Report: New Digital Frontier

The metaverse offers a new platform for solving many of today’s most pressing issues, but will we be able to realise its full potential? Read the new report, made in partnership with Meta.

Executive Summary

The metaverse is the next stage in the development of the Internet, and it will reshape how we work, learn and spend our free time.

For now, however, awareness of its benefits, opportunities and threats is very low, which increases the risk of us being passive recipients rather than driven agents of the upcoming revolution. This pessimistic scenario need not materialise as the metaverse brings opportunities to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that can help foster equality, strengthen democratic security and boost economic growth.

Tapping into this potential can be achieved by using the tools of the metaverse to leverage limited and shrinking resources, especially human resources. This is of paramount importance for the ageing populations of CEE countries.

With the metaverse, we can provide quality education and jobs in underprivileged regions, preventing depopulation. At the same time, healthcare professionals can better coordinate their efforts in monitoring and diagnosing dispersed or rural populations.

Moreover, citizens have the means to maintain social interactions and take part in various activities that are not currently available. All of these developments are especially important for our demographically ageing communities.

At the moment, we are not ready to leverage these opportunities. People dabbling in the metaverse are mostly isolated, creating islands of excellence and failing to create a proper ecosystem. Such an ecosystem is needed in order to present challenges and opportunities, provide expertise and raise awareness of the public and politicians alike. Only then can countries – preferably whole regions – create a unified strategy towards the metaverse.

Such a strategy is necessary to efficiently utilise the CEE region’s limited resources and avoid over- competition, nurturing a more focused specialisation instead.

Moreover, such a coalition would be more than capable of initiating and influencing the regulation process at the EU level. This is needed to prevent the all too common over-regulation in Europe and to focus on creating necessary standards that would foster the development and expansion of the metaverse, including identification, digital ownership, performing business activities and working through the metaverse.

Click this link to download the pdf of the report

Author: Tomasz Kasprowicz

This report was made in partnership with Meta.