What is the metaverse? All you need to know about the alternate universe.
The metaverse is a vision for a new place to interact with other humans and bots to play games, conduct business, socialize and shop. That’s the metaverse of the future. Right now, the metaverse is a grab bag of hardware, software, and unrelated experiences.
Sounds familiar?
This has been seen in science fiction movies like Ready Player One and in the 1964 animated series Jonny Quest. The metaverse allows people to perform iterations of day-to-day activities in the virtual space, creating a virtual economy that runs parallel to our real one.
Think of it as the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of — instead of just looking at on a screen. Essentially, it’s a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people can meet, work, and play, using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps, or other devices.
It’s the next evolution of connectivity where all of those things start to come together in a seamless, doppelganger universe, so you’re living your virtual life the same way you’re living your physical life. Sounds cool, isn’t it?
Let’s see a few instances where metaverse comes in handy.
It is possible to buy real estate in virtual worlds, such as Decentraland and Cryptovoxels. If you’ve made it as far as buying cryptocurrency or NFTs, you’ve also gotten a taste of the metaverse.
The metaverse also could be a game-changer for the work-from-home shift amid the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of seeing co-workers on a video call grid, employees could join them in a virtual office.
These could help save a lot of time and energy and hence the chances for metaverse to become a success is huge.
When can we expect to experience metaverse?
The metaverse won’t become a reality for at least a decade and there’s much that tech companies need to perfect before getting there. The first piece of that puzzle is something called ambient computing, a future where computers exist all around us and screens can be fitted into almost everything. People will interact with these computers using gestures, and at times, even their thoughts.
Is the metaverse just a Facebook Project?
No. Other companies talking up the metaverse include Microsoft and chipmaker Nvidia. Apart from these, a lot more companies are working on the metaverse
In summary, no one really knows how exactly this is going to turn out. Mark Zuckerberg has promised privacy and data security, but we can only decide once it is really here. A lot of people predict the metaverse to replace the internet. The future holds great innovations for us to experience and time will help us answers all the speculations.
