then there will be a few companies that will lead the way.

Angela17:21

Definitely. Definitely. But then you have to be the one that jumps on board and does it yourself. Mm-hmm. , don’t you? You can’t stand back and moan about other people if you could do it yourself, which is where we are at the moment.

It’s so in its infancy that the opportunities are there. Okay, next question. The Metaverse isn’t a single app or brand that you can buy into, and if there was, it isn’t meta. Oh, the irony. That was the actual question. Mm-hmm.

Cheryl17:53

. Neva is any app that goes into your iPhone or any app that goes on a pc. You don’t turn on a phone and just stare at it.

It is a, the mechanism of the technology that enables you to experience the 3D world.

Angela18:07

I think this is a, a weird one cuz we, we don’t know yet. So for example, you posted something recently about Apple’s new VR glasses. Um, whether if you put those on, are you gonna be able to do the same things that you can do with your meta, with your Quest glasses?

Yeah.

Cheryl18:28

I wonder if they’ll be able to download the meta app, as it were, so that you could play in meta, but using the.

Angela18:37

Headset. Yeah. Yeah. And we don’t know that yet. And it did take a long time when we got apps for them to be for Android and iOS. So some still aren’t and some have a different experience.

But I think if you go in, if you use Quest two, it’s a very similar experience in terms of there are different apps or things that you can go into. It’s no different. You have to come out of an app on a phone to go into another app. Yeah. But the, but the mechanism for getting into that world or into is the VR glasses or to go into roadblocks or wherever.

So it does work similar. It’s just more 3D technology, doesn’t it? Yeah. I

Cheryl19:26

would say it’s definitely very similar in the way of thinking and the way that we’re gonna be using it in and out. Yes. Okay, we got another one. So again, how it was written, VR is fun, but I don’t believe anyone wants to spend all day with a headset on and the graphics are currently rubbish.

Second, life showed us the possibilities of virtual worlds 10 years ago, and most of us got bored with it. Pretty soon. The Metaverse isn’t the future. Another person from Facebook. Another person also commented that Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, don’t mess up your hair. Okay?

Angela20:10

. If you’d have been told 20 years ago that you would spend hours a day on your phone, or you would spend your time posting elements of your life all over the place, would you have done that at the moment?

Probably you would not spend all day with a VR headset on because they are incredibly uncomfortable and they are not designed well for women because they can wipe off the face of makeup in two minutes. But again, they will improve. We used to have to dial up the internet and it was a nightmare and I couldn’t have imagined at that point trying to work all day on the internet, cuz every time the phone went, the internet would cut off and it was really slow and it was a nightmare.

But now I can sit in my garden on my laptop for hours working, using my wifi. Again, the technology will involve, it’s, it’s in its infancy. It’s a teeny tiny baby at the moment. Yeah.

Cheryl21:10

I didn’t see, uh, the, the evolve , the, uh, evolution of images to reels, to be honest with you. Yes. What you thought would be dancing around our living rooms, trying to promote them in, you know, CBD oil,

Angela21:26

Yeah. And all of the, like, the effects and the fact that you. Voice over and edit a video in an app and you know everything that you can now do. It’s incredible the fact that you and I like we can self-publish a podcast and you know, we are sat in our own offices just recording a podcast. None of that technology existed and here we are today, not even having to think about it.

Yeah. Once again, the technology will evolve, so it isn’t great at the moment. The VR headsets are heavy and uncomfortable, but the experience is still something you will never experience before and it will get better. Right? This one, this is a good one because it’s 3D tv. That was the comment.

Cheryl22:19

This is a perfect example because when 3D.

Introduce special cinemas were built. You had to sit in cinemas with funny glasses on, and there the technology evolved and you can now have a 3D TV in your home. But the digital universe takes it another step forward in the evolution in that you experience so much more, and as we’ve already said, the opportunities in education, healthcare, and particularly how it removes border.

Vr, the metaphor 3D technology is being used in healthcare to help doctors with empathy. It is being used for pain relief, and some studies have shown a 24 reduction in pain when using vr. They are using VR for sick and injured injured children by using it as an. They are using mobile enabled games to enhance physical therapy treatment.

It is not just a

Angela23:21

free dtv. This is incredible. I, some of this stuff I found out while I was researching this episode. All of that stuff they’re doing in healthcare, in medi, in, you know, medical centers. Brilliant.

Cheryl23:35

Okay. The last one, it’s pants low . Let’s create something nobody really needs.

Angela23:43

We are gonna end the episode here.

These comments to the question, were 90% negative, but we have been here before. Whenever technology looks like it’s gonna take a big step, people seem to predict the end of it before it’s even started. We can understand when people are informed. If any one of these comments comes from someone who has taken the time to do a ton of research, then we really genuinely respect their opinion.

However, Sharon and I saw the exact same thing happen with social media. People’s resistance was incredible. We heard all the time people talking about social media never taking off and you don’t need it for a business. And we have seen so many women who could have exponentially grown their businesses if they had recognized how important it was for their brand.

If you make a decision to go old school with your business, If it’s a factor to your brand, then we respect that. It’s like the story we told about Rory Sutherland. He was talking about the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong where you are shown to your suite and given a cup of tea whilst you check in. It’s old school, but they made a decision to do that.

But if you, but if you comments come from not doing any research and you dismiss it out of hand, just because other people have told you it’s rubb, Then you set yourself up for so many missed opportunities, and that’s what we don’t want for you. We want you to really do some research and understand actually this is new and it is gonna evolve and it’s gonna get so much better, and you wanna be doing things now so you are not left out.

You’re not missing out on these opportunities. As we’ve said

Cheryl25:33

before, Andrew and I started this podcast because we were interested to learn and we can see a future in this digital universe. We particularly started it for women. As the name of the podcast suggests because we wanted to give women a voice in this space, there are so, so many opportunities for men.

In our next episode, which is the last episode of season one, we are going to talk about these opportunities more, but from this episode, we’d really. Urge you to not listen to the negative voices until you’ve done your own research. We hope you enjoyed this episode and it helped you to start thinking big.

Join us next week and we will continue our journey into the Metaverse. See you

Angela26:14

then. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Women of the Metaverse. You

Cheryl26:25

can find all information, links and people we talked about in the show notes on our website. If you have

Angela26:31

enjoyed this podcast, please comment and subscribe.

Cheryl26:35

Join us again in the next episode as we continue this exciting metaverse journey.