You've probably heard a lot about the metaverse recently.
And we will try to explain you in the simplest manner we can.
What is Metaverse?
A metaverse is a collection of 3D virtual worlds designed to foster social interaction. The word is frequently used in futurism and science fiction to represent a potential iteration of the Internet as a single, universal virtual environment assisted by the usage of virtual and augmented reality headgear.
The term “metaverse” was coined as a combination of “meta” and “universe” in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. Various metaverses, such as virtual world platforms like Second Life, have been created for public use. Some metaverse versions include virtual and physical spatial integration and virtual economies, as well as a strong desire to advance virtual reality technology.
The term has been widely used as a public relations buzzword to exaggerate development progress for a variety of related technologies and projects. Information privacy and user addiction are concerns in metaverses, and they arise from issues that the social media and video gaming industry face as a whole.
Online communities have existed since at least the mid-1980s, and chatrooms, AOL instant messaging, and the first social media sites proliferated in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, World of Warcraft created a lasting social environment for millions of individuals, and communities sprung up both within and around the game. Coming onto Fortnite, joining a console platform chat with friends, and jumping into a game with them is just as sociable for younger generations as most other physical interactions.
Virtual Realities:
The metaverse promises to bring our digital and physical lives closer together in terms of wealth, sociability, employment, commerce, and entertainment, whether through virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), or simply through a screen. Because these two worlds are already interwoven, there's no need for a headset: Consider how the Uber app uses location data to estimate the distance between you and the car. Consider how Netflix offers suggestions based on your previous viewing history. Consider how contemporary iPhones' LiDAR scanner can scan your surroundings in 3D. The metaverse (also known as "web3" by some) is a step forward from the current Internet. True believers would disagree. It believes that the metaverse can benefit everyone, that it can expand access, opportunity, social networks, and mental health—though it must admit that much of what the metaverse can do is still speculative, and depends on a confluence of events, from hardware deployment to data infrastructure developments, all of which are on very shaky timelines. If the metaverse is just an extension of the internet we presently have, one only needs to consider the plethora of issues we have yet to address in our online existence—hacking, catfishing, harassment, and hate speech—to realise how dangerous a future on the metaverse could be.
