What the F*** is the Metaverse?
And can one company own it?
Facebook is rebranding itself to “Meta”, possibly aiming to synonymise itself with the Metaverse. But can just a simple renaming of the company help them claim the complete Metaverse? Let’s explore why this idea is absurd. But first let’s define what a Metaverse is.
The word “Meta” derives from Greek and stands for “after”, “beyond”, “more comprehensive” and “transcending” (taken from Wikipedia). Therefore, metaphysical means something that is beyond this physical world, and is thus used in religious and spiritual contexts, and sometimes (often hilariously) in horror movies, to represent ghost activity. The second half of the word metaverse is taken from the word universe. Metaverse thus roughly means a world we live in more than physically, i.e., virtually, or digitally.
The Metaverse is Already Here
If you spy on a Gen Z kid’s life, you will see that they spend most of their days playing Fortnite, scrolling through Tik Tok and posting reels on Instagram, you may think that they already spend most of their time in a universe that is much more than just the 3-dimensional physical world you and I play football in. In my opinion you won’t be wrong. After the shock that COVID has had on almost all countries around the globe, we are collectively…
