Everything you wanted to know about the metaverse (but were afraid to ask)
Five things to know – and what it could mean for you
What can I do in a metaverse, and how soon?
Different corporations will probably have their own visions or even local versions of the metaverse but, like the internet, they will all be connected, so you can move from one to the other.
It’s likely that some things are going to be more immediately appealing and practical than others. Playing games would seem to be a reasonable leap, as many gamers already enjoy online gaming, and some games, to a degree, have already enteredthe metaverse(think back to the characteristics above).
The idea of being able to socialize or meet with others, and feel like you’re really there with them in person, is also appealing – particularly in today’s pandemic age.
We don’t have a particularly clear idea of Meta’s metaverse offerings yet. In announcing the rebranding, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg mentioneddifferent possibilities. You might be able to appear in a real meeting as a hologram, or play chess with someone across the world on a virtual chessboard superimposed on the real world.
Facebook’s vision of the metaverse is as being our future interface to the internet. But whether we will one day access all internet services through 3D virtual worlds and virtual reality headsets remains to be seen.
Headsets still appear to be a somewhat niche technology in spite of many large corporations’ attempts to bring them to market in recent years, including Facebook with their purchase ofOculus.
I suspect Facebook will need to be in this for the long haul and that their vision of the metaverse is still many years off becoming a (virtual) reality.
A final observation
Stephenson’s original vision of the metaverse was very exciting, but also full of possibilities for both online and real world harms, from addiction, to criminality, to the erosion of democratic institutions. Interestingly, Stephenson’s metaverse was mostly owned by big corporations, with governments relegated to being largely insignificant paper-shuffling outposts.
Given the current tensions between big tech and governments around the world over privacy, freedom of speech and online harms, we should seriously consider what kind of metaverse we want to create, and who gets to create, own and regulate it.
This article bySteve Benford, Professor of Collaborative Computing,University of Nottingham, is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists.An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
