Metaverse … a jargon, a new idea, a new revolutionary concept, or a virtual digital land… what is the mystery behind this word?
Metaverse … a jargon, a new idea, a new revolutionary concept or a virtual digital land… what is the mystery behind this word? The term “Metaverse” was coined by an author “Neal Stephenson” in 1992 in science fiction novel “Snow Crash”. In his novel, Neal Stephenson visualized the natural lifelike avatars (in computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user or the user’s character or persona ) interacting with 3D (three-dimensional) world.
Recently, the word Metaverse got spotlight due to the fact that “Facebook Inc.” rebranded itself to “Meta Platforms, Inc”. As per Meta (formerly Facebook Inc), “Today at Connect 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta, which brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand”. Read the announcement from Meta.
Glancing in history, we find that with advent of Internet and most specially World Wide Web (aka WWW) has significantly impacted the human societies. Nowadays, our lives have transformed to the extent where we cannot envision our lives without being connected to any network or platform provided by internet. However, even with the advancement in Internet (also WWW) technologies, until most recently, we were not able to communicate or connect and imagine ourselves interacting with each other virtually in 3D realm.
So, what does this mean for internet and social media communities is an important question? Metaverse provides us the option to interact with each other (obviously, virtually) but to be more in lifelike arrangement. Simply, this means that even though we are sitting oceans away from each other, using Metaverse technologies, we will feel and imagine ourselves sitting in one room or even flying a plane, climbing the Mount Everest, or diving deep under the sea even though while sitting in a comfortable chain in a room.
Another important question is how in future Metaverse will impact our lives. The answer to this question is very simple… it will impact significantly, and to some extend beyond our expectations. This is apparent by the fact that companies, such as, Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook Inc) and others have been heavily investing on this technology. Therefore, it is safe to assume that in coming future we will see substantial changes to the way we live, interact and work… shifting our daily lives to a more digital and virtual.
