METAVERSE

METAVERSE: THE FUTURE OF INTERNET???
TO hear tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg or Satya Nadella talk about it, the metaverse is the future of the
internet. Or it's a video game. Or maybe it's a deeply uncomfortable, worse version of Zoom? It's hard to
say.
It's been nearly six months since Facebook announced it was rebranding to Meta and would focus its future
on the upcoming “metaverse.” In the time since, what that term means hasn't gotten any clearer. Meta is
building a VR social platform, Roblox is facilitating user-generated video games, and some companies are
offering up little more than broken game worlds that happen to have NFTs attached.
Well in my understanding, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal and
immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
headsets. In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
The term "metaverse" originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, as a portmanteau of "meta"
and "universe". Metaverse development is often linked to advancing virtual reality technology due to
increasing demands for immersion. Recent interest in metaverse development is influenced by Web3, a
concept for a decentralized iteration of the internet.
Components of metaverse technology have already been developed within online video games. The 2003
virtual world platform Second Life is often described as the first metaverse, as it incorporated many aspects
of social media into a persistent three-dimensional world with the user represented as an avatar. Popular
games described as part of the metaverse include World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Fortnite, VRChat, and game
creation platform Roblox. In 2017, Microsoft acquired the VR company AltspaceVR, and has since
implemented virtual avatars and meetings held in virtual reality into Microsoft Teams. Proposed applications
for metaverse technology include improving work productivity, interactive learning environments, e-
commerce, real estate and fashion. In 2021, Facebook was renamed "Meta Platforms" and its chairman Mark
Zuckerberg declared a company commitment to developing a metaverse, a virtual reality world where you
can interact with people, objects, almost like playing a game of living the life inside of a computer. You can
also own things in this virtual world i.e. you can own a piece of land and build a virtual house on it. You can
also own digital assets in this world, which are known as NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens). So, metaverse is
basically a parallel universe where everything is digital. But, unlike one real universe where we all live,
metaverse can be multiple. You can think of it as multiple planets you can choose to live on.
Now, how to interact with metaverse? To do that you can jump onto a metaverse website and create an
avatar first who is going to live on the meta world. Then you will need a VR headset and bam! You are in
meta world. Cool thing is your avatar don’t need to physically travel there, they just can teleport anywhere
and meet anyone in a fraction of second no matter how far you are, kind of a digitalized version of ZOOM.
Another cool thing that is in discussion that people can be able to interact and talk with their own avatar, like
a friend.
But the question is, is metaverse really the future of internet? Is this where we should expect ourselves
in the next 20 years?
So many questions are being raised along with the rising idea of implementing metaverse. Information
privacy is an area of concern for the metaverse because related companies will likely collect users' personal
information through interactions and biometric data from wearable virtual and augmented reality devices.
Meta Platforms (previously Facebook) is planning on employing targeted advertising within their metaverse,
raising further worries related to the spread of misinformation and loss of personal privacy.
User addiction and problematic social media use is another concern. Internet addiction disorder, social
media, and video game addiction can have mental and physical repercussions over a prolonged period of
time, such as depression, anxiety, and various other harms related to having a sedentary lifestyle such as an
increased risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease. Experts are also concerned that the metaverse could be
used as an 'escape' from reality in a similar fashion to existing internet technologies. People will probably
focus on their insecurities in real life and jump to create a ‘perfect’ version of themselves and eventually
start to believe the virtual world as reality and consider the avatar as ‘real me’. Virtual crime like sex abuse
and other user safety issues such as harassment are significant challenges with current social virtual reality
platforms, and may be similarly prevalent in a metaverse. The potential presence of child predators on
metaverse platforms is another concern, and the ComeBack of games such as ‘BLUE WHALE’ has so much
possibility that its terrifying. And we still don’t have clear idea of the potential of AI. In 2017, Facebook
abandoned an experiment after two AI bots appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only
they understood. The chatbots came to create change in English that made it easier for them to work- but the
language remained mysterious to the humans that supposedly look after them. So the idea of having a human
instructor behind an AI avatar sounds cool until the AI avatars start functioning by themselves and result in
something we can’t imagine at all in 2022.
In Conclusion, selling technology may or may not be profitable, but SELLING THE FUTURE is going to be
COSTLY for sure.
BY Jayita Ghorai, CSE/20/091

METAVERSE

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METAVERSE: THE FUTURE OF INTERNET???

BY Jayita Ghorai, CSE/20/091

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