Facebook’s decision to rename itself with the new corporate name Meta Platforms Inc. -marked an appropriate endpoint for a year in which the relatively murky concept of the Metaverse became one of the most hyped buzzwords in technology. Many people laughed when Facebook renamed itself, but do you actually know the reason behind it?? Metaverse has set the trend for all internet things so much that it now has its own Wiki definition. Metaverse has already become a part of our lives without us knowing about it. People who play Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, etc., are already living in metaverses and won’t likely hesitate to join another where their friends and the things they enjoy all exist.

-History:

Before understanding metaverse, let us go back to when the internet was invented. British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first website on August 6, 1991. He dreamt of linking together information with hypertext that could be viewed via a web browser. Years later, he created the famous World Wide Web Consortium. The Web remains the most significant technological innovation of the modern time. In 1992, Neal Stephenson, inspired by the internet, wrote his science fiction novel Snow Crash, which first coined the term metaverse as- a collaborative virtual shared environment generated by the merging of virtually augmented physical reality and physically persistent virtual space. In 2003 Philip Rosedale launched Second Life. Second Life was an enormous community of people who fraternized in a 3D world and collaborated in various tasks, games, and adventures. Soon in 2006, Roblox came into the scene. Ten years later, in 2016, came the most wildly played game of that time, Pokémon Go. Fortnite, launched in 2017, now has over 350 million players, making it the world’s biggest and most active Metaverse.

-So what exactly is Metaverse?

The Metaverse is the hypothesized next internet iteration, supporting decentralized, persistent online 3-D virtual environments. This virtual space would be accessible through VR headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphones, PCs, and game consoles. It is not far-fetched to think of the Metaverse as eventually transforming to host practically every brand, service, and product you can think of. Of course, its complex infrastructure is still underway carefully developed, and without a doubt, the innovations that arise from such momentous architecture will set new standards for almost all live industries. Mark Zuckerberg during an event explained that the existing interfaces we use today aren’t immersive enough. They are bound by a lot of limitations. He further said that screen can’t deliver the deep feeling of presence and that presence is the defining quality of the Metaverse. When we interact with our family, friends, or colleagues virtually, we’re experiencing a heavily reconciled version of email threads, text messages, grainy Meet videos with jerky audio. And all of that interaction is crammed through a two-dimensional screen, often the size of a pack of playing cards. Metaverse can take our virtual communication to the next level and provide real-life experience by providing them virtual space, making them feel like everybody is in the same room. One might recall the scene from the movie kingsman where all the kingsmen enjoy a toast as if they were all sitting together in the same room.

Many students are locked in their homes for a long time due to the pandemic. Metaverse can help to enhance their experience. It can help to enhance college lectures or allow distance students to attend college virtually. It would help students in medicine, architecture, etc., practice skills that are difficult to perform in real life. During the pandemic, the experience of learning and working with people has shifted between online and in person. Imagine what if we can shake hands and play with our friends without actually meeting them, or experience the Taj Mahal during sunset, or see the city of Dubai from the top of Burj Khalifa, or go scuba diving into the deep oceans of Andaman and feeding the fish there just by wearing headsets, sound’s fantastic, right? This is the power that metaverse would bring just to our fingertips.

-Who Will Own the Metaverse?

One of the main reasons for the internet’s flourishing was the lack of ownership, accessibility, and open standards. For metaverse to develop extensively as the internet, it should have no owners, open standards, and shared interest for mutual growth. Many companies like Roblox and Facebook are interested in building their own closed-circuit metaverses, while companies like Nvidia are interested in building the backbone of the metaverse. Nvidia is building a platform called Omniverse for building tools to create and connect virtual worlds. Omniverse can be defined as a collection of every universe, multiverse, metaverse. Theoretically, it is a container of everything. Maybe it could be the reality soon.

-Hurdles While the metaverse offers benefits to people across various fields and industries, there are still many challenges that need to be overcome:

Identity It would be tough to determine what will really be the elements that makeup one’s identity. And most importantly, how to even prove that you are who you are, instead of another person or bot trying to mimic your existence.

Ownership There isn’t anyone metaverse. Soon there will be hundreds and thousands and then maybe millions. So if Facebook is building a metaverse, Fortnite another, Roblox has a one, and then Minecraft, Pokemon Go, etc., will and can there be only one metaverse? The answer is a straight NO! Right now, each of these metaverses is covered by massive walls around them, and without connecting each of these various metaverses, it’s a pipedream to think that it’s a possible fruitful future.

Accessibility Another massive hurdle is accessibility. Virtual Reality (mostly assumed to be a metaverse by people) is not an easy medium to interact with. Though it has an incredibly immersive experience, it is way too expensive. Also, withstanding hours in a headset is not so enjoyable and convenient. On the other hand, augmented reality is much more accessible (even with a modern smartphone) but lacks VR’s immersiveness. So with many variations of metaverses existing, this might seem like a fantasy for Web 3.0.

Legal Questions

Metaverse is bound to bring enormous users together, making it a great place to interact and exchange. However, it might make users vulnerable if no laws regulate these boundaries. It will indeed be a challenge to identify jurisdiction and set legislation to ensure the virtual space is safe and secure for the users. While these are all crucial issues, you can expect metaverse companies to solve these problems as the technology grows and evolves.

-So how would I like to define Metaverse?

According to me, Metaverse refers to a shared architecture that would allow virtual goods and identities to move from platform to platform. Imagine purchasing an NFT horse on the Zed Run racing platform and bringing it into the Wild West game world of Red Dead Redemption or buying a car in GTA and racing with it Asphalt 8 or Need for Speed. This would be a genuinely helpful step forward, notably, if it allowed us to port our social connections and assets from one platform to another. Still, it would primarily be an infrastructure upgrade.

-When can we expect it?

Major Tech giants believe that it would take 5 to 10 years before the key features of the metaverse become mainstream. But various aspects of the metaverse currently exist, as discussed above, and critical infrastructure and technological upgrades focusing on connecting diverse virtual worlds would lead the road to a more connected future