Value

Joe Rogan’s Experience, Metaverse, NFTs

A lot is happening in the online and digital technology world, some on the tech side, some on the area of content, and some even affecting the way we transfer value. In fact, isn’t it all about value, in the end?

Let’s start with The Joe Rogan Experience. Not so much the show, though that figures in here as well, as the literal experience of the man who makes it. Joe Rogan is a podcaster, actor, and Ultimate Fighting Championship color commentator, and one look at his face should have warned his foes that he wasn’t going to go gently. He’s got a strong, and sometimes crude/rough presentation style, but these days, that can make for an entertaining hour or so of listening. Podcasting is now known as “alternative media,” and more and more people are, if not altogether abandoning “legacy media” in favor of its more obviously editorial younger brother, at least supplementing their current affairs discovery and discussion with the voices of independent journalists, or as they usually prefer to be called, “content creators.”

One of the issues, we’ve noted in these pages before, is how these media channels are shared with the public. As a “platform,” or the technical means by which “content” is shared with the public, social media (like Facebook or Twitter) and sharing sites (like YouTube) have enjoyed a protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” A newspaper, however, had better check its sources and be prepared to print a retraction if something is wrong. Publishers can be held accountable for what is printed in its pages, or broadcast over its airwaves. Publishers hire and pay for the writers, producers and other “content” providers, and are responsible for them and what they say.

Needless to say, the Act didn’t anticipate podcasters like Rogan, with millions of
“followers” or subscribers ever challenging their publishing alters with bigger, more dedicated audiences, or that they could be earning huge sums of money simply by the advertising and “monetization” that sites like YouTube and Spotify would enable. Rogan, it turns out, has been controversial, and platform Spotify was challenged by some elder-statesmen rockers like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to remove his material, or theirs. Of course, content providers can do as they wish with their content in this age of Internet. The more one “side” of any controversy leans on the other to stop sharing information, the more likely that information will gain traction. What happened? Rogan became even more popular than before, maintained his exclusive with Spotify, and even survived a decade+ hunt of his shows to find other ways to damn him.

Thanks to all the efforts to “de-platform” him, he has become worth more, not less, both to his platform, and his own income stream.

The Metaverse

If this sounds like sci-fi, it is. It’s just that it’s also real.

Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook fame, launched a new company name – Meta – and with it, an evident play to move into the “metaverse” space. The “metaverse” has been proposed as a place where virtual, augmented, and physical reality merge, or at least blend, in your experience of life.

I remember when AR, or augmented reality, first became a notable “thing.” It proposed to lay information over whatever experience you were having IRL (in real life) with sound, music, and additional information. One proposed way this would work is – let’s say you were hunting for a house. Before seeking professional assistance, you could scout out neighborhoods with your smartphone. By aiming your phone at an area that looked inviting, you could enable the app, and it would tag homes for sale, give you an average price, show you the local schools (along with data about graduation rates and extra-curricular opportunities), restaurants, average family income, recreation centers, and more. You move your phone around and see whether or not the area suits your needs and preferences. Or if you were shopping for a blender, a QR code on an item in a store or an ad would let you know not just the price, but the customer satisfaction, discounts available, best features, and comparable products.

Immersive games have long since enabled a gamer to “live” in an alternate world, have “friends,” go on adventures, and create a whole other life, personality, and set of experiences. If you haven’t tried something like Roblox, you might want to adventure there – it’s not all that difficult to navigate, and each “game” has an objective (like a hide and go seek game with 50 other players) and you can seek out buddies online for your favorite adventures.

Virtual reality, through the use of glasses and gloves, can remove the clunky mouse or even touch-screen interface and replace them with movements and “sights” generated by the glasses, a headset and mic if needed so that communication could take place
“real time” as opposed to by typing chats with other players.

Ponder this: stationary bikes and treadmills have been available for home use for a long time now. Good enough for a workout without leaving the house. But what if you found that boring? Why not meet up with friends, or start a walk or a bike ride through the Scottish Highlands? With virtual worlds, you can log on to a group ride or walk, chat with friends, “see” the trail you’re on, and get the encouragement of a leader at the same time? Or you might decide to try one of the “challenges” that literally allows you to “see” the road and scenery as you ride or walk through the Alps or the North of Italy on a planned excursion, taken in small chunks, and rewarded with an achievement medal when you’re done. This blend of virtual and augmented reality would let you, if you chose, take a real physical walk, but hit landmarks via GPS on your phone, and check “where” you were in your virtual reality – a particularly nice view over the Urals, or out across the Aegean.

NFTs

NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. I have to admit that when I first heard about them I thought it was a joke. A couple of A-listers on a TV show pulled out truly ugly “art” and cackled about how much they’d paid for it. It was just a digital print, and not a very good one, at that.

The idea behind NFTs is somewhat similar to cryptocurrency. There is no “there” there with crypto; there is a “wallet” that has an address, one for you and one for anyone else who engages. Many places will accept crypto in exchange for real goods and services, so in that way it’s like money. Unlike coins (which have actual value, however slight, as silver or copper) and old-school currency (which used to have a demand value for the equivalent in gold, but now simply has the backing of the government that issues it), crypto is a digital payment system that bypasses banks or other exchanges for a peer-to-peer value exchange. I send you 50 bitcoin and you send me a bottle of wine. No “money” changed hands, so you didn’t make any money selling me the wine, and I didn’t “buy” it. It’s also recorded once-and-done on a distributed ledger, so the event can never be traced, but never be erased, either.

An NFT is also digital; in this case it is a “unique digital asset” that represents ownership of a real world item, like a piece of art, or music, or unique artifact. Where part of the idea behind cryptocurrency is its “invisibility,” the NFT is a “token,” or a symbol or sign (in this case digital) that is “non-fungible,” which is to say it cannot be exchanged. It is one of a kind and no other can be exactly the same. In the art world, a “real” Picasso is worth a great deal more than a print, and there is only one real and original Mona Lisa, for example. But to suggest that a very bad illustration of a dog, though there is no other in the world, is a safe or good investment, is somewhat iffy. While technically, it is true that you own something the like of which exists nowhere else in the Metaverse, at least Nude Descending a Staircase (by Marcel Duchamp and owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art) could be claimed to have some value as an objet d’arte.

Nancy Roberts