👾 All about Metaverse

What if your reality is boring? Is there a way that you can make the reality engaging? Echoing the existence of an alternate universe.

🤖 WTH is Metaverse?

The word "Metaverse" was first used by Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. So the Metaverse is actually a made-up word and this 29-year-old book actually predicted an alternate universe aka Metaverse and it even guessed some of Facebook’s strategies.

Basically, the metaverse is a virtual reality space where people can interact with each other and digital objects in a 3D environment. Imagine it as a giant, interactive video game or a virtual world where you can create your own avatar and explore different places, meet new people, play games, attend concerts, and even buy and sell virtual goods.

So for instance, if you have watched Ready Player One, you might have already witnessed what Metaverse is capable of. No wonder Spielberg is known as the Modern era director.

😵‍💫 Need an alternate verse?

Off lately, everybody started to realise that reality is a bummer. We all need something that can make us escape from the reality.

Metaverse is like going somewhere without actually going somewhere. You don’t need a destination.

Do people really need it?

Seems like Yes! People need an alternate universe in which they can do what they can’t in the real world. You can have relationships. You can be married. They stay in the verse because of all of the things they can be. You are fat and gross in the real world. But you can create an avatar that is thin, chic and smart in the metaverse.

🤔 Are we already in the Metaverse?

So, the next obvious question would be -

"How immersive we should be to actually be in the metaverse?"

Many people argue that we actually need to wear devices like Oculus to get into the Meta world. But to me, Metaverse is essentially a different world, an alternate universe. In fact, each and every one of us is already experiencing Metaverse. For instance, if you want to experience a lifestyle, we open Instagram or Tiktok and we see other people’s way of living, dressing, eating habits etc. We don’t do this intentionally but you get the point of what I mean.

So apparently you don’t need to wear a device to get into the Meta world. Each app is itself a Metaverse.

In 2016, Elon claimed that we are already cyborgs, due to our smartphones and our online presence being an extension of our physical selves. So, I would argue that metaverse was already existing and now we just need a few tools like AR and VR sets to be more immersive.

🔥 Growth of Metaverse

So what's the future like? The metaverse could become a place where people spend a lot of their time, much like how we spend time on the internet or social media today. Some experts even predict that it could become as important as the physical world we live in.

How close are we to achieving that? To be honest, we are actually pretty pretty far. In fact, when Mark announced the Horizon which is the Meta world by Facebook, it was highly critiqued for its poor performance and graphics. There are a lot of issues. But we are actually getting there.

There is the problem of the transfer of all human senses into the Meta world. For instance, currently, we have visual and hearing but we don't have a sense of smell and taste.

But But But, give it some time. Cause there is already a suit in the market called the Tesla suit which is about $13k and gives you a sense of touch through haptics similar to the one Wade had in Ready Player One movie.

One amazing use case with Metaverse is how you can be productive at work. In fact, Microsoft has released the HoloLens2 which aims at increasing efficiency and output at work.

Apparently, the use cases in gaming get crazier. I read an amazing newsletter by Jacob Jolibois on how Epic games is creating a Metaverse without any specific hardware like VR headsets.

tl;dr - Metaverse is gonna be the next big breakthrough in the tech sector like how ChatGPT made a pivotal point and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just saying that we need to digest that Metaverse is just another tech, and like James Halliday in Ready Player One said

Reality is the only thing that is real!