What is the Metaverse, exactly?

What is a Metaverse? This question may seem strange, but most people have never heard of it. The Metaverse is simply defined as “a shared virtual collective space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. »

The metaverse is a shared virtual space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet.

It's about the future of the internet, according to tech CEOs such as Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, who have spoken about it publicly. But it can also be a video game. Or maybe it's a nastier, worse-than-Zoom variation of the same thing? It's hard to say.

It's a bit like having a conversation about the meaning of "the internet" in the 1970s when it comes to talking about what "the metaverse" means today. The foundations for a new mode of communication were laid, but no one could predict what the final product would look like until it was fully realized. So, while it was correct at the time that “the internet” was on the horizon, not all expectations of what it would look like turned out to be accurate.

On the other hand, the concept of metaverse, as it stands today, is getting a lot of marketing hype. After Apple's decision to limit ad tracking negatively impacted the company's financial line, Facebook in particular is in a particularly vulnerable position.

Facebook's image of a future in which everyone has a digital wardrobe to flip through is irreconcilable with the fact that Facebook is actually interested in making money selling virtual clothes.

So, with all of that in mind…

What exactly does the term "Metaverse" mean?

To help you better understand how ambiguous and confusing the word "metaverse" can be, here's an activity to try: Replace the word "metaverse" in a sentence with the phrase "cyberspace" in your head. In more than ninety percent of the cases, the meaning will not change significantly.

This is because the term “information technology” doesn't really refer to any particular type of technology, but rather to a broad change in the way we interact with information technology. And it's also possible that the name itself will become obsolete in the near future, even as the exact technology it originally defined becomes more widely available and accepted.

Virtual reality, which is characterized by persistent virtual environments that continue to exist even when you are not playing, and augmented reality, which blends features of the digital and physical worlds, are examples of technologies that can find in the metaverse.

However, it is not necessary that these environments are only accessible by virtual reality or augmented reality. One possibility for a metaversal virtual world is the components of Fortnite that can be accessed through computers, video game consoles, and even smartphones.

The term also refers to a digital economy, in which users can make and buy things, as well as sell them. It is also interoperable, according to some of the more utopian visions of the metaverse, allowing virtual objects such as clothing or automobiles to be transferred from one platform to another.

Buying a shirt at the mall and then wearing it to the movies is perfectly acceptable in the real world. The majority of virtual identities, avatars, and inventories currently only exist on one platform, but a metaverse could allow you to create a character that you could take with you everywhere, much like you can copy and paste your profile picture from one social networking site to another.

It's hard to decipher what all of this means because when you hear descriptions like the ones above, it's natural to think, "Wait, doesn't that already exist?" It's hard to decipher what all of this means.

For example, the permanent virtual world of World of Warcraft offers a marketplace where users can buy and trade items. Rick Sanchez can get to know Martin Luther King Jr. through virtual experiences like concerts and an exhibit in Fortnite.

You can put on an Oculus VR headset and be transported to your own virtual reality world. Is this, in fact, what the "metaverse" refers to? Are these just a few new types of video games?

Yes and no, to be honest. If we were to declare Fortnite to be "the metaverse", it would be like declaring Google to be "the internet". While you can hypothetically spend a lot of time in Fortnite chatting, buying items, learning, and playing games, that doesn't necessarily imply that it contains the entire metaverse.

While it's true that Google creates parts of the internet, from physical data centers to layers of security, it's also true that Epic Games, the company behind the hit video game Fortnite, develops sections of the metaverse. And it's not the only company to do so.

Tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook – the latter has just been rebranded as Meta to better represent this effort, although we still have to get used to the new name – will be responsible for some of this work. Many other companies, like Nvidia, Unity, Roblox, and even Snap, are also engaged in building the infrastructure that could one day serve as the foundation for the metaverse.

Most discussions of what the metaverse is and what it includes stop at this point. We have a general understanding of the elements that currently exist in what we can call the metaverse, and we know which companies are investing in this concept, but we are still unsure of what it represents.

The social networking site Facebook thinks it will contain fictional mansions in which you can invite all your friends to meet. Sorry, Meta, but I still don't understand what they're talking about. Microsoft seems to believe that virtual conference rooms, such as those used to train new employees or communicate with distant colleagues, could be implemented.

The tone and content of these visions of the future range from hopeful to outright fanfiction. An example of a metaverse was demonstrated during the presentation of…Meta presentation…on the subject, in which a young woman is sitting on her sofa and watching Instagram when she comes across a video posted by her friend from a show to come that takes place on the other side of the world.

After after, the film turns to the concert, when the woman emerges as an Avengers-style hologram. In addition to being able to make eye contact with her friend who is physically present, she and her friend are both able to hear the performance and can see a floating text message hovering above the concert stage.

Although this appears to be an advertisement for a genuine product, or even a potential future product, it is not. In fact, this brings us to the heart of the matter when it comes to the “metaverse”.

What are holograms used for in the Metaverse?

When the Internet appeared, it was accompanied by a succession of technological breakthroughs, such as the ability to communicate between computers over long distances or the possibility of connecting from one web page to another.

These technological characteristics served as building blocks to build the abstract structures that we recognize today as the internet: websites, applications, social networks and everything that is based on these fundamental characteristics.

It is also important to note the convergence of interface technologies that are not exactly related to the internet but are nevertheless necessary for its proper functioning, such as display technology, keyboards, mice and touch screens.

The metaverse has introduced new building blocks, such as the ability to accommodate hundreds of people in a single instance of a server (future versions of a metaverse should be able to handle thousands or even millions of people at the same time), or motion tracking tools that can distinguish where a person is looking or where their hands are. These new technologies could be quite intriguing and futuristic in their appearance.

However, there are several restrictions that might be insurmountable in the long run. When tech companies like Microsoft or Fa-Meta release fictional films about their vision for the future, they usually tend to gloss over how people will interact with the metaverse, which is problematic.

VR headsets are still bulky, and most people experience motion sickness or physical pain after wearing them for an extended period of time. Users of augmented reality glasses face the same difficulty, plus the significant challenge of figuring out how to use them in public without coming across as nerdy.

So how can tech companies demonstrate the concept of their tech without showing the reality of huge headsets and wacky goggles? From what they have said so far, their main response is to create technology from scratch.

Is this the holographic woman from the Meta demo? I'm sorry to burst your fancy bubble, but even with the most sophisticated versions of today's technology, that's just not achievable.

Instead of motion-tracked digital avatars, which are already available but could be improved in the future, there is currently no "goofy" form of creating a three-dimensional image that appears in the air without the use of tightly regulated conditions.

No matter what Iron Man tells you, you must obey. Perhaps these images should be interpreted as images projected through goggles – after all, the two women in the demo video are wearing similar goggles – but even that makes a lot of assumptions about the physical capabilities of the compact goggles, which, Snap can tell you, isn't an easy problem to fix.

This kind of obscuring of reality is commonly seen in movies demonstrating how the metaverse works. In another demo, players are shown hovering in space – is this person strapped to an immersive aerial device, or just sitting at a desk in the middle of the room? Do you have information about a person's hologram?

Is this person using a headset, and if so, how is their face scanned? And sometimes a person appears to be holding virtual objects in what appear to be their real hands after grabbing them with their virtual hands.

This example creates a lot more questions than it answers, which is a problem.

It is acceptable in some respects. It's important to remember that Microsoft, Meta, and any other company that does crazy demonstrations like this are trying to create an aesthetic sense of what the future might be, and not necessarily answer all the technical questions that might arise.

A long-standing practice, dating back to AT&T's demonstration of a voice-controlled foldable phone that could magically erase individuals from photographs and build 3D models, all things that seemed equally unfeasible to era, has continued until today.

It's hard to predict, however, which parts of the metaverse's many visions will ever come true as a result of this kind of wishful thinking presented as a technology demonstration in the present day.

As soon as VR and AR headsets are comfortable and affordable enough for everyday use (a big "if"), the idea of ​​playing virtual poker with your friends while they are robots and holograms and floating in space might be a little closer to reality. If that's not possible, you can always join a Discord video call and play Tabletop Simulator.

The glitz and glamor of virtual reality and augmented reality also masks the more mundane features of the metaverse that are perhaps more likely to come to fruition in the future.

The creation of an open digital avatar standard, a form of file that incorporates characteristics you can input into character creators – such as eye color, haircut and clothing options – and allows you to taking it everywhere with you would be trivially simple to achieve for IT companies. There is no need to develop a more comfortable virtual reality headset for this purpose.

However, imagining this isn't nearly as fun.

What is the current state of the Metaverse?

Because it is necessary to define it remotely for it to be the future, there is a paradox in defining the metaverse. Online multiplayer games (MMOG) which are virtually complete virtual worlds, digital concerts, video chats with people around the world, online avatars and trading platforms are all now available. To sell these items as a new perspective of the world, they have to have something new.

If you spend enough time talking about the metaverse, it's inevitable that someone will bring up fictional stories like Snow Crash, which was the first novel to use the term "metaverse," or Ready Player One, which depicts a world of virtual reality where everyone works, plays, and shops, among other things.

With the general pop culture idea of ​​holograms and heads-up displays (basically everything Iron Man has used in his last ten films), these stories serve as an imaginative point of reference for what the metaverse – a metaverse that tech companies might actually sell as something new — might look like in the near future.

This type of hype is as essential to the metaverse concept as any other element of it. It's no surprise that proponents of NFTs (cryptographic tokens that can serve as certificates of ownership of a digital asset, in a sense) also embrace the concept of metaverses.

Granted, NFTs are harmful to the environment, but if these tokens could be said to represent the digital key to your virtual home in Roblox, that would be a big win for everyone. You've just turned your hobby of meme-hoarding into an essential piece of internet infrastructure for the future (and possibly increasing the value of any bitcoins you hoard in the process).

It's essential to remember all of this because while it's easy to compare today's proto-metaverse concepts to the early days of the internet and believe that things will improve and grow in a linear fashion, it's not is not a fatality.

Without legs in a virtual office or a game of poker with DreamWorks CEO Mark Zuckerberg, there's no guarantee people will want to, let alone that VR and AR technologies will ever become as ubiquitous as smartphones and computers.

It's possible that any real "metaverse" consists mostly of fantasy VR games and digital avatars in Zoom chats, with the rest of the internet remaining as we know it today.