I loved this article Chris, thanks for posting.
The subject of VR AR is the same as my VRENAR blog was set up for (VR enabled AR), after I too came to the conclusion that a digital twin was needed, to reflect the real world in a virtual equivalent, whilst I was working on a related PhD candidate project, funded by my own company.
The full title of my project was "The Possibilities of First-Person View Interactions, Between the Users of Virtual Worlds, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles"
During that research, I came to the conclusion that there has to be a single, continous, digital twin, for all of the possibilities of XR to work.
I identified a class of those possibilities as "Superhuman".
The superhuman possibilities include such things as people being able to see live virtual representations of other people occupying the real world space all around them, including in nearby buildings, and in public moving vehicles like buses, trains, even underground, possibly even on aeroplanes.
It became apparent to me that for technical, commercial, and social reasons, it could not be done at profit.
Further, that a non-profit scenario required the real world to be entirely non profit.
I used the latest formal model based systems engineering (MBSE) techniques, and tools of my lonstanding trade as also a practicing Systems Engineer in the Aerospace industry, to model everything relevant to my analyses. It is essentially a model based project, more than a document driven project.
That is unusual, to be applied on a non profit basis, as the tools, and the time (which could otherwise be spent being highly paid), are very expensive.
Anyway, it led down a rabbit hole of seeing on one hand, dystopia and world destruction, and on the other, Utopia.
Attempted at profit, gives dystopia.
Done non-profit, gives utopia.
The exercise itself, of modelling such a system, including even the social dynamics is an incredibly revealing experience.
After all, that model itself is a metamodedel of the real world, a kind of simulated metaverse.
So it is pretty useful, in giving a reasnably well grounded view of the real world future.
Hemce the reason why I then moved to putting my own efforts into looking at the climate problem, because that is clearly heavily related to the issue of profit driven dystopian impossibility, vs non-profit utopian infinite possibility.
Fixing the climate problem is fundamentally required, to have all of the possibilities of the non-profit metaverse, and real world utopia.
Not fixing the problem is not an option.
Dystopian rule, is only possible for a short time, ending in disaster for all.
Nothing positive can be achieved by it, only extinction.
Sorry that was a war and peace type ramble in response to your excellent post, but I thought you might be interested to know a little about the effect that the drive for profit has on all things, from my point of view.
Of course all of the known Metaverse players are profit driven, because those are the only ones promoted on for-profit platforms.
Now you know at least one that isn't.
Part of being non-profit, is accepting that some of our expensive work will appear, offered for profit by others.
I wouldn't say that about anything I've seen here, though I never would. The key to non-profit is collaboration, the ideal result is somebody doing it, it doesn't matter who.
I will be amongst the first to pop a cork in celebration if Meta, or anyone else does does it, because if/when we do, we will have also have solved the global climate / planetary destruction issue.
Bur pigs might fly!
Merry Xmas!