31 Aug The Rise of The Metaverse Will Be Inevitable
Imagine yourself in a world where you wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, drink your morning cup of coffee, make your commute to work, and grind through all of your 8-hour work cycles on the clock. You then go to the local hangout and slam down a few drinks with your friends as you all talk and laugh the night away for hours until it is time to go home, unwind, and enjoy the rest of the day with your family. Then you lull yourself into your bedroom, remove your virtual reality headset, complete your nightly routine, and do the same thing tomorrow. Did you catch that? That’s right, your entire day, from going to work to hanging out with your friends, was all done seamlessly inside of a virtual reality world. This scene exemplifies what many individuals would swear to you will be just how a person’s typical day will be imparted in just a few short years. This virtual world we are expected to live in soon is known as the Metaverse.
The Metaverse in itself is not a new idea or concept. It could even be said that it is just one of the hundreds of other sci-fi concepts that were born in fiction several decades ago, and to just about everyone’s surprise and wonder, real-life technology has happened to become advanced enough to where the prospect of a lot of the fictional technology is either on the border of the horizon or already acquired and for some, even improved upon. Some examples of this phenomenon are quite literally all around us and can be found in everything from handheld computers (cellphones), Artificial Intelligence, air travel, atomic power, and even organ transplants. Still, virtual reality and the Metaverse may be among the most ambitious of these occurrences that the advancement of technology has been leading up to by far.
So now your interest may be piqued, and you may ask yourself, what exactly is the Metaverse? It could be described as a completely virtual world that is entirely grounded online via the internet. This world would be consistent and reliable, being made up of websites, games, applications, connective media, and pretty much anything else that the internet has to offer as you know it. It does indeed make sense to wonder that if we all already have access to these things in our daily lives already, then what makes the Metaverse so unique? Well, the thing that sets the Metaverse apart is not just the ease of access to the online tools that we all know and love (sometimes too much), but the fact that it will all exist on a single plane, and offer an almost totally seamless bridge between these tools with the detailed development of cyberspace that everyone can see, feel, and interact with just as you would the outside world, and ideally, polish to a point where it can easily emulate the experience of living in the outside world and more.
As mentioned before, the Metaverse plans to be a natural, seamlessly interactive world that can supplement or flat out replace just about every aspect of a person’s life that is not fundamentally physical. The Metaverse claims to be soon able to allow a user to put on a headset and complete tasks as complex and taxing as working a job and developing a career, meeting people living on the other side of the world without a language barrier, shopping for clothes and groceries, or simply surfing the internet and social media platforms as you would normally, but all without leaving your own home and interacting with the virtual environment to the fullest effect as you would the real world. This will be pretty amazing as it offers virtually (pun intended) unlimited resources and support to fully and conveniently explore the deepest recesses of human creativity and will. If developed to the point that it is predicted to be, there won’t be an individual on Earth whose life is not changed in every conceivable way by the rise of the Metaverse.
Another thing that is certain about the Metaverse is that, to some degree, even if it is not as sophisticated as it is predicted to be, it WILL happen. There is a very scalable demand for immersive digital experiences that have grown to the point where everything that has the potential to sell fundamentally has a digital market. The sheer amount of money involved in the metaverse just so far is a great way to tell that it will become an inevitable trend at the end of the day. We are all painfully aware that the latent potential for money to be made in something will always precede practicality or even public demand, and boy, is there much money to be made there. (Virtual real estate, items, etc.)
Need more convincing? Arguably, the age of the metaverse is already upon us. The Metaverse, as it exists now, is another perfect example of its inevitability. Some say that we are already living in the metaverse thanks to digital technologies and the internet. Others believe it will be considered a completely alternative universe when humanity is moved to the virtual world where people can live and interact entirely online. Either way, as things look, the metaverse and its components already play a huge role in everyday life. Just think back to the tasks you completed today using online. If you’d thought about it for a second, you would realize that you could probably not even fathom the number of activities you would have no way of doing otherwise. The truth is that components of the Metaverse as it exists now are the same ones that make your life easier and, in many cases, possible all.
However, it is not all digital sunshine and rainbows. Nearly everyone who imagines a future with a thriving Metaverse has a long and frightening list of concerns and worries. That list is so long that it is impossible to realistically circumvent most of these issues with just a few short years and outright impossible to solve some of those concerns. Some glaring issues include digital harassment, lack of moderation, online abuse, and possibly even utter neglect of the natural world and its existing issues. How many of these issues will peak their heads as the Metaverse finally reaches its golden years? There is no way to know for sure, but what is certain is that the age of the Metaverse is truly inevitable and poised to play a significant role in our lives in the coming years.