Metaverse — A Virtual Reality
The development of science and technology in today’s era is growing to the virtual world of the Metaverse. This world will be exactly like our real world known as the Metaverse, that has many technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality, and video of a combination where people continue to live within a digital universe. The concept is gaining momentum rapidly and several tech giants have already stepped up in the process, like Meta (Facebook) and Epic at the forefront. The Metaverse is not being built by one company or a few companies but will be shaped by millions of creators around the world.
Just imagine that you meet your family members or your friends or relatives, but not in reality but in a 3D world, which is artificially created. You enter this world while you are sitting in your room, using a special headset or glasses. Similarly, when you are working or studying or shopping, you do almost everything that you do in the real world, but not in the real world but in this virtual artificially created world, how does it feel?
Well, the Metaverse promises something similar for the future, it is touted as a technology that will replace the Internet in the future and become the future of humanity.
The word Metaverse is made up of two words i.e. Meta + Verse, the word Meta is derived from Greek, it is a prefix that basically means ‘Beyond’. And the Verse comes from the word world means ‘Universe’.
When we talked about the Metaverse, it would be a world where we could be completely in 3-dimensions. For example: When you watch someone on television. When we watch football match, it happens in 2-dimension but technically if we are using virtual reality, we will get 360 degree experience of watching cricket match around us. It will try to create an experience that will make you feel like you are really in the match.
The term Metaverse was first used in the 1992 science fiction book “Snow Crash” by Neil Stemfenson. In this novel, he talks about a dystopian world, a real world where real life has been destroyed, outsiders were no longer habitable to humans, so everyone is confined to their own buildings and rooms and virtual reality.
So if we talk about the metaverse in very simple lines, it will be a virtual world where people can live very similar to the real world. They can travel from place to place, they can shop, they can watch movies, they can exchange their belongings and items, even all the things we can do in the real world.
There are different techniques used to actually create the metaverse.
The first is virtual reality, a technology that still exists today, but you have to wear a heavy headset to use this technology.
The second technology is AR i.e. Augmented Reality. This would mean that some artificial ingredients get mixed up with our real world. It will not be full virtual reality. A classic example of this is the Pokémon Go Smartphone game. On it, you can use the Smartphone to see the real world around you, but when you view it through a Smartphone, you can see artificial Pokemon there. It’s like they blend into the real world around you.
Apart from this, there is also talk of having 5G technology in Metaverse. If we are to create a massive virtual reality world, we will need to upload and download huge amounts of data constantly, for this we will need extremely high internet speeds.
Additionally, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are also mentioned. When money will be spent to buy anything in the metaverse, they may not be real money, of course, because everything is digital so digital currency i.e. cryptocurrencies will be needed. And with the large number of transactions being frequent, they will need to be kept secure. There would be a risk of hackers, or even a risk of data breaches. Blockchain can be used to keep them secure.
Also, if you want to buy land in the Metaverse, or any other property, or a property in the Metaverse, how should this be accomplished?
It is being said that this will be accomplished through NFTs (Non-Fungible Token). You can think of NFTs as tokens that exist on the blockchain, and prove ownership of any digital asset. Nowadays it is being used to buy or sell the ownership of memes.
Although all these technologies basically exist individually, it would take a lot of time to combine them to create a true Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) estimates that it will take 7 to 10 years for key features of the Metaverse to become part of the mainstream.
Now let us talk about the advantages and disadvantages of metaverse because whenever a new technology comes, it also brings some advantages and disadvantages.
Pros of Metaverse is Interconnecting the world without physical activity, immersive experience, social media upgrade, business opportunities, Online examination system improvement.
Cons of Metaverse is increases cyber crime, addiction problem, distance from the physical world ,mental health issues , Privacy and securities issues
My opinion for the Metaverse is that, I think some technologies from this will definitely be popular in the future. But they will be popular in their regions. For example, the technology of AR, I think it has a very productive use case in the field of engineering, architecture or even machine, or in the field of medicine, where you need to think in 3D. Using 3D models will make the job more efficient and overall better. I believe it has great potential in many business sectors and industries as well.
