Live an Alternate Life in the Virtual World: Metaverse Explained
Metaverse is a buzzword that has now kindled the curiosity and imagination of many. Is it an evolved form of the internet, with a symbiotic combination of social media? Or is it a technologically advanced leap in the entertainment and gaming world? Let’s try to understand this immersive new tech and its experience.
The Metaverse space can be simply understood as an online virtual space. It is enhanced through appealing realistic designs and a 3D feel. It aims to connect users, forming their alternate lives in this digital universe. Users have their digital avatars, either based on their real looks or custom-designed to look attractive or appealing.
The Metaverse space also connects multiple platforms. Very similar to how the internet connects multiple websites. But at its core, metaverse can be viewed as an enhanced and evolved version of social media networks.
The concept was first introduced to a wider audience in the early 90s. Neal Stephenson, a well-known sci-fi writer, had authored a very successful and cult hit cyberpunk novel ‘Snowcrash’. His imagination then can now be viewed as a striking prediction. His idea developed in the book is not far from what is now being achieved in reality, or we can accurately put it as virtual reality.
Metaverse space is an expanding platform. It will be engagingly driven by augmented reality. Each user will be controlling a character or their digitally designed avatars.
Just to have a glimpse into the future of metaverse, you can imagine yourself attending a meeting in your virtual office. You can complete your work and relax. You can immerse yourself in a block-chain based game. You can also manage your crypto portfolio and make a variety of financial transactions inside the metaverse.
Some aspects of the metaverse are already present in the video game world. Games like Second Life and Fortnite are already using work socialization tools to bring real-life elements into online worlds.
These games are not entirely metaverses. They are steps that are leading to the creation of a fully functional virtual universe.
The envisioned metaverse is supposed to be unimaginably bigger than just being an extension of social media or gaming. The evolution of metaverse is also said to be aimed at accommodating economies, digital identities, decentralized governance and many such ambitious ideas.
How will metaverse impact your life?
- You’ll express yourself in unique ways
Radical self-expression will find new outlets in the metaverse platform. These environments provide people with the power to manipulate the virtual world. Creators can use tools to create amazing elements to make the world look more exciting.
Even if you don’t have the time or creative push, you will still be free to explore worlds built by talented creators. You can use their creations to make something of your own.
Let’s dive further deep into the idea of presenting ourselves as digital avatars.
These avatars provide us avenues to express ourselves in unbelievable ways.
You’ll have an option to try out different ‘skins’. It might help you in injecting more confidence when you interact with different avatars of others. The positive outcome of this phenomenon can be the confidence that’ll start building up in your real life.
Metaverse provides us with the platform to express ourselves more deeply and freely.
- A path leading to accepting and tolerant work culture
Unconscious bias is something that affects the process of large scale cultural acceptance. Every individual harbors it to a varying degree. The demonstration of it at work is undesirable.
However, in the platform of metaverse, these biases are predicted to fade away.
In that virtual world, the way we project ourselves will be a mere fragment of our real-life individuality. When we switch avatars, it gets challenging to hold on to pre-held biases.
The outer skin doesn’t provide a clear or complete picture of the person behind it.
There might still be a human being behind every avatar, who is swayed by common human tendencies. But the metaverse definitely will push us towards the direction of radical acceptance.
With a choice to explore many sets of skins, we’ll eventually start to celebrate the differences each avatar and its aspects provide.
- Are we ready to dive into the metaverse?
Technology is a fascinating tool. It can assist human potential to reach new heights, it also is like a modern drug that can hook and addict you to what it has to offer.
As we move towards experiencing this strange new virtual world, we shouldn’t move towards being oblivious to what the real world has to offer.
Our mind has to address new philosophical questions, with this form of technology taking over our lives.
When this technology gets adopted by many, the way the world works, as we know it, might completely get disrupted.
From the future of work to the issues related to policy and governance, each will have to be created for this newly evolving digital civilization.
We are already on the doorstep to introducing this technology to our modern society, it is our moral responsibility to ensure it doesn’t get corrupted with nasty intentions.
Are VR devices necessary to join the Metaverse?
There is an argument in the tech community about the nature of entering the metaverse. Some say VR devices are the only way to live the fullest in the metaverse (for now) and others say we are, in a way, already existing in a few metaverses. Smartphones being the devices and social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. being those many metaverses — the digital worlds.
Also, some argue that VR devices are being made a necessity to access the metaverse so that it becomes another vertical for hardware companies, that’s a matter to be discussed for another day.
The point to be not ignored here is that the users will not be locked out of reality using these partial VR platforms which isn’t the case with VR devices for metaverse. So, it’s a matter of ‘to what extent’ VR devices are necessary rather than whether they are necessary or not.
