Metaverse Introduction
I always dreamt of being in some kind of simulated world, thanks to early influence I had from the movies like Matrix. That time, the idea of being in some virtual realm was crazy and absolutely fictitious. But as the technology progressed, this idea of you being in some alternate reality seemed achievable. Enter Metaverse!
The idea of Metaverse is coined by author Neal Stephenson in Sci-Fi novel Snow Crash. Simply put, it is a shared virtual place where your digital avatar lives and interact with environment as if you are playing a game, but the experience is so immersive, that the line between reality and digital will become blurry. We have experienced this phenomenon is some way when we played role playing games like Roblox, where you create a digital avatar for yourself, complete with an alternate ego and go on completing missions. You are surrounded by other digital beings and can talk to them, invite them for a challenge. This experience is more fun as you have a conversation with a digital being fully knowing of someone real human behind that smiley face. I mean, you literally carry your personality with you in the virtual world and that’s really fascinating and at the same time engaging as well.
Now the question is how you enter this digital world? Today, we can have this experience on your computer by login into some obscure server and start playing a game. How can you make it more immersive? Well, you can put on your fancy virtual reality glasses and get completely engaged, losing the real environment around you. Or if you are mindful, then try augmented reality glasses that gives you best of both digital and real world. This is by far we have reached today as far as virtual world is concerned. But then, how Metaverse is different than this virtual world? Read on.
To fully understand Metaverse, we need to see it in a definite context. And what could be good context other than Internet? It is the backbone of network where all the devices and eventually people are connected to each other. We use internet for social activities, watching our video content, talk to our friends and also play games. In a way, Internet is kind of Metaverse and we use our devices like phones, tablets, laptops, watches to enter it. But it is very limited as we are constrained by few screens, it’s like, looking in a tiny whole expecting a great experience. And more often, the experience on these digital devices are tiring and cause mental exhaustion. So the start of building the Metaverse is to change the way live in digital world. We tried this to some extent with digital assistants where we can have some meaningful conversation and get the information from internet. The key here is, to make digital experience seamless without tethering ourselves to few limited devices. With advent of augment reality, there is a great possibility to interact with internet by putting some geeky looking glasses on our face or may be some holographic technology to build an entire simulated world in front of us. Even if these ideas look far fetched today, but with current pace of technology, this is certainly possible in near future. Just imagine, having your next zoom call, not from your phone but from augmented reality glasses where you can see your friends avatar in front of you, having a candid conversation. Or imagine, attending a full concert or a baseball game as if it is happening just in front of your eyes. No need to go to a cloth store, as you can try all the fashion labels on your digital avatar and purchase right in the Metaverse. The possibilities are limitless!
One thing to understand, why Metaverse it gaining traction now when the concept looks quite dated?. The answer lies somewhere around blockchain. Yes blockchain! This technology has revolutionized the decentralized world with a trust-less system where different parties can collaborate with each other without any intermediary. And this has enabled use cases like selling digital artifacts like art, music and collectibles on internet. Note, all these are virtual items and nowhere exists in real world. The economy around these digital items is growing into multibillion dollar industry where people are owning digital assets by paying a significant price for it. That shows an important shift in perception for virtual items as valuable asset. Blockchain is perfect foundation for building Metaverse as it will be decentralized and not a single entity will be able to control it, hence eventual possibility of widespread adoption. Internet had a great vision of a common platform, where all the services will perfectly co-exist with each other without any vendor lock-in. But over a period, unfortunately Internet has become a monopoly of few companies. Blockchain has shown a great promise to build truly decentralized systems. Metaverse will not solve this problem but it will be one step close to achieving that true interoperability of services if it is based on Blockchain like technology. Metaverse technology will be used by big social companies as next level platform to sell their services but in more inclusive way.
We have discussed a lot of introductory piece, let’s look at what is happening on ground in the space of Metaverse. Epic games with it’s popular Fortnite game experimented with Metaverse space where virtual parties were recently held with astounding success. Facebook and Tiktok have shown active interest in Metaverse where the next generation social media platform can actually be a Metaverse. Gaming companies like Roblox, Nvidia and Tencent have already joined the fray to adopt and design their offering around Metaverse. The concept is still in it’s evolving phase and only time will tell how Metaverse will pan out in the future but as of today it looks a promising vision for the future on Internet!