There are two approaches to the Metaverse,” says Cecilia MosZe Tham. “First, the Metaverse is all hype and can be ignored. Second, the Metaverse is going to change everything, so jump in immediately. If you are the first type and ignore it, then you’re letting other people build the Metaverse for you in the way that they want to make the Metaverse.”
Cecilia designs Metaverse moonshots for companies, brands, and people. She’s building the Metaverse to be a force for good for all species. Cecilia’s latest work, Plantiverse, is a bold moonshot to achieve true inclusivity, a future in which humans, non-humans, and even plants can participate and benefit meaningfully.
Why does the Metaverse have to represent the physical world? Cecilia doesn’t think that’s necessarily the future. A moment that stands out for Cecilia since she started working in the web3 space was when she realized that ownership in the Metaverse goes beyond just humans. “Algorithms, pets, plants, the Amazon Rainforest – all of these can own assets, make contracts, and be active participants in the economic universe that controls more and more of the planet every day.”
What she is most excited about for the future is that her work in the Metaverse empowers interspecies experiences in the real world. “I am excited to be able to give non-human voices to those that currently have no voice. We, as humans, have been far too human-centric for way too long. My own legacy is far less interesting; it’s time for us to step aside. I would rather be delighted that plants and other non-humans can leave their legacy and contributions.”
How she is building this future through the Metaverse is incredibly exciting. Cecilia is Founder and Director of Futurity Systems, which provides futures-as-a-service to help companies and organizations build better futures faster. She and her team make future artefacts so that the world can achieve true equality and equity beyond humans to create an interspecies economy that is more sustainable and ecological.
Plantiverse is the beginning of this Interspecies Metaverse journey, where trees own bank accounts and can make transactions based on their own well-being. Here, she supports the creation of digital twins of real plants, trees and other ecology, converted into NFTrees, each designed by plants for the benefit of plants, seeded in a carbon-neutral blockchain to fund sustainable initiatives.
Her incredible work has not gone unnoticed. Plantiverse has been honored by Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards 2022! Recognizing their efforts in helping to make the world a safer, fairer, more beautiful place.
Another one of Cecilia’s progressive projects is called SOFT (Store of Future Things), which is an experimental space that overlaps the phygital (physical and digital) experience where digital assets can be sold, such as digital clothing, art, and NFTrees using AR and VR technology. SOFT is a store with no stock or inventory that aims to pivot our consumption into digital things to slow down the consumption of our natural resources.
With decades of experience working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, technology, science and design, Cecilia is a Harvard-trained designer, formerly a Social Technologist at Alpha Telefonica (Europe’s first moonshot factory), and social entrepreneur with multiple companies, including Makers of Barcelona, FabCafe, and allWomen.tech. This Spanish visionary also serves as an advisor to the UN World Food Program X, SXSW, the National Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), and other private companies.
The Metaverse creates limitless opportunities. Asked about the kinds of opportunities web3 and the Metaverse will present in the next five years, Cecilia shares: “I think there will be very different opportunities in different layers of the Metaverse stack (AR/VR, blockchain, dWeb apps, and more). For example, AR and VR are already viable in social gaming for consumers and maintenance with digital twins in business. In the next five years, those will mature a lot. We’ll also see VR take over telemedicine, and AR will become commonplace in surgeries.”
Cecilia also believes that as much as we already hear about cryptocurrencies and smart contracts, we’re only just starting in that space. “Only a few million people in the world actually own any crypto – it’s nothing yet. These will present real challenges to the existing legal and f inancial systems in the next five years. Today’s systems aren’t really ours; there’s a lot of corruption and systemic injustice built into them. Web3 can create a better alternative – billions of better alternatives.”
The Metaverse is undoubtedly still in its infancy but is developing at lightning speed. While some people have yet to hear the word, others are already planting million-dollar flags on Metaverse soil and claiming ownership of a real estate that exists nowhere but digitally.
According to Cecilia, “the Metaverse is currently a bunch of isolated bubbles of virtual spaces and distributed communities, with as many definitions as participants – all of them trying to establish their own rules of the game and laws of the land, and their own currency and sovereignty. Most people think the Metaverse is just VR and crypto: a digital world that works as close to the physical one as possible.”
She explains: “The Metaverse is so, so much more, and can make the world so, so much better because it is built on the foundation of web3, a decentralized blockchain-based web that is fundamentally distributed, transparent, and above all, self-governing. And this is a great opportunity to build a technology that can be somewhat equitable, and the virtual citizens dictate that – and not by capitalism, politics, or power.”
And because the Metaverse is still in its infancy, Cecilia insists that people must ensure that the web’s foundations stay true. That’s why she’s building the Metaverse with voices for humans, non-humans and even plants.
Cecilia’s accomplishments are impressive but her perspective on the future and her vision to leverage this new world to revolutionize the world and shift commonly accepted norms is inspiring.
Website: ceciliatham.com | futurity.systems | plantiver.se
