Internet’s development might seem like the peak of technology for many people. It is through the internet that we visit various websites, social media platforms, and messaging applications. We communicate with other users via text, sharing multimedia, and making video calls. However, the metaverse aims to take this experience a notch higher.
According to TIME magazine, the term metaverse refers to a community that exists primarily within the digital world. If so, it would mean nothing new, since online communities have been around since the dawn of the internet.
The idea of the metaverse, however, involves combining both the digital and physical realms into one. It aims to make digital spaces more lifelike by using virtual reality, or augmented reality. In other words, it is an online world where people can use different devices to move and communicate in a virtual environment. Consequently, what you do in cyberspace can directly affect your real life.
The Metaverse translates to a digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. In more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it is interoperable. That means it allows you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another. In the real world, you can buy a shirt from the mall and then wear it to a movie theater. Right now, most platforms have virtual identities, avatars, and inventories that are tied to just one platform. But, in a metaverse you might create a persona that you can take anywhere. This can be done just as easily as you can copy your profile picture from one social network to another.
The metaverse may also be a key factor in the future of many, not to say all industries. As society expands beyond the current hybrid model of office work, the virtual experience may be refined by having people work directly in the metaverse. Bill Gates believes that office meetings will be increasingly done via a 3D space with personal avatars in the span of three years. Having this in mind, can you imagine what this means for the education field? Let’s suppose the teacher is explaining the solar system to students, the Metaverse would allow for a 3D manipulation of it in the classroom, providing perfected means for explaining concepts.
Explaining the Metaverse is difficult since it has yet a long way into becoming the exciting reality we expect it to be. The technologies powering it are still undergoing intensive research and experimentation in order to fulfill the demand of making online interactions more lifelike.