The Metaverse has been a very hot topic in the past few weeks since the founder of Facebook “the big Mark” switched the name of the popular social networking platform and its subsidiaries to META, and he explained the plans of the company as it relates to metaverse in a live stream. The term has since then been a major topic as corporates and startups alike have been in a hurry to create projects in alignment with the buzz.
So what does the term Metaverse mean? In its simplest form, it is a collection of 3D virtual worlds designed to foster social interaction. The word is usually employed in futurism and fantasy to represent a possible iteration of the web as one universal virtual environment assisted by the usage of virtual and augmented reality headgear.
The term “metaverse” was coined out of these two words “meta” and “universe” within the 1992 fantasy novel Snow Crash.
Various metaverses, like virtual world platforms and Second Life, are created for public use.
Some metaverse versions include virtual and physical spatial integration and virtual economies. Here’s an example to assist you to understand how the term “metaverse” works: in an exceedingly simple statement, replace the word “metaverse” with “cyberspace”, but with an almost surreal human interaction.
Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won’t vary significantly. This can be because the phrase refers to a broad shift in how we engage with technology instead of one kind of technology. Even when the precise technology it originally described becomes widespread and known, the metaverse seems extremely fragile that the name may become obsolete likewise.
Implementation of the Metaverse technology
Video Games:
Several metaverse technologies have already been implemented in modern internet-connected video games. Second Life, a virtual world platform that launched in 2003 and merged many components of social networking into a persistent three-dimensional world with the user represented as an avatar, is mostly mentioned as the first metaverse. Many massively multiplayer online games include social features as a regular feature. Clive Thompson, a technology journalist, claims that Minecraft’s dynamic, social-based gameplay is a sophisticated version of a metaverse. Similar claims were made for the sport Roblox, which has since used the word extensively in marketing. The games Active Worlds, The Palace, and Fortnite have all claimed to be constructing a metaverse.
Virtual Reality:
A video game Facebook Horizon, a social VR realm, was introduced in 2019 by the social media firm Facebook. Facebook was dubbed “Meta Platforms” in 2021, and its chairman Mark Zuckerberg stated that the corporation was committed to establishing a metaverse.
Many of the computer game technologies promoted by Meta Platforms are still within the early stages of development. Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower, slammed the move, saying that Meta Platforms’ continuous target growth-oriented projects are usually done at the expense of guaranteeing platform safety.
Thanks to the incidence of harassment on the network, Meta Platforms has received user safety criticism over Horizon Worlds. Microsoft purchased the video game business AltspaceVR in 2017 and has subsequently integrated metaverse capabilities into Microsoft Teams, like virtual avatars and computer game meetings. There are some new building blocks in situ with the metaverse, like the power to host many people in an exceedingly single instance of a server (future versions of a metaverse should be able to handle thousands, if not millions) and motion-tracking tools which will distinguish where an individual is looking or where their hands are.
What is up with the Metaverse technology Like Right Now?
MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online), which are essentially entire virtual worlds, digital concerts, video conversations with people everywhere around the globe, online avatars, and commerce platforms are already available. So, so as to plug these items as a brand new way of watching the planet, there has got to be something new about them.
Spend enough time talking about the metaverse, and someone will undoubtedly point out fictional works like Snow Crash, which created the phrase “metaverse,” or Ready Player One, which describes a video game world where everyone works, plays, and shops. after you add within the overall popular culture concept of holograms and heads-up displays (These stories function as an inventive point of reference for what the metaverse—a metaverse that tech corporations could genuinely offer us something new—may appear as if.
With all said above, are there risks synonymous with this new trend, what are the possible risks and how will we mitigate these risks? All these and more will be carefully detailed in a follow-up article.
