It was clear from the start of the conversation about the role of governance and national sovereignty in the metaverse, that there were far more questions than answers.

Vladimir Radunovic, director, e-diplomacy and cybersecurity programmes at the Diplo Foundation in Geneva summed up the problem: "Has the playing field been levelled between developed and developing countries? I'm not so sure."

"If we want to be followers and consumers, that's fine and we are on an equal footing, but if we want to be trendsetters and creators, then there is more that we need to do to enable us.

"Under the hood of the metaverse, we have the hardware, the servers, and we have the social networks, both of which have governance questions that we are still grappling with.

"There are a lot of questions about standards, but the question is, where will those standards be set?

"There is tremendous geopolitical pressure being brought to these deliberations.

"It's not going to be like in the early days of the internet and I am not sure whether we can actually avoid governments being there, but that's the reality."

For Radunovic, all the conversations about decentralisation that the metaverse promises must be balanced against the reality of hosting, hardware and data transfer, where the hardware is overwhelmingly centralised, much of it in developed nations.

Radunovic also worries about the architecture of the metaverse because it is built on the internet, which as he noted, "Is already full of societal problems."

Alan Emtage, the Barbadian who dreamed up Archie, the search engine of the pre-internet digital network, worries that, "The issues of working in a virtual world are are far more complicated than the real reality, where we have centuries of experience of precedent and infrastructure to build on."

"This takes us in a whole new direction that we really don't have a handle on quite yet.

"If people can interface with these new environments in ways that are familiar to them, they may be more accessible, but they are often being built by young people who have their own engagement with technology that can be somewhat incestuous.

Professor Avinash Persaud, chairman, Caricom Commission on the Economy, observed that some aspects of the current situation hearken back to historical precedents, specifically the Navigation Act of 1763, which limited trade between the colonies to those under British rule.

"Trade is happening increasingly on a small number of digital platforms (and) these are becoming the new empires," Persaud said.

"How do we ensure that we do not become the subjects of these new empires? If all we do is end up being consumers of this new world, we will become subjects of a new empire?

[caption id="attachment_941389" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Professor Avinash Persaud, chairman of the Caricom Commission on the Economy. -[/caption]

"We are looking at the formation of oligopolies. Who is going to be the countervailing force?

"How do we make it possible for individuals to become producers on thes