What Is the Metaverse and Why Should You Care?

The metaverse is a vision of the internet’s future in which multiple permanent virtual worlds are linked and co-exist. The metaverse transforms today’s internet into a place where you can use immersive technologies like Virtual- and Mixed-Reality to live in an embodied way.

The metaverse is likewise a hazy concept popularized by famous technology figures. As a result, its meaning is still a work in progress, however the overall goal is to unite the internet into a shared virtual area where we may spend at least some of our time.

Where Did the Term “Metaverse” Come From?

“Metaverse,” like many other technology terms, was coined by renowned science fiction author Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash. Snow Crash’s metaverse appears to users as a city environment. It’s a 100-meter-wide road that circles the virtual planet’s diameter. That’s about 40,000 kilometers of virtual highway!

Users can purchase real estate in the metaverse and then construct virtual structures. Aside from size restrictions, users can appear as avatars of any shape or size. People use virtual reality terminals in their houses to connect to the metaverse. Some users never leave the metaverse and are always carrying around portable VR gear.

Ready Player One, a Steven Spielberg film, is one of the most remarkable on-screen renderings of a metaverse. The characters spend practically all of their time in OASIS, which is based on Ernest Cline’s novel of the same name (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation).

The OASIS virtual world is a rich and complex virtual environment that connects everything. Users can freely go from one location to another as if it were all part of the same reality. OASIS stands out because it is both a shared virtual environment and a multiplayer video game with overarching scores and goals.

Metaverse-like virtual worlds are a staple of Cyberpunk fiction. “Netrunners” in the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (based on a tabletop RPG franchise) view the online world as a physical environment.

Even the Matrix from the 1999 film of the same name, starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, is essentially a metaverse. The distinction is that the people in the simulation are unaware that it is a simulation.

Finally, the concept of a metaverse predates the name itself, and the people who run today’s major technology companies grew up with the metaverse concept as a prominent aspect of science fiction.

The Metaverse We Already Have

We’ve already experienced the metaverse in many forms over the years, depending on how significant you think particular components of the metaverse concepts are. The text-based Multi-user Dungeons (MUDs) that first appeared in 1975 with Colossal Cave Adventure could be regarded a metaverse forerunner.

MUDs, at the very least, are a forerunner to modern MMORPGs like Everquest or World of Warcraft. These are persistent online environments in which users can live a different existence. Despite the fact that MMORPGs are devoted to one provider, the spirit of a metaverse is there.

We now have games and apps that provide a closer look at at least a portion of the metaverse experience.

Video Games

We’ve already cited World of Warcraft as an example of a metaverse-like experience, but some games are being more blatant about it. The wildly popular Fortnite Battle Royale game has already outgrown its origins. Epic Games’ attempt to create a GaaS (Games as a Service) product has resulted in a great success.

VR Social Platforms

Second Life is without a doubt the most obvious real-life example of a metaverse. In Second Life, you can purchase real estate and virtual things to use in your virtual house or business. People roam around as their avatars, playing, exploring, flirting, and doing most of the activities they would do in real life.

Web3 and the Metaverse

Another new phrase, “Web3,” has added to the hoopla surrounding the metaverse. This is not the Web 3.0 you may have heard of, but rather a new internet architecture based on decentralized systems. Instead of large centralized data centers, the internet is scattered across nodes throughout the network. To provide online services, you can combine the processing power and storage of everyone’s PCs.

Web3 technology includes NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens), cryptocurrency, blockchain, smart contracts, and dApps (decentralized apps). While some, such as Mark Zuckerberg, see the metaverse as a unification of all the tech titans’ centralized online resources, the real metaverse may exist as Web3 distributed simulations. At the very least, crypto could become the working currency of the metaverse’s virtual world.

NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens), bitcoin, blockchain, smart contracts, and dApps are all examples of Web3 technology (decentralized apps). While some, such as Mark Zuckerberg, envisage the metaverse as a synthesis of all the tech titans’ centralized online resources, the true metaverse may exist as Web3 distributed simulations. At the absolute least, crypto might become the functional currency of the virtual world of the metaverse.