We’re seeing a lot of chatter in the news and on social media lately about “the metaverse”, what is the Metaverse? It looks to be the next big thing in the online world. Nonetheless, everyone appears to have their own interpretation of what “the metaverse” is, assuming they have any understanding of what it is at all. And the cool part is it mostly all powered by crypto currency.
What Is The Metaverse?
In a nutshell, a Metaverse is a computerized representation of people, places, and objects in virtual reality. These are real individuals represented by digital objects in this “digital world.” This means that actual individuals are represented by digital things in what is referred to as a “digital world.”
Microsoft Teams or Zoom are already a Metaverse in many respects. A live video, an avatar, or even, an image a of you are all present “in the room”. Metaverse, on the other hand, encompasses a wider range of “bringing people together.” It can be utilized for a variety of purposes, including meetings, factory floor visits, on boarding, and training.
It is possible to reconfigure nearly every human resources and talent management program for use in the Metaverse. Furthermore, if you use 3D glasses, the Metaverse becomes completely immersive.
Vendors from all over the world will enter this market. In order to convey their point, Facebook decided to rebrand their entire organization. Microsoft is already well-established in the market. This is only a fraction of what’s to come. All of the major technology and entertainment companies are eager to get involved.
Why Is It Taking Off?
People who are obsessed with the metaverse believe that it represents the next step in internet advancement. Nowadays, people communicate with each other via social media platforms and texting applications. When it comes to creating new online environments for people to interact in, the metaverse aims to do it in a way that is more immersive than simply viewing digital information.
As a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, there has been an increase in interest in the metaverse. In recent years, as more individuals have begun working and attending school online, there has been an increase in the desire for methods of making online contact more realistic.
A Persistent “World” The Ability To Create Your Own Virtual Property
It can be argued that allowing users to create their own metaverse content is a boon for both users and metaverse creators, because it allows users to shape the virtual world according to their preferences while also saving them time and effort by not having to create every single virtual object from scratch.
In-world constructions produced by games such as Minecraft and Roblox demonstrate how metaverses that give very simple building blocks may harness network effects and player creativity to produce a large range of in-world creations. However, simply telling people to create virtual things in a metaverse is not that simple.
Control, moderation, and copyright infringement are all issues that can become extremely important in this context, especially if your metaverse is managed by a corporation that wishes to benefit from all of the user-generated content.
The Ability To Exchange And/Or Sell Your Virtual Property
A wide variety of options are available, ranging from simple currency exchanges for World of Warcraft gold farming to rigorously regulated economies like EVE Online. It’s in this middle ground that you’ll find games like Second Life, whose “ownership” disputes have been litigated in the United States courts.
Full 3D Telepresence via VR Or AR Glasses
This is widely regarded as the ultimate step toward attaining a “complete” metaverse. You can go beyond the “magic windows” of our flat displays and into a world where you can genuinely feel “presence” alongside other 3D avatars inhabiting the same space thanks to virtual/augmented reality.
You’ll feel like you’re in the same room as the people you’re chatting with, creating eye contact and sharing a sense of space, rather than just staring at faces on a screen. Demonstrating the feasibility of such a system are early attempts like VRChat’s Horizon Worlds and Meta’s own Horizon Workplaces.
But as Carmack pointed out, sharing a room in Horizon with 16 other players is a country mile from the metaverse of our dreams. Carmack envisions a VR metaverse with “thousands of people strolling around” and “walking in and out of virtual spaces at will,” but many technical issues must be overcome before this can happen.
What The Business Metaverse Could Do
Let’s start by saying that the Metaverse is in a lot of ways similar to the Internet when AOL was around. Countless new things are on the way. Recall that the original web was text-based only, sluggish, and devoid of any visual content whatsoever.
In the near future, the Business Metaverse will begin to emerge. In training we aim to move from “e-learning” to “we-learning,” from “digital learning” to “immersive learning.” This suggests a wide range of new uses, from on boarding and training to leadership development, meetings, simulated experiences, huge staff events, and entertainment.
Is Facebook Going All In On The Metaverse
Zuckerberg is investing heavily in what he considers to be the next generation of the internet because he believes it will play a significant role in the development of the digital economy. He anticipates that in the future years, people will begin to think of Facebook as a metaverse corporation rather than a social networking company.
Antitrust investigations, statements from whistleblowing ex-employees, and questions about the company’s treatment of falsehoods have prompted some to question the company’s possible shift. Ex-employee Frances Haugen claims Facebook’s platforms injure children and incite political violence after stealing internal research materials and submitting them to the SEC.
Several media agencies, including The Associated Press, had access to the documents, which revealed how Facebook put profits ahead of user safety and concealed its own research from investors and the general public.
People Keep Saying NFTs Are Part Of The Metaverse, WHY?
NFTs are difficult to understand on their own. To put it another way, NFTs can be used to track who owns a virtual good, which is a significant part of what the metaverse is all about. NFTs could thus be a valuable financial architecture for the metaverse.
Virtual goods purchased on one Metaverse platform can be used on other Metaverse platforms thanks to the NFTs that establish a permanent receipt. Collectible avatars like CryptoPunk, Cool Cat, and Bored Ape are being sold by NFT creators at ridiculous prices.
Social media profile photographs currently consist mainly of two-dimensional art. However, we are already seeing some overlap with services that are similar to the “metaverse.”
How Do You Access The Metaverse?
Ready to dive into this new world? Not so soon – Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision is years distant. According to current estimations, many of the metaverse products will not be available for at least a decade. But how will we enter the metaverse if (or when) it is developed?
Users will have to buy their own VR headsets to get into their metaverse worlds from their rooms, so hardware will play a significant part in this. The Oculus VR headset, which Facebook already owns and has hinted at the introduction of a newer model in 2022, is not the only VR headset on the market.
There are several other VR headset manufacturers, like Samsung and HP, which have announced their own headsets in the past several years. In the metaverse, users will put on their headsets whenever they want to connect to the Internet and use the metaverse. Although, for users who can’t afford an expensive headset, the experience will be less immersive.
In the metaverse, you will be represented by your own avatar. Users will have complete control over the virtual representations of themselves, including the ability to alter everything from height and weight to skin tone and facial hair to headwear and body type. There will also be lots of shopping possibilities for avatar clothing and accessories.
As with any login process, security precautions will need to take precedence over all else in order to ensure that the correct individual is logging into their own metaverse account. Some examples of security mechanisms that could be implemented would be two-factor authentication, passwords and retina scanning.
Who Controls The Metaverse?
For international tech regulation, there are more issues than solutions in the metaverse theory. Who governs the metaverse in a virtual world? Users’ privacy, facial recognition technology, and personal data are all at risk.
It’s not difficult to imagine how the metaverse could open the door to a whole new range of serious issues that we haven’t even considered yet, given the numerous valid concerns that exist today about social media use, ranging from negative mental health effects on children to the dissemination of false information about vaccinations. According to Meta’s announcement on November 2021, it has formed a number of government and non-profit partnerships that will collaborate on how to construct the metaverse ethically.
