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The metaverse is the future of the internet, according to tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella. Or even a video game. Or perhaps it's a much worse, more unpleasant version of Zoom? It's difficult to say.
Nearly six months have passed since Facebook declared it will change its name to Meta and concentrate on the approaching "metaverse" for its future. What the phrase signifies hasn't changed in the intervening period. Roblox is supporting user-generated video games, Meta is developing a VR social network, and other businesses are providing nothing more than broken gaming worlds with NFTs tacked on.
The lack of coherence, according to proponents ranging from minor entrepreneurs to tech behemoths, is caused by the metaverse currently being developed and being too new to define what it means. For instance, the internet existed in the 1970s, but not all of the preconceived notions about what it would eventually look like were accurate.
On the other side, selling the concept of "the metaverse" involves a lot of marketing hype (and cash). Following the financial impact of Apple's decision to restrict ad tracking, Facebook is particularly susceptible. It's hard to divorce Facebook's desire to earn money from selling virtual clothing from its vision of a world in which everyone has a digital closet to browse. But Facebook isn't the only business with a financial stake in the buzz around the metaverse.
What Does "Metaverse" Really Mean?
Here's an experiment to help you understand how ambiguous and convoluted the word "the metaverse" may be: Replace the word "the metaverse" in a statement with "cyberspace." The meaning will not vary much 95% of the time. That's because the phrase doesn't truly relate to any one specific sort of technology, but rather to a wide (and frequently speculative) shift in how humans engage with technology. And it's very feasible that the phrase itself may become obsolete as the technology it once characterized becomes mainstream.
In general, the technologies that firms allude to when they talk about "the metaverse" might include virtual reality (defined by persistent virtual environments that exist even when you're not playing) and augmented reality (which blends features of the digital and physical worlds). It does not, however, necessitate that those areas be accessed solely through VR or AR. Virtual worlds, such as Fortnite elements accessible via PCs, gaming consoles, and even phones, have begun to refer to themselves as "the metaverse."
Many organizations that have jumped on the metaverse bandwagon foresee a new digital economy in which users may produce, purchase, and sell items. In more utopian metaverse ideas, it's interoperable, enabling you to move virtual objects like clothing or vehicles from one platform to another, however, this is more difficult than it seems. While some supporters argue that emerging technologies such as NFTs can enable movable digital assets, this is simply not true. Moving goods from one video game or virtual world to another is an incredibly difficult operation that no one firm can handle.
It's tough to comprehend what all of this implies because, when you hear descriptions like those above, it's natural to wonder, "Wait, doesn't that already exist?" For example, Environment of Warcraft is a permanent virtual world where users may purchase and trade things. Fortnite offers virtual experiences like as concerts and an exhibit where Rick Sanchez may learn about Martin Luther King Jr. You may put on an Oculus headset and enter your own virtual house. Is that what "the metaverse" actually means? Just a new kind of video game?
Yes and no, I suppose. Comparing Fortnite to "the metaverse" is like to comparing Google to "the internet." Even if you spend a lot of time networking, shopping, studying, and playing games in Fortnite, it doesn't always indicate that it covers the whole range of what individuals and businesses mean when they refer to "the metaverse." Similar to how Google does not create all of the internet, including physical data centers and security layers.
Tech behemoths like Microsoft and Meta aren't the only ones developing technology for interfacing with virtual worlds. A wide range of smaller businesses and startups, as well as several more significant corporations like Nvidia, Unity, Roblox, and even Snap, are constructing the necessary infrastructure to develop better virtual worlds that more closely resemble our real-world experiences.
For instance, in order to strengthen its potent Unreal Engine 5 platform, Epic has purchased a number of businesses that assist in the production or distribution of digital assets. Unreal is a platform for video games, but it's also utilized in the film industry and may make it simpler for anybody to build virtual worlds. Building digital worlds are experiencing genuine and fascinating advancements.
Despite this, the concept of "the metaverse," a single, cohesive location akin to Ready Player One, remains mostly impractical. This is partially due to the fact that such a world would require businesses to collaborate in ways that aren't profitable or desirable—Fortnite wouldn't have much incentive to provide players with a portal to instantly switch over to World of Warcraft, even if it were simple to do so, for example—and partially due to the possibility that the necessary computing power may be much more distant than we think.
This annoying fact has resulted in the development of significantly diverse nomenclature. Nowadays, a lot of businesses or supporters refer to any one game or platform as "a metaverse." According to this description, a "metaverse" might be anything from a VR concert app to a video game. Some go even further and refer to the assortment of different metaverses as a "multiverse of metaverses." Or perhaps we are in a "hybrid verse."
Or, these phrases might signify almost anything. A Fortnite tie-in mini-game and a "flavor born in the metaverse" were both introduced by Coca-Cola. No regulations exist.
Most conversations on what the metaverse involves stall at this point. If we manipulate the meaning of terms in the appropriate manner, we have a general idea of what items there are in the metaverse right now. Additionally, we are aware of the businesses that have invested in the concept, but months later, there is still no consensus on what it actually is. According to Meta, it will include fictitious homes where you may invite all of your pals to hang around. Microsoft appears to believe that it may include using virtual meeting spaces for new hire training or remote worker chat sessions.
The concepts for these futuristic scenarios range from upbeat to pure fan fiction. During one of Meta's initial presentations on the metaverse, the business displayed a scene in which a young lady is reading through Instagram while sitting on her couch when she comes upon a video a friend uploaded of a concert taking place halfway across the world.
The woman then makes an appearance in the concert as an Avengers-style hologram. She can see her physical companion in the eye, they can both hear the concert, and they can both see floating writing hovering over the stage. Although it appears amazing, this isn't actually promoting a current or even potential product. In fact, it gets us to "the metaverse's" major issue.
Why Does the Metaverse Involve Holograms?
When the internet originally appeared, a number of technological advancements were made possible, such as the capacity to link across web pages and the ability to communicate amongst computers over long distances. Websites, applications, social networks, and everything else that depends on these fundamental components were created using these technological capabilities as the building blocks. Not to mention the convergence of interface developments like displays, keyboards, mice, and touchscreens that aren't exactly related to the internet but are nevertheless required to make it function.
There are some new building blocks available thanks to the metaverse, such as the capacity to host hundreds of users simultaneously on a single instance of a server (idealistic metaverse predictions assume this will increase to thousands or even millions of users, but this may be overly optimistic), or motion-tracking tools that can identify a user's gaze or the position of their hands. This modern technology has a futuristic vibe and may be quite intriguing.
There are, however, some restrictions that might not be able to get around. It's common for software corporations like Microsoft or Meta to gloss over specifics of how users will interact with the metaverse in their fictitious future vision movies. The majority of people get motion sickness or physical discomfort when using VR headsets for an extended period of time. In addition to the not-trivial challenge of finding out how individuals can use augmented reality glasses in public without coming off as enormous dorks, this dilemma affects augmented reality glasses as well. The accessibility issues with VR are another issue that many businesses are ignoring at the moment.
So how do tech businesses showcase their technologies without displaying the hefty headsets and awkward eyewear that are actually required? Their main strategy thus far appears to be to just create technology out of thin air. The woman in Meta's holographic presentation? I'm sorry to break the illusion, but even with extremely sophisticated forms of current technology, it is simply not feasible.
So how do tech businesses showcase their technologies without displaying the hefty headsets and awkward eyewear that are actually required? Their main strategy thus far appears to be to just create technology out of thin air. The woman in Meta's holographic presentation? I'm sorry to break the illusion, but even with extremely sophisticated forms of current technology, it is simply not feasible.
Videos that show how the metaverse may function commonly skim over reality in this way. Another one of Meta's demos had actors hovering in space—is this person seated at a desk or is he or she attached to an immersive aerial rig? Does the holographic person wear a headset, and if so, how is their face being scanned? And at times, a person appears to be holding what appears to be their real hands while grabbing virtual objects.
This demonstration generates many more queries than it does answers.
This is OK up to a point. Microsoft, Meta, and any other firm that exhibits crazy demos like these aim to present a creative vision of the potential future, not necessarily to address every technological issue. It's a long-standing tradition that dates back to AT&T's demonstration of a voice-controlled folding phone that could produce 3D models and magically remove people from photographs, all of which may have seemed equally absurd at the time.
However, the recent metaverse pitches—from both IT behemoths and startups—have mainly depended on idealistic notions that depart from reality. Chipotle's "metaverse" was an advertisement that was presented as a Roblox game. The only "real estate" mentioned in stories about the "metaverse" is a glitchy video game with virtual land tokens (which also glosses over the very real security and privacy issues with most popular NFTs right now).
Because most "metaverse" initiatives are so riddled with ambiguity and disappointment, when a video from 2017 showing a Walmart VR shopping demo started trending again in January 2022, many people assumed it was yet another metaverse demo. It also served to highlight how much hyped the present metaverse debate is. Evidently, Walmart's VR shopping demonstration never took off (and for good reason). So why should Chipotle doing it make anyone think it's the future?
We are left in a position where it is difficult to determine which elements of the numerous visions of the metaverse (if any) will truly be genuine one day due to this type of wishful thinking used as a technical demonstration. A virtual poker game with your buddies as robots and holograms floating in space would be partially realistic if VR and AR headgear become comfortable and affordable enough for people to use on a regular basis—a big "if." If not, you could always use a Discord video conference to play Tabletop Simulator.
The flashy nature of VR and AR also hides the more commonplace ways that our current, interconnected digital environment may be enhanced. It would be simple for tech companies to create something like an open digital avatar standard, a type of file that contains details you might enter into a character creator, such as eye color, hairstyle, or clothing options, and lets you take that information anywhere, to be interpreted by a game engine however it chooses. There is no requirement to create a more comfortable VR headgear for that.
But imagining that isn't as much fun.
What's the Metaverse Like Right Now?
The paradox of defining the metaverse is that you must define away the present for it to be the future. We already have MMOs, which are essentially full virtual worlds, online avatars, commerce platforms, digital concerts, and video chats with people all over the world, and digital concerts. Therefore, there must be some aspect of these items that are novel in order to sell them as a fresh perspective of the world.
Spend enough time discussing the metaverse and someone will always (and tiresomely) bring up fictional works like Ready Player One, which imagines a VR environment where everyone works, plays, and shops, or Snow Crash, the 1992 book that introduced the phrase "metaverse." These stories serve as a creative reference point for what the metaverse—a metaverse that tech companies might actually sell as something new—could look like when combined with the general pop culture concept of holograms and heads-up displays (basically anything Iron Man has used in his last 10 movies).
Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won't substantially change.
Possibly more important to the concept of the metaverse than any particular technology is that type of hype. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that proponents of NFTs, which are cryptographic tokens that, in a sense, function as certificates of ownership for digital goods, are also embracing the concept of the metaverse. Sure, NFTs are awful for the environment, and the public blockchains that the majority of them are built on have serious privacy and security issues. However, if a tech business can claim that they will hold the digital key to your Roblox virtual house, then boom. You've just elevated the value of all the cryptocurrency you own while turning your hobby of collecting memes into an essential component of the internet's future infrastructure.
It's crucial to keep all of this in mind because, despite how alluring it may be to compare our current conceptions of the proto-metaverse to those of the early internet and believe that everything will improve and advance linearly, that is not a given. There is no assurance that consumers will want to play poker with Dreamworks' Mark Zuckerberg or hang around without legs in a virtual workplace, much alone that VR and AR technology will ever be as widely used as smartphones and PCs are now.
The idea of "the metaverse" has been a potent tool for repackaging outdated technology, exaggerating the advantages of new technology, and grabbing the attention of speculative investors in the months after Facebook's relaunch. However, as everything from 3D TVs to Amazon's delivery drones and Google Glass can attest, money pouring into a sector doesn't necessarily signal a significant paradigm change is just around the horizon. The remains of unsuccessful investments may be seen all across the history of technology.
That does not imply that nothing exciting is in the works. Cheaper than ever VR headsets like the Quest 2 are slowly weaning themselves off of pricey desktop or console systems. The creation and design of video games and other virtual environments is becoming simpler. And personally, I think photogrammetry advancements—the method of producing digital 3D things from still images or moving pictures—are an absolutely exciting tool for digital artists.
However, the IT sector as a whole is somewhat dependent on futurism. Selling a phone is good, but it's more profitable to sell in the future. It's possible that any actual "metaverse" would consist primarily of what we now refer to as the internet, along with some fantastic VR games and virtual avatars used in Zoom conversations.