Humanity in the age of the metaverse, with CJ Casciotta, founder of Reculture

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview where we look at how big topics will impact global business over the next decade and beyond. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti. Today, we’re talking about the Metaverse, or more specifically, how we can maintain our humanity amid all this technology, and what happens if we don’t. To do that, I’m joined by CJ Casciotta, founder and president of Reculture, an agency specializing in messaging strategy and media production, where he's advised presidential campaigns and worked with global brands, including MGM Studios, Delta Airlines, Sesame Street, and the United Nations Foundation. His next book, The Forgotten Art of Being Ordinary: A Human Manifesto in the Age of the Metaverse, will be released in the fall. CJ, thank you so much for joining me today. 

CJ Casciotta: Thanks for having me.

Kornik: CJ, I just mentioned the company that you founded, Reculture, in that intro. Can you tell us a little bit about that company and what its goals are and its visions?

Casciotta: Yes. We’re a messaging and production studio. Really, we’re in the reminding business. I think when you deal with words and pictures, we’re all talking about these advancements in automation with ChatGPT and DALL-E, and it’s an interesting time to be in the business of words and pictures but we like to say that we’re in the reminding business where, as people are learning to work alongside and work with these automated processes, I think it’s more important than ever for the workforce to be reminded of what it means to be a flesh-and-blood human being.

The best way that’s always been done throughout history is homemade stories made by humans. So, whether we’re helping a company craft their purpose in a way that’s genuine and authentic to the people they’re trying to serve, whether that’s internal or external or both or—we’re shaping that purpose and transforming it into a story via a visual or audio medium, like a podcast series or an animated production. We’re really in the business of reminding people why they get up in the morning, who they are in a season where I think you’re going to see—well, you’ve already started to see—this relationship between automated everything and AI everything and worker burnout and this realization that “Maybe I lack purpose and I don’t know what my purpose is” or hyperpolarization, all of these things that are threatening our society right now, I think one of the antidotes to that is storytelling that reminds us why we’re actually here on the planet, why we get up to go to work and do things that matter.

Kornik: Right. So interesting. I know that you’re working on a book or you finished a book that’s due out in the fall, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that book? I love the title, right, The Forgotten Art of Being Ordinary: A Human Manifesto in the Age of the Metaverse. I mean it totally speaks to me because we’ve been focused on writing about the metaverse now for several months and a lot of that focus is on the technology obviously—and some of it has focused on the humanity, but I think not enough. Can you unpack that a little bit for me and talk a little bit about the themes of the book and some of the highlights?

Casciotta: Yes. I’m a media guy, right? I’m somebody who’s done this kind of work for a good decade or so now but I’m not a social scientist. I’m not necessarily a researcher per se. So, I’m coming at the metaverse in this whole conversation from a media perspective. What I’ve noticed is—and I’m sure everybody’s really noticed—is that we’re in this weird stage where we’re doubling ourselves as people. It started with personal branding. You can have your real self and then your personal brand that you highlight and showcase. There’s a danger in the metaverse of not recognizing that there’s a difference between our ordinary selves and the versions that we blow up through a profile or an avatar.

It’s not to say that we should fear technology or we should fear the metaverse or—VR for instance, we’re working with a health tech firm doing a bunch of production stuff from them and storytelling from them and they’re really excited because they are developing these virtual reality technologies where doctors are able to practice in VR and save lives without actually having to work on a cadaver—not to be blunt and stuff—but when you cut up a—that’s amazing. It’s an amazing use of technology. But if that doctor were to turn around and think that “Well, I’m saving lives in the metaverse." To have that—to walk around with that notion that they are actually doing—that is the thing to be done versus taking that, applying that to real life, then obviously, that would be a big problem. I know that’s a funny obtuse example but that’s what kids are growing up thinking about right now. Kids have that confusion. It’s exactly what’s happening in games that kids are playing, like Roblox and Instagram and TikTok—and let’s not be fooled; Instagram and TikTok, they are games. This book really gives us some practical ways to ground ourselves and ground each other as it becomes harder and harder to separate fact from fiction, what’s real and what’s artificial.

Kornik: Yes. So interesting. You make some fascinating arguments in the book, one being that our collective future depends on the choices we make right now when it comes to all media, really, but essentially, Web3 and the metaverse and how that’s all going to play out, and how we communicate with each other through those mediums, right, through those new technologies. You suggest in the book that it's a crisis as serious as climate change but just not enough people are talking about it. Walk us through that a little bit if you could in terms of the burning platform that we have in front of us.

Casciotta: Well, yes. What’s really funny is, at least here in The States, it’s, whenever there’s a big commercial crisis, economic crisis of corporate magnitude, the same playbook comes out, right? The same thing happened with Big Tobacco. You see it with the concussion issue with the NFL and with tackle football. It’s like, “Let’s just wait until the data is conclusive.” That’s riddled with lots of issues in itself. When it comes to media technology… not everybody smokes, not everybody plays football, everybody lives in our current climate, and everybody uses media technology. This is the stuff that we utilize to literally communicate information and translate communication between entities, whether that’s individuals or entire governments to the masses. If we can’t get ahold of that reality—and I know regulation is a scary word in some circles, so I won’t say that, but if we’re not proactively giving this some forethought to put in some guardrails, some handholds, around the thing that we use to, again, to literally communicate every piece of information with each other, we should not be surprised when we have the issues that we’ve been retroactively dealing with, like the COVID crisis and the amount of misinformation/disinformation that has come out there when it comes to public health.

What I’m calling for is a little bit more forethought so that we’re not late to the game, whether we’re a business, whether we’re a government entity, and we’re not retroactively going, “Oh, my gosh. I wonder what happened. I wonder why this is such a big issue.” [Laughter] It’s a crisis and it needs to be thought of as one. There was actually a really brilliant paper that was done by a couple of folks. Really, it was a group of people across a ton of different disciplines that argued that media technology, social media, all of the stuff should be really elevated to the discipline of—to a crisis discipline, and I agree with that. I mentioned that in the book.

Kornik: Yes. Another one of the ideas that comes up in the book that I think is really interesting is this idea that you pointed out that in a metaverse future that we can flourish completely detached from our bodies essentially, right, our human form, and you think that’s pretty dangerous, that’s a dangerous mindset to get in, and I think that’s a pretty interesting concept. You say these shifts come at incredible psychological and societal costs. What are the answers? What can we do?

Casciotta: Well, I’d like to answer that question with a story. My family and I last year moved up to this little suburb outside of Columbus, Ohio called Westerville. I think, to many people, that looked like a very strange move. “What in the world is in Westerville, Ohio?” Well, for us it was really dear friends who felt like family, who were parenting their kids similarly to us in the way they saw social media and their use of media technology. For us it meant being near people that had similar values as we did, who knew us as our ordinary selves apart from any kind of personal brands we might be tempted to put out there. That to us was really, really important. What I found out, in the process of moving to Westerville, Ohio, is it actually used to be ground zero for the temperance movement. The whole headquarters was here. It was because they had a big printing factory and everything here and it was really interesting that this was like the place you wanted to go if you wanted to work for the temperance movement. The reality is that that movement eventually failed. It didn’t really work. It didn’t once they overregulated everything, and it’s like the data didn’t show that it stopped a lot of the issues it was trying to solve.

But then I did some more research in preparation for this book and I found out that just about an hour and a half away from us is the City of Akron, Ohio, and in the City of Akron, Ohio, something very interesting happened. You had two guys who were these struggling alcoholics who got together and decided that the very process of being in close proximity with each other actually helped their addiction, and they ended up starting Alcoholics Anonymous. My point in that story is that in this age, proximity matters.

Kornik: Well, you can certainly convince me that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and that we needed a non-tech intervention, but I’m Gen X; I didn’t grow up with this technology all around me all the time. Isn’t there a real generational divide going on here? I mean, aren’t Gen Y and Gen Z wired differently, I mean almost literally?

Casciotta: They’re wired differently but what’s encouraging is that there’s a lot of data out there showing that Gen Z, and even Generation Alpha, are actually pushing back against a lot of the assumptions Big Tech has made over the past 20 years.

Kornik: Yes, and I’m curious, as those generations have entered the workforce or are entering the workforce and are starting to move up through the ranks and as they continue to become more senior leaders, what that impact, or what that could mean, for businesses, they start to begin to try to figure out how to balance technology and the humanity of running a company, the employees, the interaction between senior leaders and more junior level employees. What are the benefits of such a realization for business leaders as they start to look at the future through a different lens perhaps?

Casciotta: It’s a great question. I think it’s realizing that genuine human interaction, what I call ordinary human interaction, a break in the automation change, is in fact a competitive advantage. Customers don’t want to go through an automated phone process that gives them seven different prompts before they actually talk to a real person. In some ways, the antidote to just good enough is actually ordinary. To make that shift, it’s going to take a lot of education; obviously, education of the workforce, and then shareholders as well. I think realizing that human interaction ordinariness, that face-to-face, that flesh-to-flesh sort of conversation, is something that can actually give you a competitive edge, is the opportunity at stake.

The bigger question is are we, as employees, as human beings, in service to the technology or is the technology in service to us? Are we creating a future where we don’t really need people to work anymore? [Laughter] That’s fine, but then we need to drastically shift what society looks like from a governmental standpoint, from an economic standpoint, and we need to be asking those questions as business leaders now so that we’re not caught between…or with our tail between our legs in 10 to 15 years going, “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t see this happening. Now I have a revolution, a revolt, on our, on my hands.”

I think whatever outcome we decide on, a company decides on, whatever is best for their bottom line, that’s fine. Again, I’m not a Luddite, I’m not antitechnology, but I think we need to think a little bit more realistically, carefully, and take our time when it comes to recognizing both the intended and unintended consequences of innovating to the point of human beings not being necessary anymore to carry out some of the key functions they have been for over 100 years, if not more.  <>Joe Kornik: Right. Which leads me right to my final question, which is where does this all end up? I mean when we do look out, let’s say, 10 or 15 years, how optimistic are you about the future in a world of humans and technology?

Casciotta: I’m an optimistic guy. I am pretty optimistic. I think it’s going to be like AA. It’s going to take enough ordinary people on a mass scale saying, “I don’t want this anymore. I don’t like this anymore. I don’t like feeling this way.”

Kornik: CJ, thank you so much for a fascinating discussion today.

Casciotta: Yes. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Kornik: Thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. On behalf of CJ Casciotta, I’m Joe Kornik, we’ll see you next time.

Digital expert Cheemin Bo-Linn offers executive playbook for Web 3

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti interview. I'm Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our global content resource examining big themes that will impact the C suite and executive boardrooms worldwide.

Today we're exploring the metaverse future, and I'm excited to welcome in Cheemin Bo-Linn, a renowned business executive and entrepreneur who has served as a CEO, fortune 100 Vice President, C-suite officer and board director over the course of her career. She serves and has served on the boards of seven public companies and multiple private companies in Canada. The United States, Europe, and Australia, in several capacities. Bo-Linn has been recognized by the Financial Times as a top-100 global diverse board director, a top-50 Board of Directors by the National Association of Corporate Directors, and one of STEMconnector’s 100 CEO leaders in STEM. She was also inducted into the Women in Technology’s Hall of Fame. Cheemin, thank you so much for joining me today.

Cheemin Bo-Linn: Great to be here, Joe. Thank you for asking.

Kornik: Wow, what a resume. I just read that intro and as I've said, you've served on multiple boards, public and private, on three continents. So, I'm wondering what role you see for the board as it begins to think about Web 3 and the metaverse; where can boards be most valuable?

Bo-Linn: Having previously served as board chair and lead independent director, it's apparent that the board can be a valuable resource as it performs its fiduciary duties. A board that is diverse, competent, and well informed can ask the right questions of management as they navigate yet another market disruption—this time, the metaverse and the world of Web 3, or what we call the 3D internet world. It's not so much as if, but when and how much and where do we invest? The board must have a critical eye on risk and return on investment. As the physical and virtual worlds meld together in the metaverse, both the board and management must stay focused on what problem they are solving to satisfy current and future customer needs and to beat competition as they reimagine the possibilities. This transformative disruption can make the impossible possible.

So here are the areas that the board can add value. The board can ask questions as an example in three key areas: One, digital governance; two, financial and business risk; and, three, metaverse literacy. Let's take the first point, digital governance and ethics policies. We should ensure responsible use of artificial intelligence, implement data governance and enable trust, and be knowledgeable about new governance models.

Number two, financial and business acumen and risk ensure a balanced view of key realistic opportunities, for example, in delivering upgraded experience. Anticipate the associated risk and value creation. Examine the financials, including assumptions and investment thesis. Ask, are we investing strategically? Or is it hype or hope? Understand accounting and legal matters, monitor management's use and leveraging of tools as it conducts metaverse risk scenarios.

And lastly, point three--metaverse literacy. The board can add value when it is educated and asks management critical questions to validate those capabilities and growth strategy. Ask questions to determine their understanding of technology, interoperability, ethical norms, regulation, privacy and security of employee and customer data, fraud prevention, digital identity loss, and just their understanding of the overall ecosystem. The board should ask questions in regard to use cases to ensure it's in line with the company's growth strategy.

Kornik: Thanks for that, some great advice there for boards. And Cheemin, you've also been a CEO. So, as the C-suite starts to consider the business implications of the metaverse as well as potential investments in both resources and capital, what advice would you offer to the C-suite and why?

Bo-Linn: If I were to look at the considerations, and narrow it down to one, my key advice is: Have a different mindset. Focus on levels and cadres and investments required to become a future leader in this virtual space versus the starting block of assessing your current capabilities. You'll be surprised how two different starting points will have different outcomes. And then determine the framework in the gap, reflect on the relative success in the last major shift, which was digital transformation. Benchmark yourself, compare yourself to your competitors and the industry leaders. Are your peers making similar investments? What have you learned from early use cases? Also, discuss your company's leadership role in the metaverse: Is it to develop technology, solutions, standards, policies, or regulation?

Kornik: Well, speaking of investment and the C-suite, I know some companies have hired Chief Metaverse Officers to oversee the strategy, the risk, the governance of the metaverse. Do you think that's necessary and what value could a Chief Metaverse Officer add?

Bo-Linn: Let's look at what is happening now. As companies prepare themselves for the next chapter of the internet, the Metaverse, some companies such as Procter and Gamble, Disney and LVMH have hired Chief Metaverse Officers to manage and maintain the company's online presence. Nike and Gucci have hired people to facilitate their metaverse presence. But without such appointments, perhaps you can wait before appointing a Chief Metaverse Officer as you develop use cases and the metaverse matures. But act now. Start exploring the possibilities within the metaverse. Also, companies may need to wait because the skills of an ideal Chief Metaverse Officer are complex. Skills desired in such a person include both creative and technical experience, ranging from virtual reality, augmented reality, cloud computing, Blockchain, gaming experiences and engines, 3D modeling, animation tools and/or computer programming languages.

Let's recall what a Chief Metaverse Officer should do. He or she drives a vision, understands the new ecosystem and leads the execution of the metaverse initiative within the company. A Chief Metaverse Officer is the single point of contact and manages the brand image, mission and vision across virtual platforms. So, at least start forming a team. Be aware of the opportunities and the risks as you navigate the metaverse. Companies may have just a few years to develop the use cases, learn and test assumptions before appointing a Chief Metaverse Officer. Remember, Gartner predicts that by 2026 about 25% of the people around the world will spend at least one hour a day in the new virtual metaverse world for work, shopping, education, or socializing and entertainment. So, it's not a matter of if the metaverse will evolve, but when it will be fully deployed and adopted.

Kornik: Thanks, Cheemin, for that great advice to our business leaders.

Bo-Linn: Thanks again for allowing me to share my thoughts leadership on the metaverse and the new internet age.

Kornik: And thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. For Cheemin Bo-Linn, I'm Joe Kornik. We'll see you next time.

Tech visionary says AI, education can bridge digital divide to meet 2030 UN goal

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, our global content resource examining big themes that will impact the C-Suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. Today, we’re exploring the metaverse future, and I’m excited to welcome in Amna Usman Chaudhry, a financial economist and strategist for blockchain, the metaverse, and Web 3.0. She’s a graduate-level lecturer with teaching experience in London and Dubai and is working on some impactful projects, including one with the United Nations. Amna has been named one of the top 100 women of the future, the global winner of the Women in Web 3.0 award, and she’s been listed on the Women in FinTech Powerlist. Amna, thank you so much for joining me today.

Amna Usman Chaudhry: Thank you Joe, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Kornik: The metaverse has certainly had its share of ups and downs the last few years, and hype cycles, but so far in 2023, I feel like there’s been a lot of emphasis on AI. In particular, generative AI. So, how do you think AI and generative AI will impact the metaverse?

Chaudhry: So, AI has been here for quite a long time but generative AI has really sparked everyone’s imagination because it has created a whole new creator economy, and I think people understood just how much potential generative AI offers to revolutionize industries. So, I think it’s really exciting and it will definitely have a great impact on the metaverse.

So, for example, imagine you have a dream house and it’s modern, it’s like big windows, maybe there’s a high ceiling, etcetera. So, imagine you type that into a prompt and then you have a virtual representation of that house and then you can invite your friends there and go see it out, and maybe even have your architect there and get an idea of exactly what you want. So, this is where we are going, and this is really exciting because we have a lot of generative AI that deals with text-to-3D.

For example, we have GET3d by NVIDIA, we have Make-A-Video by Meta, we have DreamFusion by Google, and we have so many more as well. This really saves time as well because it’s very time consuming to build a metaverse world. So, when you have this, then they already fast-paced acceleration that’s taking place in the metaverse is accelerated and you can focus on the more important aspects.

Kornik: Right, and I know you’re very passionate about education. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think the metaverse and Web 3.0 will bring to education in terms of its inclusivity and in terms of leveling the playing field?

Chaudhry: Education is one industry which is still yet to be disrupted properly, and we can see how much there is a need for evolution. Just take the COVID pandemic a few years ago. I know students and children, they had to sit [in form of] screens, and it was really difficult for them to sit all day and understand. So, with the evolution of the metaverse, you could put up a virtual reality headset. You can go in and see the pyramids of Egypt for your history class. You can go to the Jurassic era and see the dinosaurs. You need to kind of put a headset on to see just how immersive it is.

There was actually a study done by PWC which says that virtual reality education is four times better at training than the classroom. Also, the students who take part in it are four times more engaged. It’s actually after a certain number of headsets, 375 headsets, I believe, it is actually cost effective as well when you go into the skill. So, there’s a lot of potential in education.

Now, I think when we talk about emerging technologies, we also need to kind of keep into account that it is inclusive. So, we need to make sure that these technologies are—the emerging tech world is evolving super-fast—so we need to take a step back and look that there are still 2.7 billion people on the planet who do not have access to the internet, and 1.3 billion of those are children. So, this is why initiatives like Giga are so important.

Giga is an initiative by UNICEF and ITU that aims to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030, and they’re using these latest technologies like NFTs, blockchain, Web 3.0, etcetera, to kind of bring their vision to pass. So, we should always get excited about how the metaverse is going to evolve the education sector and the digital landscape, but we should also keep in mind that initiatives like Giga—bridging the digital divide is important, so that the future of education remains as inclusive as possible.

Kornik: Right, and you mentioned NFTs there. It seems like you think they’re going to be one of the big disruptors, maybe along with blockchain in these immersive spaces in the worlds of Web 3.0 and the metaverse. So, why do you think NFTs are so important?

Chaudhry: There is a lot of benefits of NFTs. I think, previously, I mentioned just with the education as well, NFTs are also being used as tool for good. I think that’s something that is often overlooked and that is something that gets me personally most excited for the potential of why NFTs are so important. NFTs offer the same advantages that blockchain has: transparency, decentralization, security, and they’re one of a kind. So, identification as well.

Going back to the example of NFTs as it were for good, we have, again, Giga where, for UNICEF’s 75th anniversary, they released 1,000 NFTs for the Patchwork Kingdom NFTs, which were made via real data collected from Giga’s Project Connect. What that did was raise more than $700,000 for Giga’s initiative to connect every school in the world to the internet by 2030. Now Giga is coming up with an NFT 2.0 collection, which aims to be the largest open-sourced decentralized database of every school in the world. And eventually, although, it’s not in the plan yet, eventually, there is a possibility of those school NFTs to be digital twins in the metaverse as well.

So, there is a whole evolution. I think the crypto market and the blockchain NFT market has slowed down as compared to last year, but there was a study done by Geneva Research, which was published around mid-2022, which says that around that time, there was 24 million NFT transactions, and in five years alone, that number is going to rise to 40 million NFT transactions. So, the sector is definitely growing. The best part is the fastest growing NFTs are the NFTs that are linked to the metaverse. So, from 2022, 600,000. By five years, 2027, we will have that number to 9.8 million. So, there is immense growth, and NFTs and emerging tech as a whole are definitely an exciting future ahead.

Kornik: Right, and I mentioned in my introduction all of the awards that you’ve won, right? You were named one of the top 100 women of the future, you’re a global winner of the Women in Web 3.0 award. You’ve been named one of the most inspirational women of Web 3.0 and the metaverse. So, I have to ask you as a woman leader in this space, how do you think we’re doing and how optimistic are you about the future of women and diversity in general in the metaverse, and if we’re not where we need to be, how do we get there?

Chaudhry: So, first of all, I’m very excited about the future of the metaverse in terms of female. I know a lot of females who are working in the metaverse sector and it is always amazing to see the brilliant minds who are in the space. So, I know, for sure, that there is a lot of brilliant women leaders who are leading the metaverse sector. However, we still have a long way to go because some of the top metaverse platforms such as Sandbox, Decentraland, and Roblox, etcetera, all of these are led by men. So, we do have—I think we have Everyrealm, which has a female CEO—but majority of the leadership in the other metaverse platforms are still men. We need to encourage women to kind of set up in the metaverse.

Companies also need to have an active DEI (diversity, wquity, inclusion) initiatives within their companies to ensure that these women are working and encouraged to join. There should also be more educational initiatives, more trainings, etcetera, and I think this is the mindset that we had when Women in Tech, the global Women in Tech Movement, collaborated with Giga and set up for women’s day this year an initiative to encourage more women in Web 3.0 and the metaverse. And I am really grateful to be part of that initiative where I’ll be giving a masterclass and cutting everything down to really basic details to kind of encourage more women to come into the metaverse, etcetera, and not just the metaverse, in Web 3.0 as a whole.

Kornik: We actually spoke to Melissa Slaymaker for our program earlier. We did a Q&A with her, who’s the global talent director for Women in Tech. I know you know her as well.

Chaudhry: I know. She’s brilliant as well.

Kornik: Finally, Amna, I just have one more question for you today and that is, if you could just take a look out 2030 or 2035 and tell us what you see when you see the metaverse in those years, what do you think is possible?

Chaundry: I think the future is exciting, especially now that we have generative AI to kind of really accelerate the already fast pace of the metaverse. So, imagine, Joe, that you can sit in your TV lounge and switch on the TV. So, in 2035, you will switch on the TV and then there will be a whole metaverse around you, and if you’re watching an ad on coffee, you would be able to smell it. I know this might sound farfetched but these technologies are actually here in 2023.

So, for example, LG TV is working on a metaverse-based TV called Sansar, and then you have the smell of the metaverse technologies such as OVR technology. So, these very much exist. So, everything would be much more immersive by 2035. The healthcare sector would be really benefiting from virtual realities. Sustainability would be benefiting from the metaverse as well. Not just in terms of carbon emissions. Digital twin technology, it would be the norm, and hopefully, by then the education sector would be more inclusive as well, because like I mentioned, Giga aims to connect every school in the world by 2030. So, hopefully, by 2035, the digital divide would be much, much less. So, there is a lot of hope for the future.

Kornik: Right. The promise of the metaverse being a great leveling of the playing field or the great equalizer in terms of opportunities from a global perspective. Amna, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Chaudhry: Thank you, Joe. I really enjoyed it.<>Joe:   And thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik. We’ll see you next time.

Microsoft’s Charles Drayton: The metaverse will benefit from a Web 3 world

Joe Kornik: Welcome to the VISION by Protiviti Interview. I’m Joe Kornik, Editor-in-Chief of VISION by Protiviti, a global content resource examining big themes impacting the C-suite and executive boardrooms worldwide. Today, we’re exploring the metaverse future and I’m happy to welcome in Microsoft Charles Drayton, Digital Contact Center platform lead for the chief product office at Microsoft. Prior to joining CPO, Charles was the chief technical architect and worldwide healthcare and life sciences lead at the Microsoft Technology Center in Chicago. Charles has an extensive background in retail, manufacturing, and healthcare, and is the creator of the Intelligent Healthcare Experience, the largest showcase of healthcare technology anywhere at Microsoft.

Today, I’m happy to turn over the interviewing to my college, Kathie Topel. Kathie is a Director with Protiviti’s Business Performance Improvement practice. Kathie, I’ll turn it over to you to begin.

Kathie Topel: Thanks, Joe. Charles, the metaverse has gone through all sorts of hype cycles the last 18 months or so. Lately, it seems there’s been more negative news. Where do you see us in the cycle and has your overall perception of the metaverse’s potential impact changed?

Charles Drayton: I think first we have to think about what exactly the metaverse is and what it isn’t. Part of it is, I don’t think there is necessarily a universally agreed upon definition of the metaverse itself. I think people often think of the metaverse as VR and AR, MR, XRs all being interchangeable. That’s not really the case. I think VR can be a component of the metaverse, but the metaverse at its heart is really just any shared digital landscape, any place where people can go and interact with each other. To that end, there are actually a number of metaverses that exist already, and many of them have had a fair degree of popularity. So, I don’t necessarily think it’s failed. I don’t necessarily think it’s on the way out. I think what people often believe the metaverse to be is still yet to manifest the way that I think people want it to manifest.

In many respect, it’s very similar to cryptocurrency where I think the Utopia and the vision of cryptocurrency was that we are going to have this universal free currency that would exist for everyone and would be without borders and would allow anyone to buy anything anywhere and would just free us from the shackles of nations and in reality it just became another speculative investment vehicle. [Laughter] I think in many respects the metaverse is very, very similar in the sense that while we might have conceived of it as being this digital universe where people can come together without borders and all of that, I think in reality it’s really taken a couple of forms. Some of it is gaming, and gaming in nature. The other aspect of it is really speculative in nature as well, where you are buying digital real estate and buying and selling it. Very similar to what we’ve seen with cryptocurrency. It’s taken on a somewhat different form, and where it’s going to go, I think, remains to be seen, but I’m very interested in seeing what the next version of this is going to look like.

Topel: How would you really characterize what Microsoft’s view of the metaverse is at this point in time and has it shifted recently?

Drayton: I think we’ve always had a more pragmatic view of things when it comes to this. Sure, there is a metaverse aspect to it, and there’s still going to be a number of years before the metaverse reaches whatever its final form is going to be, but in the meantime some of the aspects that are common in the metaverse such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, as we call it, or XR, are all things that we have areas of investment in. I think our view of it at Microsoft—and I just want to clarify, I don’t speak on behalf of Microsoft even though I work at Microsoft. This is my opinion of it, not necessarily the company’s position, so I want to make sure that I’m clear on that, but in my view, from everything that I’ve seen, everything I’ve been researching, and everything I’ve experienced that the metaverse itself is going to take a more practical form for organizations like Microsoft primarily in business types of applications.

So, rather than it being a gaming platform, which I think is primarily going to be where you see a lot of consumer use of the metaverse, we’re going to see it more for B2B-type scenarios. An example of that might be the ability to have a metaverse digital twin of some sort of commercial real estate, and then use that to plan out what actual real estate is going to look like. We’ve already seen some used cases of that with the HoloLens within the standpoint of construction, or the standpoint of manufacturing, the ability to have digital twins that would exist through a corporate metaverse, where I can see a digital replica of some of the machines that we use in real life to allow me to interact with them, sort of if I want to be able to try and diagnose a problem or operate a machine or even have a digital assembly line. Those are things that we’re seeing in real life as well.

Even the ability to use the metaverse to repair things. We have an application called field service. There is a component of field service that makes use of guides, which is a mixed reality application where you can create a digital twin of an application to walk you through installing it or repairing it, or using remote assist, which is another application where we can pull someone in and both people would be able to use mixed reality markups to try and resolve a problem even though they might not both be in the same room. Those are some of the used cases that we see being the future of the metaverse. I think we have more practical value outside of just consumer use cased.

Topel: What do you really think happened? Did we move from metaverse moment to a generative AI moment?

Drayton: Generative AI moment, yes. [Laughter] It’s funny. When we first talked about this idea of talking about the metaverse I thought, “Hmm, we haven’t talked about the metaverse in a while.” That’s because a lot of what we’ve been talking about recently has been generative AI, ChatGPT, and all the variations of that. This is where a lot of our investments, a lot of our mindshare is. What the future of generative AI is going to look like, despite the fact that it’s actually younger, is a lot more assured because of the level of uptake that it’s had. So, because of that, we’ve been making a lot of investments into generative AI as a place where people are getting a lot of value very, very quickly from it. 

The metaverse itself is largely speculative in nature still, and it still feels a lot like people are hunting for just the right used case, whereas anybody can use generative AI to be able to compose an email or be able to create a spreadsheet just by describing in natural language what it looks like. Like who wouldn’t want to do something like this? I do not remember how to build a pivot table. I couldn’t if you paid me. So, the ability to then go to a generative AI model and say, “Hey, build this spreadsheet that’ll give me insights into all of this data,” and have it do it for you with no expertise on your part, who doesn’t want that?

So, that’s where a lot of what we’re looking at now is going to encompass a lot of our future investment. So, how that relates back to the metaverse, I think, is an interesting question. That probably remains to be seen. I think right now a lot of where we’re looking in making investment is going to be generative AI. That being said, there is a relationship between the two, and that is in the sense of both of them are kind of foundational models of what we think of as Web 3.

Topel: Other experts have said widespread adoption will probably take longer, maybe even much longer that we originally thought. They say mobile took basically 15 years to get to where are today. Do you think that sort of timetable, say 10 to 15 years, for widespread Web 3 and metaverse adoption makes sense?

Drayton: What I find is that the best consumer technology catches fire quickly. A lot of the slow-burn technologies that people often talk about never really materialized the way that people expect it. So, think all the way back to 1999 and the Segway, right? People, when the Segway first came out, there was a whole thing about, “Oh, it’s going to change the way people transport themselves. It’s going to be the end of cars as we know it.” It didn’t really work out that way. If you ever see Segways ever it’s usually in the form of tours, like little city tours on a Segway or something like that or periodically someone will go viral because they fell off the Segway. I think Segway itself, if you go to their website, it’s primarily scooters now. You don’t really see the manufacturing of that traditional Segway anymore. So, despite the fact that it was touted as being a game changer, because it never really caught fire right away, it never really achieved what people thought it would.

Same thing with Google Glass as an example. Google Glass is another one where they released it and people said, “Hmm,” and then a lot of pundits said, “Well, give it some time. It will take a little while.” It never really became what it was meant to, and now we can’t really buy a Google Glass anymore. So I think the best kinds of consumer technologies are the kinds that really catch fire right away. In contrast, ChatGPT. Cool. Immediate, right? So, it immediately became popular. It immediately became a game changer, and now everyone is using it.

Where exactly metaverse falls into that? Probably a little closer to the former than the latter when it comes to some of these use cases that we were talking about. That being said, there are a lot of people who are using metaverse platforms. So, going back to the first part of the question and that’s, what will it look like in 15 years, if you look at a lot of the power users, not the speculative users, who are doing things like making NFTs or buying digital real estate and things like that, but a lot of the genuine users, a lot of them are children. My nephew, Jackson, he is eight years old, and a lot of children are building these very sophisticated applications, these very sophisticated games and levels on it. So I think if we’re going to see that sort of mass uptake, it probably won’t be this generation. It’ll be his generation, because these are people who are going to be more digital natives to building things on a metaverse platform. So, 15 years, if it’s going to happen, seems right given some of the things that I’ve seen with a lot of younger people I work with.

Topel: Let’s start with what people are actually using the metaverse for today and how that could evolve based on those technologies?

Drayton: I’ve talked a little bit about this earlier when I mentioned that there are—there seem to be three main use cases emerging from the metaverse umbrella. One of them is gaming, one of them is going to be a lot of the digital financial speculation, and the third one is going to be more the B2B-types of use cases. So, when you look at gaming, that’s probably where you see most metaverse applications today. You see applications like Sandbox, Bloktopia, Decentraland, Roblox, and these are all applications that have hundreds of millions of users. So, it’s not nothing, and I think that’s where a lot of the forefront of metaverse development is taking place now, except it’s still far ways away from being mainstream. The use cases associated with them are far from being mainstream as well. So, I think it’s going to require some additional use cases that would then start grabbing in more of the mainstream people. Will that happen? I think it’s something that remains to be seen. That being said, we’re definitely seeing a lot of use cases within some of that gaming, some of the development, within that as well.

Now, going forward, I’m a big believer in Web 3 because a lot of Web 3 is focused on this idea of immersion, so immersive technology. So, I mentioned earlier where does generative AI fit into the whole metaverse thing? I think both the fact that they can become features of this Web 3 concept. So, in Web 3, we think about that as everything being decentralized. Everything being built on a blockchain, but then also everything being much more immersive in nature. You see rather than Web 1 and Web 2, where you adapted yourself to the technology, Web 3, one feature of it is, it adapts itself to you. It learns from you. It’s able to anticipate what you’re going to do and then be a helpful assistant.

So, in that sense, the metaverse is very much a Web 3 sort of technology. Blockchain is very much a Web 3 sort of technology, and I believe generative AI is a Web 3 technology as well, in the sense that now you’re going to see it embedded everywhere within the coming year, and the ability to really understand you and be able to provide a co-pilot for you for everything you do is going to be something that’s really the game changer, like the ability to basically automate everything that’s rote in your life, and it’ll allow you to focus on thinking about the future, thinking about what’s new. So, all of that is going to be something that can potentially be a real game changer going forward.

Topel: Obviously, there are already success stories in the metaverse and some sectors that seem poised for big changes. Let’s start with one that’s near and dear to your heart here, Charles. Healthcare.

Drayton: So, healthcare in the metaverse, or healthcare in Web 3, I think has a lot of promise. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One example for this is going to be the use of mixed reality in a lot of healthcare use cases. So, imagine this idea of having a surgeon who specializes in a specific type of procedure. This surgeon is in another country, but you can have a metaverse application where you can have him basically live from thousands of miles away being able to get a live feed into a surgery and essentially perform virtual surgery through a machine by wearing only a HoloLens. That’s one of the far further reaching examples, but we’ve already seen a lot of development to try and start bridging that gap between the virtual and the physical.

Another example that I think we’re seeing right now would be cases where you have traveling nurses and/or traveling healthcare workers. They have a HoloLens, and they connect via the HoloLens when they’re at a patient’s home or patients who have limited mobility or who are in healthcare deserts. Healthcare desert meaning you are more than at least 50 miles away from the nearest healthcare institution. There’s a fairly high percentage of the population that would fit into that definition of a healthcare desert. So, having someone come to them, connect via HoloLens to a primary care physician can essentially extend the reach of the primary care via the metaverse through mixed reality to a patient’s home.

So this way you see a patient and a traveling nurse essentially working together even though they are many miles apart at a patient’s home and then delivering healthcare or being able to get a real time feed of patient’s vitals that would then be visualized in the form of a mixed reality dashboard that then could be seen by both the nurse and the physician at the same time. That’s an example of something that we’re seeing in practice today. Going forward and through expanding the umbrella of this for metaverse to the broader concept of Web 3, I’m a big fan of the idea of having digital ownership of your own data.

For me, one of the most exciting promises of Web 3 is that communal ownership of data. Who owns your healthcare data right now? It’s not you. It should be you. As long as it’s not you, you’re always going to be at the mercy of other organizations. So, I’ve been an advocate for a long time of the idea that healthcare records should be the sole ownership of the patient and then the patient should be able to pick and choose what organizations they’re going to share it with. This way, if you need to get your health records, you don’t have to call this hospital or who did I see last year or who did I go to last year? Now, you get a copy of it.

So the idea of having that as a Web 3 application is also going to be something that’s really valuable, because it’ll make it easier at that point to say, “Okay. Here’s who I’m going to share my proprietary personal health information with and here’s who I’m going to take it away from. I’m going to have everything centralized that everything about myself and my health history is all centralized. It’s not in four or five, six different electronic health records that I all have to hunt down in all these different health organizations. It’s all mine and mine only.” That will make a lovely Web 3 application.

Those are all the things that I’m looking forward to. I know there are still discussions and a lot of debate over how it’s going to look and what this is going to look like, but when I think about the future and the most promising applications for metaverse and Web 3, those are definitely things that come to mind.

Topel: Thanks so much, Charles. You have sort of touched on this earlier, but I’ll ask it again this way. Ultimately, will the metaverse be a transformational game changer do you think or more of a niche space where some innovative things happen?

Drayton: I suppose a bit of both. There are going to be—I think that there are some niche use cases that exists today that I think are successful, but relatively small scale. A lot of the things with the HoloLens that I talked about they’re all things that exist today, but it’s not something that would be used by everyone in the US, but I also think that there’s a lot of promise for what’s to come as people start becoming more comfortable with metaverse or as the metaverse start becoming more comfortable itself. That is to say, as we start putting more of a definition on it, I think that sometimes it’s a little premature to go out and announce the metaverse to the world without really defining what it is. You ask the average person what the metaverse is, they’re going to say, “I don’t know. Something that Mark Zuckerberg does, VR or something like that.” [Laughter] So, no one can really even get it right. So, how can you sell it? How can you adopt it if no one really even knows what it is yet? So, where is it going to go? Let’s see what it becomes first and then we’ll see where it goes.

Topel: Thanks so much, Charles, for all your insights here today. I really appreciate all your thoughts and visions for the future. With that, I’ll turn it back over to you, Joe. 

Kornik: Thanks, Kathie, and thank you for watching the VISION by Protiviti interview. On behalf of Kathie Topel and Microsoft’s Charles Drayton, I’m Joe Kornik and we’ll see you next time.