Metaverse and Its Applications
In this article, we will discuss Metaverse and how it is getting implemented in the real world.
What is Metaverse?
In simple words, the Metaverse is another world that is far from the real world, yet all the real-world scenarios can be done in the Metaverse such as attending conferences, doing social outings, or even talking to a friend who’s miles away from you.
Origin of Metaverse
The term metaverse was coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans, as programmable avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world. Stephenson used the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the internet.
Avatars in Metaverse
I know all of these sound very magical and fairytale-like, but it can be done using Avatars. An Avatar is like your profile picture on Facebook that’s how people recognize you. You can create your avatar as per your preference on appearance, just like you do while playing video games.
Now, you can also tweak the avatar look whenever you like while participating in different activities. You can wear a professional outfit for your conference meetings, you can wear some funky-looking outfits as well if you are going out for socializing.
Capitalism in Metaverse
Metaverse is not only limited to daily events that I mentioned above. In Metaverse, you can buy a car, land, or clothes, pretty much anything that you can buy in the real world, and similarly, you can also sell things in the metaverse. The only difference is that you can’t use real-world currency, for making these transactions, you have to use NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).
Metaverse In Learning Spaces
After the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people have shifted toward digital modes of communication. Video conferencing platforms have also become much more popular for remote work, online classes, and other work-from-home arrangements. These platforms fail to provide a compelling, engaging experience because of real-time audio and video interaction.
Metaverse provides users with a more engaging experience to address this limitation through its graphically rich virtual environment, 3-D avatars, and immersive meetings. Instead of seeing the participants on a computer screen and communicating through microphones, the Metaverse allows us to navigate a virtual environment with lifelike participants’ avatars.
Similarly, it has an impact in other fields as well, such as eCommerce businesses and on social media platforms.
Done well, the metaverse could be a positive force for inclusion and equity, bridging some of the divides that exist in today’s physical and digital spaces. — Nick Clegg
