The Rise Of The Metaverse And What It Means For You
VR, AR, wearables and even the internet of things show us that we as a species want to immerse ourselves in all that technology can offer, and it was only a matter of time until someone found a way to entwined technology even more. Enter, the metaverse.
While metaverse isn’t a new concept, it is one that has recently gained notoriety after Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and owner of Instagram and WhatsApp unveiled the fact they are changing their parent company name to meta. He plans to use meta as a way into the metaverse and offer interactions and experiences to users through his technology which will further shape and control the way we engage with the world around us.
What Is The Metaverse?
The term metaverse was first used in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in 1992. Since then it has been taken over by other authors and repeated in works like Ready, Player. Anyone familiar with the world of .//hacksign will see similarities to what the metaverse is projected to be, and The World which was the main focus of the anime show in general.
From having a playable avatar engaging in everyday things in the online space it will become easier for humanity to blur reality and virtual things in the new world that is being created.
The metaverse is geared to become the place where people meet for concerts, chats, boardroom meetings and explore cities and events that happen entirely in virtual spaces. Can’t travel? Hop into the metaverse and explore to your hearts content.
Country boarders could become a thing of the past as people meet across vast distances in the blink of an eye to reconnect – you won’t have to miss out on seeing loved ones anymore. Another way to look at the metaverse is to compare it to Star Treks holodeck, where anything you imagine can be projected and engaged with virtually. It will be the next generation of the internet. Not quite VR, and not quite AR, but a blend of both – while remaining an entirely new and customisable way to experience virtual concepts through your own body or a rendered one.
Depending on how deep into the metaverse you go, you may have a virtual pet follow you around, or you could create your avatar and forget the rules of physics choosing instead to float, fly, swim, or snorkel with your virtual avatar – which could appear a human or even a flying bug bear. But we’re not quite there yet, though we’re close.
Epic Games have unveiled their range of meta humans, the most incredibly photorealistic models that don’t require hours of design to create, which may be the start of a Second Life reality coming to the world around you.
Companies Invested In The Metaverse
The world building of Minecraft and Fortnite are one of the biggest appeals to millions of players, and this world building is only the start of what the metaverse can offer. Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVidia believes that in the next twenty years we’ll be able to see things happening which once were only science fiction, thanks to the metaverse. Niantic, creators of the augmented reality hit Pokémon Go! believes that blended realities will start becoming the norm in the next ten years as companies strive to create better ways to help us to integrate. The various layers and digital overlays which are planned in the metaverse will be like entire universes and help to span the gap that exists between reality now and the digital world around us. Much like the live games offered at Blacklotus online casino.
Companies like Disney, in the future, could be a beautiful blend of real and computer-generated environments to delight and thrill patrons as they interact with physical actors and experience living content combined with digital enhancements.
A Brave New World
With everything that the metaverse could and may very well become, Facebook’s name change has shone a spotlight on a part of technology which the general public wasn’t entirely aware of before. While dystopian realities often paint simulated realities in a negative light, such as the 1930’s novel City Of The Living Dead by Fletcher Pratt & Laurence Manning who had humanity wired up in cocoons living only in a virtual world, the metaverse is set to be different.
The metaverse may very well be the chance to give everyone in the world a chance to be a creator in their lives by allowing them to tweak things for their own happily ever after in a digital space, while encouraging more people to become the architects of their dreams. The main appeal, in theory right now, is that it levels the playing field for people of all ages around the world, though only time will tell how fair, all-encompassing, and equal the metaverse truly will be.