Facebook is planning to recognize as a Metaverse company soon. It is setting up to build a world beyond reality that feels like reality. With technology, the stories from ‘Snow Crash’ or ‘Ready One Player’ will soon appear as reality. Everything you do here on the planet Earth will then be possible in VR/AR world.
What Exactly Is Metaverse?
The novelist Neal Stephenson first coined Metaverse in 1992. Technically, Metaverse is a collection of virtual spaces that involve the virtual world and the internet.
However, the vision of Metaverse seen by Zuckerberg will not leave augmented reality alone. For him, the grid size interaction over the internet is not what works as effectively as being present in the environment does. For instance, over a video call let says Zoom, you only see the faces, interact in 2D, no one is sitting to your left or right, and so you are. This lacks zeal and is not what virtual reality is for.
Mark Zuckerberg said,
“In many ways, the Metaverse is the ultimate expression of social technology. It is the future we are working towards. A virtual environment where you can be present with people in a digital space. An embodied Internet that you are inside of.”
Indeed, virtual reality is the base for a world beyond a world but augmented reality has the potential to make it more accessible and mindful. Together, both VR and AR can create a world where you can talk, have meetings, do parties, or just walk freely as if you are in the real world. Your Avatar (a hologram) will live in a VR/AR world and you will be able to sense everything just as happens in the real world.
Can Facebook Alone Make It a Reality?
As admitted by the CEO of Facebook (in an interview with The Verge), no company can develop Metaverse. Instead, each company can strive to contribute to it.
He said,
“I think that there will be a number of different layers to this. I think a good vision for the metaverse is not one that a specific company builds, but it has to have a sense of interoperability and portability. You have your avatar and your digital goods, and you want to be able to teleport anywhere. You don’t want to just be stuck within one company’s staff.”
Thus, Facebook will build its part of the vision using virtual reality internet but do welcome others to make it as presentable as possible. Moreover, Facebook is not the first company but many others like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Epic Games have also been building their part of vision based on Metaverse.
Will Metaverse pilot to social/emotional quarantine?
Well, every creation that comes so far has its pros and cons. While looking at it, seems everything is positive and so may not realize its negatives. Even though the 21st century, generation is better at adopting newness in the world and the old society may remain left alone.
Conclusion
Nonetheless, technology has its own importance, and now when such a pandemic is going on, it is more a need of every person who is stuck on the couch for the last two years. Well, Metaverse will take its course but the brains must start learning from now onwards.