Look around and pay attention to the environment that you are in and the chair that you are sitting on. How is it? Confortable?
Now, imagine you are wearing Virtual Reality glasses and suddenly you are visiting the Metropolitan Museum in NY, checking out an art exhibition.
Then after the tour, you decide to take a trip to the International Space Station and, boom, you are abruptly teleported to it.
While experiencing all of this, you are still sitting on the chair that you have just paid attention to. It sounds like a Sci-fi novel or a crazy dream, right?
But actually this is possible when you are plugged into a virtual reality world where you can step beyond the limitations of the physical world and visit virtual places at will.
It might seem like a distant future away, but actually we might already be living in a pre version of this parallel universe. And it already has a name: It is called the metaverse.
What exactly is this metaverse, how will it impact our lives and moreover, is the metaverse already here?
These are the questions that I am going to try to answer today. Stay tuned!
Towards the end of 2021, Mark Zuckerberg appeared in the media to announce the rebranding of Facebook which is now called Meta (abbreviation for metaverse). During the launch speech, he said that the aim of this rebranding was to align the company with its ambitious plan: to build the metaverse.
Since then other large corporations, including Microsoft, Disney and even Nike have announced plans to invest in the metaverse. Some of them are already buying properties in metaverse platforms like Decentraland or Sandbox.
Silicon Valley is also obsessed with what it called web 3.0 or the next Internet.
After hearing about all this interest from large organizations, I decided to go deeper and understand more about what this new virtual world really is.
So what is this metaverse after all?
If you have ever watched James Cameroon's film Avatar, then you may be able to understand the concept of the Metaverse quite easily.
It is a virtual environment where people are able to create avatars of themselves, interact with others, and engage in activities such as working, shopping, watching concerts, playing games and so on. For instance, my avatar could meet yours at a virtual Yankee Stadium to watch a real game or we can go to a 3d marriage somewhere far away.
This virtual universe can be accessed from devices like smartphones or computers.
However, to get the complete immersion experience, virtual reality glasses are recommended.
It is like an immersive video game with a huge difference: the Metaverse is ongoing and never switches off. It keeps running even though you are not connected.
Therefore, at some point, you will have to decide which reality you want to spend more time in.
And since the metaverse is run by an algorithm which provides a more customized experience, it will probably be more appealing than real life . For example, you can be more popular or richer or own a piece of land in the virtual Manhattan.
Eventually, we might experience a similar situation to the Matrix movie, where our brain won't be able to tell the difference between the real world and the metaverse.
So where will the crossover point be between reality and fantasy? Is the metaverse the unstoppable future?
Well, in my opinion, there is no way back. It is the beginning of the new era of the internet and human interaction. It is the inevitable future created by technology.
It is reasonable to assume, that in the future all of us will interact in the Metaverse on a daily basis. It is also the intersection point for the latest digital technologies such as blockchain, NFTs, algorithms, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.
It seems like we are already in some kind of elementary version of the Metaverse where we live a large amount of our lives in the digital world, spending more and more time behind the screen.
Those who take a positive view of this trend tend to imagine something like an Oasis, a virtual world where anything is possible and people live out their fantasies, allowing them to live lucid dreams.
On the other hand, there is also a dark side. It can be a way of escaping real life and tasting experiences that are impossible in the real world which might cause some of us to never want to come out of it.
In summary, the Metaverse will have a huge impact in our lives and will change the way we relate to each other, but there will always be space for in-person, human interaction.