Imagine you meet with your family members or your friends, but not really—rather in a 3D world, one that is created artificially. You enter this world while you are sitting in your room, using a special headset or glasses. Similarly, when you are working or studying or shopping, you do almost all the things that you do in the real world, but not in the real world—instead, in this virtual artificially created world. How does it sound?
Well, the MetaVerse promises something akin to this for the future. It is touted to be a technology that would replace the internet in future and will become the future of humanity.
The word MetaVerse is made up of two words i.e. Meta + Verse. The word meta is derived from Greek, it is a prefix that basically means ‘Beyond’. And the Verse comes from the word world meaning ‘Universe’. This word MetaVerse basically refers to an artificial world.
When we talk about MetaVerse, it would be a world where we can be completely in it in 3-Dimensions. For example: when you watch a cricket match on the television, it is in 2-Dimension but technically if we are using virtual reality, then we would get a 360-degree experience of watching the cricket match around us. It will try to create an experience that would make you feel as if you are actually at the match.
The word MetaVerse was first used in the year 1992, in the science fiction book “Snow Crash” written by Neal Stephenson. In this novel, he talked about a dystopian world, a real world where real-life has been destroyed, the outdoors was not livable for humans anymore so everyone lives confined to their buildings and rooms and spends their lives in virtual reality.
So if we talk about MetaVerse in very simple lines then, it would be a virtual world where people can live virtually the same as the real world. They can travel from one place to another, they can do shopping, they can watch movies, they can exchange their goods and items, even all the things which we can do in the real world.
How is MetaVerse created?
There are various technologies used to create a MetaVerse actually.
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Virtual Reality (VR)
This technology already exists today, but to use this technology you have to wear heavy headsets.
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Augmented Reality (AR)
It means some artificial elements mixed with our real world. It is not a complete virtual reality. An excellent example of it is the Pokemon Go smartphone game. You can use the smartphone to look at the real world around you, but when you look at it through the smartphone, you can see the artificial pokemons there. It seems like they are mixed in the real world around you.
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5G Technology
If we are to create a huge virtual reality world, we’d need to constantly upload and download a huge amount of data, for this we’d need extremely high internet speeds.
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Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies
When money would be spent to buy anything in the MetaVerse, they cannot be real money, of course, because everything is digital so there would be a need for digital currency i.e. cryptocurrencies.
Because of large numbers of transactions constantly, they’d need to be kept secure. There would be threats of hackers or data breaches. To keep these secure, blockchains might be used. -
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)
If you want to buy land in the MetaVerse, or some other property, or any asset in the MetaVerse, it would be accomplished through NFTs.
You can think of NFTs as tokens that exist on the blockchain and can prove the ownership of any digital asset. Nowadays, NFTs are being used to buy or sell ownership of memes.
Although all these technologies basically exist individually, combining them and creating a true MetaVerse will take a lot of time. Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) estimates that it would take 7 to 10 years for the key features of MetaVerse to become mainstream.
Advantages and Disadvantages of MetaVerse
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Advantages (Pros)
- Connecting the world to each other without physical activity
- Immersive Experience
- Upgrading Social Media
- Business opportunities
- Improving online examination system
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Disadvantages (Cons)
- Increases cyber crime
- Addiction problem
- Distance from the physical world
- Mental Health issues
- Privacy and security issues
My Opinion
I think some technologies from the MetaVerse would definitely be popular in the future, but they will be popular in their sectors. For example, AR technology has a very productive use case in engineering, architecture, or even in the field of medicine, where you need to think in 3D.
Using 3D models would make the work more efficient and overall better. I believe it has great potential in many business areas and industries as well.
