By Louis B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., CEO of Unanimous AI.
The concept of land ownership is so ingrained in our culture, it’s easy to forget that the practice has only been pervasive in North America for a few hundred years. For 10,000 years before that, the millions of people who lived on this continent felt no reason to think of land as something a person could own.Play Video
Why mention this in a piece about the metaverse?
Because land ownership, like many of the social norms that govern our lives, is a cultural choice, not an inherent requirement of a well-functioning society. And yet it is quickly becoming a central element of many metaverse worlds.
Is this the right approach? Maybe, but it’s worth noting that land ownership has driven inequality throughout history, concentrating wealth and power within small groups of elites to the detriment of everyone else. And yet metaverse developers, who have the power to invent totally new worlds from scratch, have seized upon this old-world norm by selling NFT real estate. In fact, numerous developers have made the sale of virtual real estate a key premise of their platforms.
Continue reading… “Landlords, property taxes, and zoning permits in a virtual world”