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In July 2021, Mark Zuckerberg staked Facebook’s future on the Metaverse to prove he was serious about the idea he renamed the company to Meta and promised to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a Metaverse platform. He is not alone; other companies are also working on their plans for the Metaverse, the expected next big thing of the Internet.
What is Metaverse?
The Metaverse is difficult to define; it’s usually described as online spaces where people socialize, work and play as avatars of digital representations of their identities; unlike a zoom chat the spaces don’t disappear when you’re done. They are there permanently for someone else to use though it’s often name checked in the tech world the Metaverse is still a fuzzy idea for people outside the industry. We mean the Metaverse is clearly a term of great currency at this moment.
Metaverse is a story we are telling about what the future of technical infrastructures might look like when you combine virtual reality, augmented reality, high-speed internet connections and some kind of notion of a virtual space. Metaverse will be the next version of the future of computing. It’s exactly how we imagine the world.
Meta and other companies tout the Metaverse as an evolution of the internet, a virtual world that parallels our lives in the real world. But it is an amazing idea that’s been tossed around for decades and tried before. One of the other ways to think about the Metaverse is that it’s always already existed in different pockets of the world, whether you were someone engaging in gaming experiences, whether those were multiplayer games or whether those were deeply immersive games.
The Metaverse is coming
Metaverse is coming and there is no turning around, we are going to go there. Most forecasts believe that the Metaverse by the end of the decade will be between $6 and $13 trillion. There’s confusion or disagreement as to exactly what it is, what it requires, when it arrives. We think many people have heard the term ‘Metaverse’ over the past year with the idea that society’s going to transform. The Metaverse is not encompassing a clear vision of the future-it is an ambition, it’s a hypothesis. At its core, the Metaverse should be understood as a fourth wave of computing and networking.
Virtual Reality (VR)
If you were engaging in other kinds of online communities there’s an argument to say that the Metaverse is already here just wasn’t called that. Roblox and Minecraft have been building virtual worlds for years. Second life fortnight Minecraft and other games all incorporate aspects of virtual augmented or mixed reality to create an immersive gaming experience for users. If you are unfamiliar with the term virtual reality refers to entirely digital spaces that are accessed through hardware like the oculus headset, these headsets use special lens technology cameras and motion tracking controllers to fully immerse you in their digital worlds where objects can seem real even when they are not real.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality is a related but different technology AR brings digital objects into the real world often with no headset required though there are some AR headsets on the market. Some experts see augmented reality as a gateway to broader acceptance of the Metaverse.
The technology has continued to advance and continue to find touch points in all of our lives whether it’s through you know mobile phones connected to the internet or other forms of connectivity smart tv all those sort of pieces of the puzzle.
Fidelity
Advances in software have introduced users to more realistic experiences through higher levels of fidelity. The degree of real-world exactness that’s digitally reproduced. However the critics say more work is needed in order for the technology to deliver fidelity. The Metaverse needs it to be easy to get carried away in like this nirvana state of what’s being sold to us but we need to think about what’s right in front of us. Right now we have started seeing some Metaverses being made available on mobile platforms as well as web browsers,so we are seeing the shift towards accessibility. You know that also comes typically at the cost of Fidelity.
Who Will Build the Metaverse
Beyond the technical aspects of Metaverse another area of concern is who builds and controls the corporate version of Metaverse. One which is built by the existing tech companies risks repeating problems that already plague social media. Some people worry, bias, bullying, misinformation and harassment could even be magnified in the Metaverse because it’s an immersive environment.
It’s one thing to send 180 characters to somebody over Twitter and another thing entirely to bully somebody in a Metaverse type space where your brain has tricked you into feeling like you’re really there. Here the potential for abuse in the Metaverse that the argument that maybe we need to get ahead of this other critics believe that user-generated content will be the building blocks of the Metaverse same as current and previous iterations of virtual platforms like the game’s second life.
Mark Zuckerberg arguably Metaverse’s biggest champion says interoperability among applications is crucial to get people to use the Metaverse that means companies will need to collaborate so people using the Metaverse can move freely between platforms and experiences for instance if you have an Avatar in Meta’s Metaverse ideally you should be able to use the same avatar when moving to a Microsoft platform that however is easier said than done.
How or when these projects will be developed is just a guess game and entertainment companies like Stageverse which digitally reproduce concerts and festivals have been operating in a Metaverse-like environment for years. But with more companies adopting a hybrid work model the Metaverse could also come to the world of work.
Future of Metaverse
The future of Metaverse is exciting, as it holds the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives. Metaverse is an open-source, decentralized platform that enables users to create and use digital assets, build applications, and interact with one another in a shared virtual world. It is a platform that can be used for anything from virtual reality gaming to virtual education and even virtual commerce. As the technology behind Metaverse continues to advance and the user base grows, so too will the opportunities available. We may see a future where Metaverse is used to create virtual cities, where users can buy and sell virtual goods and services, or where businesses are conducted entirely in the virtual world. As Metaverse continues to evolve, it has the potential to become a major player in the digital economy and to shape the future of the internet.
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