Web and the metaverse is a trendy topic, so it is even nicer to enjoy a more nuanced view of the subject. An optimistic but still realistic sneek peak of our digital future. Katryna Dow from Meeco will elaborate on the challenges of Web3 in her Keynote The Omniverse SWOT on Thursday, May 12, at the European Identity and Cloud Conference 2022.
To give you a preview of what to expect, we asked Katryna some questions about her presentation.
To be honest, I was trying to avoid the word metaverse. And also because I think this new paradigm that we're moving into, it's not like we're going to leave the physical world or our surroundings behind and only move to the digital, I think what it is, we're starting to see the fusion of both. And so what I was trying to do is capture the idea of everyone's talking about the metaverse, but actually it is more than that. It's this connection between the physical and the digital.
Why was Web2 different from Web1? Why was the pre-Internet different from Internet? Why were fire and wheel different from, you know, fire and wheel? And I think what we're looking at is an evolutionary process. And if you're born into a web3 world or you're growing up in a web3 world, it's normal, right? But for those of us that are moving from one paradigm to another, we want to hold on to the things that we were used to, the things that worked, we're challenged by the new. And I think we're on the cusp of another evolution. And it will probably be in hindsight that we will say, okay, they were the major differences. But I think it'll be the new capabilities that we probably can't even imagine right now that over the next decade will just be mainstream.
I think the immersive part is really what we've got to get our heads around. And I think if you want to understand who's doing this really well, is kids in the gaming worlds. You know, whether or not that's headsets or something in their ear or their whole sort of being in the game or playing with somebody that they, you know, may not ever know who they are in the physical world. And so what does that mean? Well, that means there are issues of trust that means there are issues of safety. That means there are issues of, you know, is this a person or a bot? Is this secure? But that generation right now that are growing up in this immersive world that is already every day in a virtual world, in a gaming world, in making connections where there is a sort of proxy for trust, there's lots of great things about that, breaks down many barriers. But as we know, coming from having been trying to build that trust from an enterprise point of view around privacy and security as the perimeter in enterprise has been expanding. Now, imagine wrapping that around your home and wrapping that around your wearables imagine wrapping that around yourself. And imagine technology from a medical point of view starts to move inside the body. So that perimeter is really hard to see. Where that perimeter even is in the future is becoming immersive. It's becoming blurred and with that blurring, we're going to have a whole range of new challenges from an identity point of view, a trust point of view, and really importantly, from a security point of view.
Look, I want to think so, but I'm being pragmatic and realistic. I think as we move into this combination of physical and digital and even if that is done in a very respectful and trusted way, for us to have an open digital world, a digital economy, a trusted digital space, probably the ability to be completely separate and completely private is going to become more of a challenge. However, I am concerned that privacy may be something that will be only available to people with the means. They may be the financial means or the means to control. So I have hope, but I also see that it's going to be hard though. However, I think as these concerns around privacy are mounting, I think the opportunity to win the trust battle. So if we do lose ground on privacy, I think the opportunity to win ground in terms of trust and transparency and agency is probably going to be the biggest enablers of that. And then as a result of that, it may help to underpin what we want to achieve from a privacy rights point of view.
I think it's all of the things we've just talked about over the last 15 years. EIC has been the place where these challenges around identity, enterprise identity, the move to the cloud, the embracing of AI the move to distributed, blockchain. Each time we've had these evolutions, it's raised a whole range of new opportunities, threats, of weaknesses, and so we've worked through that over the last decade and a half, each time these new technologies have emerged. How do you apply them? And I think the reason I would hope people would enjoy this session and why is that we look to Web3, we look to the Omniverse, we look to this environment without perimeters. And what we have to build in is security and trust. And that is going to provide a whole range of new opportunities and some new threats, which means there'll be the chance to solve problems in new ways. And I hope this helps to spark that conversation.
