What is the Metaverse?
What is the metaverse in 2023?
It's been a couple of years now since a huge tech company changed its name and kicked off a premature metaverse hype cycle. Since then it has been declared a huge disappointment by some, while others have even declared it dead!
-Meta Inc.'s name change also triggered an early NFT season! Crypto enthusiasts and investors at the time did not believe an NFT run would happen until mid to late '22.
Metaverse is Not dead!
It just doesn't exists, yet. The best answer to, what is the metaverse, and the only one that most developers in 2022 agree on:
A network of interconnected (sharing encoding and encryption )...
...networks of unique & persistent digitally rendered environments and objects that represent real time data...
- as Augmented Reality in the real world; as we go about the mundane chores of daily human life,
- as immersive virtual environments with customizable Mixed Reality settings,
- & hardware agnostic.-meaning accessible with any device-2D & 3D displays.
That metaverse is still years away.
However, the pace of its development will heavily rely on analysis of the end user data generated by consumers with newly tagged #metaverse-devices, set to hit shelves later this year.
Its 2024! Hitting shelves now...
Though metaverse does not yet exist; it will become possible via the new internet philosophy of accessibility, automation, and decentralization.
In other words:
- Web 3.0, which is still not finished, will eventually enable a metaverse of some kind in the near future.
- New Spatial computers, AR/VR/ Mixed Reality smart glasses etc. will shape the solutions that speed it along.
That is why the World Economic Forum has predicted that the metaverse will be defined by the manufacturers of the "Web 3.0 devices" required for access.
-it is folly to try to predict where future tech will take us.
Managing Expectations: What is the metaverse?
Most people think of the metaverse as extended reality digital experiences. Commercial XR applications for immersive education, medicine, computer aided design, engineering, virtual emergency services training, flight & vehicle simulators have been in use since the '80s. They also represent a laundry list of different technologies that have advanced, as expected, through the first decades of the 21st century. Costs have dropped and volumetric displays offer compatibility with a wider range of systems,& therefore a consumer metaverse is now possible.
What is the metaverse most likely to disrupt first?
What is the metaverse most likely to disrupt first?
- gaming & collectibles (NFTs)
- entertainment & events
- brick and mortar shopping and dinning experiences
- Pub Life
- Education
- Tourism-but not for the reasons you might think
- Travel-again, not for the reasons one might consider obvious.
- Online Social Experiences
- More to come....
Nebulous Metaverse will continue to monitor, and post links to use cases, and the results of studies and experimental web3 business models here.
What is the metaverse most likely to become?
What is the metaverse most likely to become?
Global Industries-private corporations, academics, central governments...etc have expectations for the next 33 years or so of technological advance.
Regardless of what we as individuals end up calling it; the metaverse, web 3.0 or just the internet; some expect it to trigger these three things:
- another industrial revolution
- a new kind of human experience where real time streaming digital data is visually noticeable in public*
- a revolution in HMI-Human Machine Interface, and BCI- Brain Computer Interface.
Number two looks good, to me. All humans should become aware of the data we are interacting with invisibly; right now though.
The metaverse will become whatever the end result of the web 3.0 philosophy of accessibility, automation, and decentralization, allows.
Before a working metaverse is built, bought, packaged and sold back to us, a lot of other things will have to die.
This is why many experts believe that it will take decades to achieve anything that resembles the sci-fi expectations, the world Metaverse conjures within us.
*i'm talking about the digital objects in the real world that we will interact with Pokemon Go style. "your are the one-hundredth person to pass this historical plaque today!! You get a free Big Mac after this brief history lesson and survey..." idk.
Who coined the term Metaverse, anyway?
Who coined the term Metaverse, anyway?
Metaverse is a science fiction term, from a novel by Neal Stephenson, called Snow Crash. Bantam Spectra, 1992.
In 2021, Snow Crash was discovered by a new generation of fans, around the same time that Facebook changed its name, and kicked off "NFT Season" about 6-8 months sooner than many crypto-enthusiasts expected.
We were there; and it seemed like the 90's all over again. Just replace the "information superhighway" metaphor, or dotcom, with the word "metaverse".
What is the metaverse umbrella of underlying technologies?
A growing list of new and existing tech has been tossed beneath the metaverse umbrella, since the pandemic began.
We have listed the obvious but some may surprise.
Into the Metaverse, a Podcast by Bloomberg, reported in 2022, that 11 global ETFs added Metaverse to their name in 2021-early 2022.
Many developers are not shy about saying that they never called their work metaverse technology before the pandemic.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Spatial Audio has been around for a while and precluded the metaverse trend, but is now a metaverse umbrella tech.
- 3D volumetric imaging is an established tool for military, drafting and architectural design, mechanical engineering and medical imaging.
- Remote work, secure encrypted communications apps adopted in the pandemic are now a big part of metaverse development today.
Here is where we will present old things and new things, p2p and b2c, that are being adapted or invented beneath the metaverse umbrella.
Apps, Data, Devices & Privacy
Coming Soon: Dive deeper into newly released products, services and their intended uses.
Nvidia's Omniverse is called "the building blocks of the metaverse", by R.L.
The company hopes creators will use it to make and expand their own little realities.
Adobe Express has a new AR content creation tool.
Canva Pro has a generative AI element as well. You can type some words and see how the AI interprets them visually. I haven't used it since late last year, but i'm sure it has gotten better since.
Generative AI apps are out there, and savvy individuals are using them to create web content and make themselves more productive. XR Smart Devices will be released later this year and then each subsequent year.
The data generated by the users of those devices will help manufacturers more immersive platforms.Improved XR technology will affect Medicine, Engineering and Architecture, Vehicle Design, Brain Science and maybe even eventually revolutionize the way we interact with machines.
metaverse user data...
Also: Coming Soon