‘Metaverse’ our future inside a virtual reality….

by Soham Datta, Civil Engineering, UG 3

The term “Metaverse” was coined by Neal Stephenson in his cyberpunk novel, “Snow Crash,” and has recently come into much public attention after the rebranding of Facebook as Meta. Leaders in technology, fashion and entertainment, have started investing heavily to stake their claims in this latest edition of the internet, and businesses all around the globe are already in a state of FOMO.

So, what exactly is “metaverse”?

Imagine, you think about a product that you need to buy, and a catalogue appears in front of you with exactly the product you thought about, you simply order it and get it delivered to your doorstep.

Or take this for example, if you are thinking about buying a dress you can just simply hop into your avatar and try out as many clothes as you want from suppliers anywhere around the globe, in a matter of minutes, in a completely virtual world.

Welcome to the Metaverse

Just like the social media in the 90’s, metaverse is destined to become the next frontier for marketing and communications. While we don’t have one connected metaverse right now, several companies are working on the same. Aside from the huge technological advancements that are intertwined with the advent of the metaverse virtual shopping and entertainment will get an unprecedented boost.

Different companies are coming up with their own versions of the metaverse, and there are certainly some overlapping features :

1. In the nascent form of metaverse, people will be only represented by digital avatars, but eventually they will be able to enter it and access parts of it, through the help of augmented and virtual reality.

2. The metaverse will rely on your user-generated content. Thus, the metaverse will continue to grow and evolve based on the interactions taking place within it.

3. This virtual world will be available 24/7. You would be able to visit anytime you want (just by putting a headset on, in most cases).

4. In some visions of the metaverse, the virtual stuff in the virtual world actually represents real stuff in the real world. Like buying clothes as seen earlier.

5. In some, rather grander visions, this virtual world will be modifiable and customisable. You will be able to change it and, the changes remain in place the next time you visit, essentially giving the user full control. (Why be a king when you can be the god :)

There is no denying the fact that this is nothing but a fact based envisage of a distant future but it isn’t as far away as it seems. A big part of education and jobs, have already shifted online. The online retail and entertainment industry are larger than ever before. More and more people are connecting on social media seeking out friendships even relationships. Metaverse seeks to combine all these aspects.

But these are just one side of the coin.

A lot of experts argue, that this, ‘metaverse’ is nothing but a public relations stunt, with big companies seeking to create a hype among the public. Their argument goes along the lines that most of the equipment needed for a virtual reality experience are already here and a lot of the internet especially in the entertainment industry already use some form of virtual reality (games like Fortnite depict the concept of a metaverse to a certain degree). So metaverse rather than being a technological fiasco, that the giant companies seek to portray, is just a facelift given to a part of the internet, and this is being done to create a buzz in the streets and reap the maximum profits.

I will leave the conclusions to the reader.

However, there is one thing which is very certain. As the most important aspects of our lives start moving online there will come a D-day when our virtual representations will matter more to us than our offline lives. We will become clipboards on the metaverse (or by whatever name it will be called), all our achievements listed from start to finish, all our activities recorded, and all our memories most perfectly remembered.

When will that day come?

Perhaps that’s a question for another time….