Lately, one of the most popular topics on the internet has been “the Metaverse”, but what is it anyway?
The Metaverse is the new virtual world, and it could take over the internet in recent years. Are you ready to live in this future? Live through avatars and do everything in the virtual world: work, shop, have fun, and much more.
The term metaverse has recently become popular thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, because at the end of 2021 Mark announced that the Facebook organization would be renamed Meta.
According to him, this change came about to mark a new phase for the company, which is super focused on building the new metaverse. Facebook has opened up 15,000 engineering positions for the metaverse, and the investment is high to ensure that everything happens as he dreamed.
How does the metaverse work?
The term first appeared in a science fiction book called Snow Crash, published in 1992 and written by Neal Stephenson. In this book, people used the metaverse to escape from their reality, and ended up living in a virtual world through their avatars.
Today we already have several examples of the metaverse applied in our reality, one of which was rapper Travis Scott’s mini tour that took place inside the game Fortnight.
This show brought together people from all over the world within the game itself. Imagine you and all your friends enjoying the show of your favorite artist from anywhere in the world in virtual reality, an incredible experience, right? But does it cancel out the real experience? Or does it just complement it?
Another very popular example is the game Pokémon Go, which mixes real life with virtual life. This can also be considered an example of a metaverse, as well as several others that are already being tested around the world.
The metaverse is not just a kind of game, in the future you will be able to carry out all the important tasks of your real life in this virtual world. It will be possible to work, earn money, buy things, interact with people, all using only your avatar and a goggle that allows you to immerse yourself in this universe.
Today there are already very advanced studies into implanting this new technology into the retina, which will eliminate the need for glasses to immerse yourself in this virtual universe. Neuroscientists say that in the future it will probably be almost impossible for the brain to distinguish between our reality and virtual reality, since studies show that the brain molds itself to the universe it is exposed to.
These same neuroscientists carried out tests on monkeys, where they were exposed to virtual reality and performed tasks with 3 arms on each side, 2 of which were real and 4 virtual. The monkeys responded well to this experiment, managing to perform tasks with synchronized arms and sending commands from their brains to perform tasks in sync with their real arms.
After removing the glasses and returning to the real world, the monkeys searched for the missing arms, the virtual ones, and the neuroscientists identified the representation of these arms in the monkeys’ motor cortex, concluding that the brain will not know, depending on the level of exposure, how to distinguish reality from virtual reality.
The Metaverse can also come as a complement to real life, working in a complementary way, as an additional technology in our daily lives. This complement would come in the form of product information in stores, biographies in museums, and in various other areas of the market, and there is no shortage of speculation.
The Metaverse universe
As Mark’s universe doesn’t exist yet, we can’t describe exactly what it will be like, but what we do know is that the company wants to build a virtual world where people can build avatars and connect to any place in the world, in other words, a new way for people to interact with each other on the internet.
This virtual world will be created using various technologies that already exist, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, social networks, cryptocurrencies and others. It will be possible to visit a store from anywhere in the world, make a virtual or physical purchase, and have it delivered to your home if you wish, all using just your avatar.
Access to Mark’s virtual world requires the purchase of a virtual goggle, the Quest 2, which costs an average of R$2,000 – accessibility for all is also a challenge for the metaverse.
It’s not just Facebook that’s working on this new universe, there are other giants in the field, such as Microsoft.
Facebook has already developed some virtual reality products, one of which is Horizons Workroom. It’s basically a virtual meeting space, where the avatars interact with each other as if they were in the same place, even if they’re at a distance, but for this you need the Quest 2 glasses.
There’s also Horizon World, which works as a virtual reality social network. You create an avatar that looks like you or whatever you want, and you can explore the various environments there. It’s possible to interact and chat with other users, and even take part in games, but you also need Quest 2 glasses for this virtual world.
These are examples of small steps that Facebook is already taking to make the metaverse a reality. However, it’s not just Facebook and Microsoft that are investing heavily in this new virtual reality.
One of the biggest challenges at the moment is the speed of the internet, because to work well you need an ultra-fast internet with minimal ping, and another challenge is to make all this more accessible to everyone.
Many companies are working on this project, and it is not yet known whether there will be compatibility between platforms, whether Facebook and Microsoft will work together to create a single Metaverse for the entire internet, or whether the two will be compatible or interact with each other.
And what about ethical issues? Because if you’re “living” there inside the Metaverse, then how would access to your information be?
You go to the movies, you work, you interact, you buy books, you connect, and how does that information look? Your life will be monitored, what about data privacy?
These are questions to be analyzed and asked, but let’s wait, after all, the future has already begun!
