The Metaverse in Education - A Conversation with Teddy Pahagbia

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

Mainstream is talking about a metaverse like, you know, virtual worlds and all of that, but it goes beyond that. It's the next iteration of the internet. People need to understand what is at stake because until we get it, until we understand what is going on, we won't be able to involve the right people, all of the people, and put them at the table.

Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast with me, Tim Logan, brought to you in partnership with Intrepid Ed News. This week's guest is Teddy Pahagbia, who is the founder and chief executive druid of Black Pixel, a design-led strategy firm that bridges the gap between technology and business, merging the realms of virtual and real worlds. As an expert in emerging technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and advanced data management, Teddy designs new disruptive experiences based on the way we interact with technology. Teddy has been identified as one of the top 30 most influential people in the metaverse. Known by many as Mr. Metaverse, he is one of the leading voices helping to evangelize, educate, advise, develop, and create the successor to today's mobile internet. Teddy is a former consulting manager for various industries and government agencies in Western Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. You can connect with Teddy on Twitter @MrMetaverse or on LinkedIn, and all the links are in the show notes.

Hi, Tim.

Hi, Teddy.

How are you?

I'm good. How are you doing? It's just awesome to be able to talk to you because it's— this is an area that is not in my total comfort zone, right? And I know education maybe isn't your main comfort zone either. So we're going to kind of meet, we're going to meet somewhere, right, in the metaverse together. But I mean, maybe first, I'm curious, but how did you get this title of Mr. Metaverse? Because that seems like a pretty hefty title, right? A crown to be wearing.

I don't feel like it's a crown, you know, I don't feel the heaviness of it. You know, it's just like, When people ask me how I ended up into the metaverse space, I usually told them I've been there like since day one, since forever, since my birth, you know, and I'm a dreamer. I always been a dreamer and I love science and technology and all of that. And this is why I have an engineering background. So, and for me, that was the natural evolution of technology. To somehow reach that point when technology is advanced enough and that we can use it to materialize things that we only dream about years ago, you know? And so I was already envisioning what could be the world if we can use better tech to remove the barrier of space, time, imagination, and come up with concepts that would sound like sci-fi for us nowadays. And so as a futurist, you know, I was thinking about what could be the next step, what could be the next stage. And I was talking with that, with my friends, relatives, people, and the metaverse community, which was very small back then because it wasn't something mainstream. And we didn't even know that.

Yeah.

What we were talking about.

And when, when are you, when are you talking about, I know you're talking about collapsing time, but when, when are you talking about right now? Like, is this like the early 2000s when?

After 2000, and for me it became more concrete like in 2016. In 2016, you know, I've quit my job to start this journey as an entrepreneur, you know, because, you know, I was doing IT for different industry and government agencies across Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, and I was seeing technology advancing so fast and that they were starting to converge, and we were working on some infrastructure project you know, to streamline the processes within different industries. And it was a merge of, you know, AI, blockchain, and all of that, just to break the barriers and the silos between business operation and department. Just, we were seeking for improved efficiency and how information could travel faster, more efficiently with the data analytics and all of that, and to reach the right people at the right time, because they will need it to perform better and everything. And this is really at this moment, that I was like, wow, okay. And I have some kind of a vision, to be honest.

Yeah.

Like a haha moment. Like, holy shit. Yeah. This is happening. So if we converge AI, blockchain, immersive tech with connectivity, edge computing, and all of that, I was like, this is the future. Yeah. And this is the metaverse people are always talking about. I mean, mass market and mainstream is talking about a metaverse like, you know, virtual worlds and all of that, but it goes beyond that. It's the next iteration of the internet. And if you say that it's the next iteration of the internet, that means that it's the next iteration of information technology. Yeah, IT.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And you know, I started my journey and I start meeting people to share some ideas and some thoughts about it, and this is when I've met my community of futurists and dreamers, you know, a lot of background people were coming from different fields, you know, AI, immersive tech, and all that, virtual reality, augmented reality, and all of that. Even people from, I would say, hardcore science, you know, quantum physics, mathematics, and all that. And then we were discussing about what could be next evolution of technology and humankind, you know, obviously, because tech is fusing everything.

Interesting.

And this is when some of my friends gave me the nickname Mr. Metaverse. Nice. I'll take that.

It's better.

I take it.

It's better for you to have it than Mr. Zuckerberg, right?

I don't know if it's better for me to have it or Mr. Zuckerberg, but still, you know, this is my nickname. So that's cool. Very good. And now I feel like I'm ready to, like a couple of months ago, I felt that I was ready to wear it, to own it. Brilliant, that's cool. This is when it went public.

And that went public, but then also, as you're saying, like a small community suddenly just exploded, right? Became huge because of Zuckerberg and the shift across to Meta from Facebook and all of that stuff. And Microsoft, you know, buying the World of Warcraft company and, you know, suddenly everybody is—

Activision.

Activision, yeah. So suddenly everybody is now talking about the metaverse. And even the fact that you're with me on the podcast is perhaps testament to the fact that the community has exploded and it's come out to a much, much wider audience. And so everybody's basically asking the question, what is this? What does it mean? What does it mean for my sector? So my sector is learning and teaching education. There's a lot of people asking that question. What does the metaverse mean for us? In education. And as I said at the beginning, you're not an educator, but that's kind of what I'd love to explore with you just over the next half an hour or so, just to think, you know, what does it actually mean for schooling, for education, for universities, for the way we live and learn, basically. So maybe it's worth— I don't know whether it's a useful question at the beginning to just say, what is it? So you've already mentioned a couple of things, right? And it's obviously connected to Web 3.0, and just as you say, the next phase of computing, information technology, etc. But if you're a teacher, for example, who's got some awareness of technology but doesn't really know, how would you explain what the metaverse is to somebody who is not that au fait with technology?

Very interesting. You know, I had an interview with mid-schoolers in Sweden like a couple of months ago. Oh, cool. And the topic was the metaverse, of course, because but their teacher was into my network and LinkedIn and she reached out to me, you know, asking if I can talk to those kids. And I would say, okay, yeah, anytime, you know, and I found myself explaining them in a very simplistic manner that the metaverse is just the next iteration for humankind. Just imagine that with tech, anything you can think, you can make it come true or more tangible, by the way. This is it, period. And now, I mean, but the tech is an enabler. The tech is the tool, now it's what you build, what you make out of it, you know. And if you think that way, it's like you can go totally crazy, you can go nuts. I mean, unleash your creativity. And I think like, you know, from education, I mean, for all industries, but for education, it's like, imagine that, you know, you can literally build schools, universities, and classes into a virtual world, and that to attend those schools and to have knowledge from the best teachers in the world, you won't have to go physically to a school no more. So you can attend those classes from distance, and one teacher, instead of teaching just a class, they can teach millions of students. So this is it. And in terms of experimentation or history, instead of just looking at movie or reading a books or looking at a documentary on something like this, you can literally immerse the students in the moment, in history and all of that. So they can really be in the feel of the moment and to see things as if they were there when it happened.

As I understand it, there are multiple different pieces that are all, as you kind of said at the beginning, are coming together because you've, you know, you've had virtual reality headsets in schools for a while. Different people are experimenting with them in different ways, right? For people to immerse themselves in an environment. But then you've also got augmented reality, which is increasingly coming in, I think not used as much, but that blurring of the boundary between what's physical and what's digital. I saw phygital was a word that was being thrown around. This is a horrible English word.

Yeah, but I think that it would be more what is physical and what is imagination, more than digital, because digital is the medium to translate imagination.

Yeah, interesting. But it's when all of those pieces come together, that allow people to, as you said, kind of immerse themselves in an experience. Like, so for example, the Brookings Institute has just released a report this month about the metaverse in education. And they give the example of a kind of visiting a Greek town, you know, so students in a classroom will go and immerse themselves in this Greek town and they'll see the hustle and the bustle of the people. And they maybe, you know, have almost sensory experiences of what it's like to be in that place. And then they can come back into the room, if you like, physically.

Exactly.

And interact with the teacher, with each other, et cetera. And then, you know, so I think originally I was imagining it's kind of the metaverse is a place, but it's really not a place to go, right? It's a convergence of multiple different mediums that allow you to have different, these different experiences.

And the thing is, I mean, the convergence of these different mediums literally create a new reality. Yeah, because when you experience things, the experience is something, you know, it's more than just reading something, watching a video of whatever. You experience it, which means that even in terms of immersion, memorization as well. Yeah, I mean, this happened at a totally different level, you know. You know, we used to say that sometimes you can't remember what people say, but you would always remember how they made you feel, you know, and being in the moment is something that has no value. You can experience different culture as if you were there, you know, different moment in time and history. So instead of just telling those kids about Hiroshima and how dramatic, I mean, what such a disaster it was, just bring them there, they would get it. And I can guarantee that in one or two generations, we might erase maybe wars, conflicts, and stuff like this, because when you never been there, you don't know what it is. So it's more easier to—

Interesting.

Yeah, you can have these kind of powerful, potentially transformative experiences without having to go through.

To go through.

That's really interesting. And, you know, we talk a lot about experiential learning in education, and usually that means getting outside of the classroom, going and doing some real-life project initiative outside in the real world, because the school is not seen as the real world. And this provides another potential dimension in which you can go and have experiences without leaving the school, right?

For example, exactly, the school will come to you, and the world and the universe could come to you as well.

Interesting. But one, one of my questions, and this is partly my ignorance, is somebody has to build build that experience of Hiroshima, right? Somebody has to build that environment. And that's one of my questions is, who are the people that are building those environments to allow people into? And so there's the Web 3.0 kind of talk about decentralization and how that's a really kind of positive thing. And we're pulling power and influence away from the big tech companies and providing that opportunity for more decentralization. But there needs to be the infrastructure built? And I guess it doesn't exist yet, right? The possibilities that are there with the metaverse, they don't yet exist.

I mean, definitely, and you're absolutely right, you know, the possibilities are there. You know, the metaverse is more a moment in time and history, and on my side, I assimilate the metaverse to the digital age. When we are talking about geologic time period, you know, and on the geologic time period scale, we are still very early in the digital age. Yeah, well, what, 50 years, 60 years? This is nothing. And those periods in time on Earth lasted— I mean, we can talk about the Cretaceous and, you know, with the Ice Age that lasted thousands, I mean, hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years. And if we are just at the early beginning of the digital age, it means that we are still very early. So for me, the metaverse is still, it's already there. It's just on slow release because when we are, maybe since the dawn of age, you know, when the cavemen were doing artwork, you know, just to tell their stories, you know, I've been chasing that mammoth, look how strong I am and all this, this is history. So they were using a medium Yeah, tell something, a story that only them know, knew about, coming from out of their imagination. And from there we just kept advancing and having more sophisticated tools and medium to create things. Yeah, out of our minds. Even the world where we live right now, it's something that we built, you know. And now we just have Now that we master the physical world, we are starting to master how to create new tools to make something out of our imagination more tangible and to kind of live in it or experience it with a much deeper sense of presence. So the metaverse was on slow release since then, but now we have reached that point when it becomes more tangible. Instagram is the metaverse. Internet, it's part of the metaverse. The real world is part of the metaverse, you know, because it's really about how we use things, how tools or the mediums we create to bring, literally pull something out of the imagination realm, out of the imaginaries, and to make it real. And one day that would be possible. So right now we have reached that point that some of the infrastructure layer is there already. Blockchain is there. It will just keep advancing and getting better and better. You know, we have seen that in the last few years, you know, from proof of work, we have now a bunch of protocols, including proof of stake that is more carbon friendly.

Yeah.

Okay. You know, and artificial intelligence. I remember when Garry Kasparov, you know, at the chess game. But now the artificial intelligence we have just in our smartphones is much more powerful than Deep Blue 25 years ago. So this is it. And when I was a kid, I couldn't even imagine that we would have such things as smartphones that we give access to the world and everything. And we'd be able to talk to each other from different parts of the world, simultaneously to see each other. This is the speed. And just because humans are not able to see things that can happen, I would say, out of the lifespan, and even during the lifespan, from the beginning to the end, you can't imagine what will happen in 20 or 40 years. Yeah. So we are stuck in the moment somehow in terms of imagination and how we can foresee things. But if we look at the past and see what happened these last 30 years, the advance was so tremendous that if the same speed, if we keep the same speed in 30 years, what could we have? 30 years ago, we didn't even have smartphones. So I'm not sure that in 30 years we won't have, I mean, very realistic augmented reality lenses. That we won't have to wear virtual reality headset no more, and even augmented reality glasses, and that we'll be living literally in the metaverse.

It's mind-blowing kind of projections, but I wanted to pick up on something you said about— I completely agree, like since prehistoric man and whatever, we've always used these technologies or tools or psychotechnologies to basically just kind of create our world and distribute our cognition. And it's absolutely— I agree, and this is kind of the next iteration of these these tools. But you said something there about we've mastered the physical world and now we're, you know, we're now we're kind of learning to master the immersive or digital or beyond digital world. But we've also really messed up the physical world, right? Like as, as much as we've mastered how to manipulate the physical world, we've also really messed it up. I mean, I like, I think that's quite a lot of evidence that that is true, right? So I guess my question is,— and this, it goes back to this Brookings Institute paper about people who are designing this infrastructure or these experiences, let's say, go back to the classroom example for young people, people are designing them. And are they designing them in a way that is going to serve people and going to serve the best of the biosphere and humanity and all those things rather than commercial interest and profit orientation and all of those things? Because one of the examples they give is the idea of learning educational apps in Web 2.0, right? You know, so these apps are coming out, they're educational apparently, in inverted commas, but actually when you look at the way that they've been designed, they're very attention-distracting rather than attention kind of directing. And there's not a lot that is educational about them. They're much more about ads popping up to divert you into another commercial opportunity or whatever. So How are we, I don't expect you to have the full answer to this, but how are we as a community gonna ensure that the kind of the best bits rise to the top and the worst bits, the Zuckerbergs and the commercial interest and all of those things don't just rush in like a gold rush and dominate the landscape of what's possible in the metaverse? Sorry, that's a massive, huge question.

It's not a question. This is the question we have to answer as a species, not just as a community. And this is the very specific reason why I can bear the crown of Mr. Madara, because this is my fight, you know. And because first of all, people need to understand what is at stake, because until we get it, until we understand what is going on, we won't be able to involve the right people, all of the people, and put them at the table. Second, you know, is that we are humans and we are still babies as a species. Yeah, you know, the thing is we have learned to walk, run, fly, go into the sky— I mean, travel out of Earth, going into space. So we have gained so much power. In such a short amount of time, even if we are talking about 100,000 years of living on Earth, on the scale of the universe, this is just a fraction of a second, which means that things are moving so fast. We are getting so powerful tools and mediums so fast, and we are still not wise and not mature enough to use those tools and those mediums for the greater good and for all of us. This is it. And I don't know if it's within our nature, if we will change one day, if we become more mature or not. But this is the question we have to answer because this is our legacy as humankind and we are all involved. And until we understand that and we understand what is at stake, we won't be able to solve it. It's not just about the big techs, it's about all of us. Because look what happened with Web 2.0, with the internet. It was advancing so fast, people didn't know what was going on. And when we realized, now we start to think, holy shit, what is going on? We have to put some regulation and stuff like that to make sure that, you know, individual liberties and state sovereignty are preserved and guaranteed, etc., etc. But with the metaverse, we are already not even one step to, I mean, 10 steps Oh hey, even more than that. But at least as we were caught, kind of caught by surprise, but the rise of the internet, we are now early enough in the advent of the metaverse to involve the right institution, the right communities, the right people, the right representatives to make sure that What will build will be for the people and for the greater good. And until we involve those people, that won't happen.

Yeah.

And if we don't do with such powerful medium, with such powerful tool, we will create something Matrix-like or Big Brother, which is already happening, by the way. Yeah. We are really at this turning point. This is why I preach. This is why I try to evangelize as much as I can about what is before us. That's amazing.

Because I think in a way, if people don't know what questions to ask, maybe, you know, because perhaps they're just not aware of exactly what it is, and they see the hype, they read the hype, they see Meta, they see Zuckerberg, all of these things, but they don't really know what questions to ask to get at the heart of who's at the table, who's making the decisions about these big infrastructure points, right? And if you don't know what questions to ask, it's easy to stay outside of the conversation, right? It's much easier because you don't really know how to engage with the conversation because you don't even understand what it is in the first place.

Exactly. And this is why I blame Zuckerberg and all of these people, because they are approaching the thing from the business perspective. That's it. And they know what the metaverse is. There is a reason why Facebook rebranded itself to Meta, because what people don't get is the meta part of the word metaverse. I mean, but the two parts are really important. Verse, which means universe, and universe is everything that exists. And meta is like, it's the data part of the metaverse and digital technology. Guess what? It's about data, nothing else. Everything else is just how we manipulate that data, how we transform it, how we process it to come with something else that could be a 3D rendering, text, video, or whatever. So imagine that metaverse literally means a universe made out of data, but what data? Real life and real universe data. This is it. And when we will be able to literally digitize everything, the one that will own that universe, that verse, metaverse, it will run the world. That is the true meaning of the rebranding of Meta. Yeah, I mean, they are trying to snatch it, but not just them. I mean, Microsoft did the same, but I don't know if they are going as far as Meta is going, but from a business perspective, that makes sense. They want to connect everything, they want to digitize everything, and to be the one to run it. Yeah, this is it. Because if you are that one, I mean, this is the global company with a capital G. Yeah, you know, yeah. And they will run basically everything. But if they know what it is, I blame them to not explain what it really is. And instead of that, just showing funny use cases, I would say gaming application or business applications. It goes beyond that, literally. Because let's take one example: what is the future of chatbots? But the future of chatbot, which is AI supercharged by data, right? So AI supercharged by data, but the next stage of that in the metaverse, it's an avatar. Avatar. So rather it's in a virtual world or in augmented reality in form of an hologram or whatever, you will be talking to an avatar that will look like at some point like a real person. And that avatar will be able to adapt, to adjust his voice tone, how he looks like, and etc., just to please you because he have all this data about you. And he will be able to direct how you think, how you behave, and all that because he's your friend. You choose him to be your friend. Just like we are talking to Siri or to Alexa on a daily basis, you know, remember those assistants we have, you know, back then, those agendas and all of that. Now, I mean, this is the, this is the metaverse version. Exactly. This is the next iteration of that. And what they will say to you, how they will treat you, how they will behave with you, will have a real impact on yourself, on your decision, on your psychics and everything. See, this is it. And what is the next state of that? They will take those artificial intelligence consciousness and we will put it in what? Cybernetic corpse. This is it. And if Meta own all your data because you literally are a Meta citizen Yeah, they will own everything about you, from healthcare, from how you use your money, how you behave in the metaverse. Not just typing words on the keyboards and posting videos and content, but literally you, how you behave. Yeah, how you interact with people, how you talk with people, your voice tone, and everything about you. They will be able to recreate a more accurate version of yourself. Yourself that you will be freaking out, like, holy shit, they made Avatar, that is me. Yeah, but that will happen, that will happen. We are so early. Look what happened in the last 30 years, imagine what can happen in the next centuries. Yeah, we are building the ground now. This is it. But if people don't really get it, people don't really understand what is happening. Yeah, and instead of talking about what they're really building right now what it will enable in the future, near or far, they are talking about games. I mean, come on.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, but I think that's so interesting what you said, because when, when the data, when the AI, etc., they— when, when it knows you almost better than you know yourself, right, as you said, because they've got control of the data, they understand all the nuances of the data about you, ironically that platform, that AI, whatever, will be able to help you learn better. If I bring it back to education and learning, they'll help you learn better because it will be so tailored and personalized to your exact person, you know, person nuances, likes, dislikes, abilities, etc., which on the one hand for the education community is a really interesting idea. But on the other hand, what you've just— that picture you've just painted is the scariest thing, you know, I've heard in a long time, right? So there's a really interesting question about what do we do? Because if we go too far, too quickly down this path of wanting that data because it will be so useful to help people learn more efficiently, effectively, deeply, actually that could be the same road that we go down as the one that you've just described. So it's like, How do we prevent the data controlling us rather than the other way around?

I mean, it's just a tool, you know, remember what I've said, it's about what we will make out of it. That's it. And to be able to frame what we will make out of it, people have to understand what it really is about. That's it.

But when the illusion of the thing that you're looking at seems so real, As you said, as you just painted in that picture, it feels so real to you that to many people that will be really difficult to, to know exactly what's going on there. It doesn't, there's not like a big signpost saying you're being manipulated now. It's like, it's this really deeply intelligent interaction where you have to discern, am I being influenced in, in this particular way? What do I really want as a person? How am I using this data as a tool? And how is this tool using me?

Exactly. The thing is we won't be able to make the difference as humans. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Until the AI core agent is made out of us somehow and we are the one controlling it. That's it. And which means that we will be the one designing the AI model and we'll be the one controlling our own data and we'll have access to it.

Yeah.

Period. That's it. And this is what is at stake, you know, and what you said is really relevant is that Imagine how we can unleash the potential of people by tailoring the learning process, adapt to the person, to the need, to the learning pattern and everything. So it's just a tool. We can use it for good and we can use it for bad, but to be able to use it, we have to understand what is the tool and how it functions.

Yeah. And trying to get, as you said, trying to get the right people involved in the conversation because I mean, that's, that's the other part of this. There is a very clear dominance of certain people in the conversation. And then the same marginalized communities will be marginalized again, but even more radically, potentially from— and that is critical, right? Because otherwise you just get this white Californian, you know, male dominance of the conversation.

Silicon Valley, bro.

Exactly. Just to caricature it, right? But that's essentially what's going on is you have certain voices that are way more influential in the conversation and the marginal voices who have always been marginal are just becoming even more, or could potentially become even more marginal if we're not really careful about how we proceed.

More than ever, this is why we need more than ever inclusion, diversity. Imagine that this is a blessing for me to be listed almost one of the most influential people into the metaverse. That couldn't happen. There is no way that could have happened 20 years, I mean, 40 years ago at the early beginning of the internet. I'm a black person born in Africa, raised in Europe, and I have a global footprint and the global platform because of the internet. So it's a tool, see? Thanks to this tool, you know, you know, I am able to have a platform and to speak my voice and most of all to speak the voice of the unheard. You know, and yeah, this is it. I mean, we, we will have to understand that this is a tool, so it's for us to use it for a greater good. And we have to— it has to be more inclusive and more diverse to make sure that every community and everyone's voice matters, and everybody have to speak his voice.

Yeah. And just, I mean, again, to bring it back to education, what I see in a way happening is that some of the early adopters, like teachers who are particularly interested in this, will pick this up, right? They've been picking up AR, VR, etc. for a while, but a lot of the education community will just— it's quite fringe. They will kind of ignore what's going on. And I think what I'm hearing from you is that if we don't think we're interested in it, we can't afford to sleepwalk into where you've just described we're going, right? So in a way, there's a kind of educational necessity in this is that everybody has to educate themselves. We have to educate people, help people to learn about this potential as a tool, but also the, the potential pitfalls and things that we really need to avoid. So there's kind of an educational piece in there of like getting this word out and this, this message out toward to understand it, to know what questions to ask, and then to get involved in the conversation.

Definitely, yes, it's needed. It's needed ultimately, you know, and the good thing is digital is there. The world is already borderless without limitation of time, space, and everything. And we are already seeing the rise of digital communities.

Yeah.

And this is it because we all have our government educational system, which are quite rigid, you know, and to include new disciplines and all of that, sometimes it takes years, you know. Even to come up with a new program, even to change slightly a program, it takes, I mean, so much effort and consensus to make that happen.

Yeah.

So the thing is we have to think about alternative ways to make that happen. And it's all about the community. It's all about the academics people. Yeah. What you are doing, Tim, and what other people are doing. And maybe using the same technology we are talking about, you can literally create a DAO and come up with an institution that will frame the blueprint for education in the metaverse.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, nice. But ironically, quite a lot of that movement will probably come from the private sector, right? And I've had this conversation with other people, is that it's often the private sector that is the first mover because they have the freedom to be able to go, and they've got a business case to, to move into, you know, the latest thing, right? So you, I'm, I see, for example, like Optima Classical, like on a metaverse school based physically in, in Florida, but based in the metaverse, right? You've got these, these kind of private sector organizations that are starting online schools, metaverse schools, and it's, they're the ones that will have potentially the early experiences in this, but also therefore the responsibility to to bring, try to bring this to a wider audience. Maybe that's beyond their private sector ambitions, right? In this kind of narrow business model. But we, my feeling is you just have to, we have to look more broadly because if we only focus on, is my private sector organization doing well in this commercial financial sense, we're not going to get the movement. Because as you say, the public systems are rigid. It's going to take decades for them to move anywhere in towards and exploring the implications of the metaverse, right?

Exactly. This is it. This is what I'm trying to bring, you know, in the metaverse industry and in the metaverse space. And this is my call, you know, and you said it right. It all comes down to people, gathering the right people that will gather more people to push the movement. Forward. That's it.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not going to come from government level policy, right? It's going to come from individuals.

Exactly. Bottom up. Yep.

Wow. Thank you, man. I mean, this is amazing. It's really interesting to talk about it and yeah, very interesting, like essential necessary topic. And I'm really happy to be able to push the message out a bit more widely. And if we can build a bit more of a community around this, that would be a good outcome.

Awesome. Thank you for the invite.

Thank you, man.

I mean, anytime, Tim.

Thanks, Daddy.

Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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