Has the pandemic launched us into the age of the metaverse?
Several recent events seem to foreshadow the metaverse as the place where we’ll be spending a lot of time in the not-too-distant future.
The metaverse is the collective, virtual and shared 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. Traditionally, it has been exploited within the scope of virtual reality or augmented reality in environments ranging from video games to industrial applications, but always relatively niche, and until now, hasn’t reached a majority audience.
But events on the technological scene suggest that we could be close to moving from this relatively marginal use to more significant levels of adoption, particularly as a way of dealing with the pandemic and the new realities it has generated: a leak from Apple about supposed augmented reality glasses possibly linked to the iPhone, the launch of which some do not consider viable before 2022, and which would confirm the company’s interest in an environment in which it has already made several acquisitions (the most recent a week ago) and registered several related patents.
Facebook, which bought Oculus VR in 2014, continues to advance its vision of remote working using virtual and…
