METAVERSE: The Next Big Revolution After the Internet?
In today’s world, we perceive the internet as the greatest invention ever. People have access to everything in the world at their fingertips. It has eased communication and interaction, facilitated better expression, better access to knowledge and led to further inventions like social media, online workspaces, visual enhancements, millions of online applications and a lot more. It has almost created another parallel realm of things “online”.
But what if, instead of just seeing things on screen we could actually enter it and manoeuvre it as the physical world? What if, instead of texting your friends, you could actually meet them (or their avatars) online and experience the real-world interaction from home? What if, instead of just viewing images of clothes, you could actually wear it and try them out from home before buying?
This brings us to the concept of “metaverse”.
MetaVerse is made up of the words “meta” (meaning beyond) and “verse” (stem of universe) meaning a specific sphere, typically used to describe a virtual online space which is connected to a virtual universe, where interactions are more multidimensional and life-like than current technology supports. It is an internet that we’re inside of, instead of just looking at it.
Metaverse wouldn’t replace the internet but be an iteration of it. People will have to login and connect to it using a virtual reality headset. You could then interact with objects like you normally do. They won’t be shared as images but as 3D projections onto your eyes, making it feel like the real world. Avatars could walk around in Cyberspace, talk, touch, and meet new people (even strangers or people from other parts of the world in the same room) similar to how we do in the physical world. One could be at a concert without inconvenience and still have that sense of shared physical space, human interactions-from anywhere.
Digital workspace with avatars in metaverse
WHAT GAVE METAVERSE THIS SUDDEN POPULARITY?
The world has seen metaverse hype throughout the years, with people trying to create immersive virtual worlds as early as the 1960s, by both the film and video-gaming industries. Games like Roblox and Fortnite have been promoting the “virtual worlds” for quite some time and the term itself is a decade old.
But what caused this sudden, immense hype since October 2021 around metaverse?
Facebook’s recent rebranding to “Meta”- to embrace the company’s full commitment towards the metaverse- triggered a wave of interest in the subject. Newspapers headlines, social media posts, memes, gaming platforms began swirling with this new word. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision conjures up a virtual reality that includes almost everything.
“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine—get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create—as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today…In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up,” Zuckerberg wrote in his 2021 Founder’s Letter, released on Oct. 28.
New logo of Meta, launched in October 2021.
HOW DOES FACEBOOK PLAN TO BUILD THIS METAVERSE?
Meta knows it is not the only company that can ‘build’ this metaverse. The plan is to keep the experience of the metaverse free and for that Meta will sell its “devices at cost or subsidised to make them available to more people.”
There are VR or AR devices which can be used to access parts of the metaverse such as the Oculus Quest 2 or 3. There’s also a new VR device called Project Cambria, which will be more expensive and with more advanced tracking technology. This is coming next year. Facebook also has its AR glasses project called Aria, which is still in the progress.
Avatars in “Horizon Home” clip uploaded by Meta- Source: Youtube
Meta has shown clips of “Horizon Home”, “Horizon Workspace” and “Horizon Worlds” to depict how the world would look and operate through their headsets.
Meta will also “support side-loading and streaming from PCs, so people have choice, rather than forcing them to use the Quest Store to find apps or reach customers.”
“And we’ll aim to offer developer and creator services with low fees in as many cases as possible so we can maximise the overall creative economy. We’ll need to make sure we don’t lose too much money along the way though” Zuckerburg said. This will also offer Facebook a chance to escape the rules of Apple and Google, which tightly control the IOS and Android platforms respectively.
Oculus Virtual Reality Headset by Meta- Source: Google
COMPANIES CHASING DOWN THE METAVERSE
Apart from Facebook, now Meta, there are numerous giant companies that are working towards establishing their hold in the virtual universe silently, pacing towards the same goal of achieving metaverse.
Roblox– Major American video gaming company visualises metaverse as a place where “people can come together within millions of 3D experiences to learn, work, play, create and socialize.” After its IPO earlier this year, it is now valued at more than $45billion, with one step closer to fulfilling their dream of metaverse. Roblox Founder/CEO David Baszucki has also mentioned that the company is looking forward to creating future shopping experiences on the platform, which is powered by its own virtual currency, Robux.
Microsoft– The software giant already uses holograms and is developing mixed and extended reality applications with its Microsoft Mesh platform, which combine the real world with Augmented reality and Virtual reality. With the Xbox and Minecraft under it, Microsoft is a prominent player even in the gaming world, which will also see advancements to bring in the concept of the metaverse.
Epic Games– They have invested $1billion to spend on its metaverse plans. The company has previously held concerts by Ariana Grande, movie trailers, music debuts and even tried a re-making of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech. They further plan to develop realistic digital humans with its MetaHuman Creator, with which one can customize their digital avatar in future open world games.
NVIDIA, Tencent, AutoDesk, Snap Inc (owner of Snapchat) and Unity are also among the other companies stepping into metaverse.
LINKING DIGITAL ASSETS TO REALWORLD ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN METAVERSE
The metaverse is also expected to have a strong connection with the real-world economy – and eventually become an extension of it. It must have the ability for companies and individuals to participate in economic activity in the same way they do today. This means being able to build, trade and invest in products, goods and services.
To a certain extent, this may rely on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as the foundation for value creation. A NFT is a claim of ownership for a unique, non-interchangeable digital asset that is stored on a blockchain. If NFTs become a commonly adopted tool for trading such goods, they could help accelerate the use of extended reality ecosystems as places people go to combine elements of the digital economy with their offline lives.
One way to think of this process is how the App Store encouraged businesses to digitize their operations, so that consumers could experience (and pay for) their products and services from any location. This legitimized the idea that retail and digital need not be separate, paving the way for a whole host of use cases that might not initially have made sense.
With its large popularity, metaverse comes with fear, speculation and the possibility of engulfing the physical lives of humans in artificial headsets and corporated pixels. Will it get a breakthrough as successful as the internet or will it just be a hope of potential in the eyes of many? Only time will tell.
Curated By: Isha Saraf and Roshan Singh Bedi
(Isha Saraf is a 2nd year student pursuing B.Com(H) at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata and a Senior Associate of the Xavier’s Finance Community.)
(Roshan Singh Bedi is a 2nd year student pursuing B.Com(H) at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata and a Senior Associate of the Xavier’s Finance Community.)