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What is the metaverse and how it will transform our lives

Sigma School
17th August 2023

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Ever since decades ago, the technology industry have anticipated a future form of the Internet, termed the "metaverse”. 

Nowadays, it appears like everyone and their corporate parent business is raving about the “metaverse" as the next big thing that will alter our online lives. But everyone appears to have their own interpretation of what "the metaverse" is - that is, if they have any clue at all. Despite the fact that the metaverse's whole vision is difficult to explain, and appears outlandish, the components have begun to feel very real. 

"The best way to understand the metaverse is to experience it yourself, but it's a little tough because it doesn't fully exist yet” - Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook)

According to Zuckerberg, the metaverse is the next step in Web 3.0 and social networking. This helps us move beyond static user profiles that only allows individuals to submit comments and media. 

People will have to wear virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) glasses to get there, which would expose the digital environment onto the actual world.

Hyper-realistic holograms might likewise be projected into the actual world via cutting-edge projection devices. However, the metaverse is currently just a jumble of hardware, software, and unconnected experiences.

In simpler terms, the metaverse is a concept for a new world where people and bots will interact to play games, do business, socialize, and shop. 

Neal Stephenson wrote a science-fiction novel ‘Snow Crash’ which popularized the term "metaverse" to allude to a digital realm accessible via virtual reality. 

One very popular video game called ‘Fortnite’, offers metaverse-style features in which users may command customizable digital avatars who can interact with other players. It is also popular in many modern works of science fiction, including the ‘Matrix’ trilogy and the novel and film ‘Ready Player One’. 

The metaverse in Zuckerberg's vision is far more than just a space where people can hang around as avatars; it's a full-fledged transformation of the online experience, providing a platform where people will spend the majority of their everyday lives. The future metaverse, according to Meta and the others, will be utilized for just about everything from business meetings to shopping to large social gatherings. 

Which means, the metaverse is highly likely to be the new form of internet as it would transform not only the digital world's infrastructure, but also much of the physical world, along with the services and marketplaces that sit on top of it, how they function, and what they provide.

It almost feels like sci-fi movies coming to real life - but how exactly will this new form of Web 3.0 transform our lives? 

Virtual and augmented reality might help us go beyond our flat displays to a future where we can genuinely feel "presence" with other 3D avatars in the same space. Check out Ariana Grande and Fortnite collab

Now, imagine you going to a live concert of your favourite artist in the metaverse. 

Rest assured, it’s going to be mind-blowing! As Meta described it at its keynote, "it'll feel like you're really in the room together, making eye contact, having a shared sense of place, and not simply gazing at a grid of faces on a screen”.

Interestingly enough, the pandemic had definitely propelled the shift to this new form of internet. It is clear that no matter where you are, this virtual reality experience can greatly improve the possibilities available when connecting with people by taking communication into a whole new level. 

Aside from that, the metaverse allows users to develop their own content which can be seen as a win-win situation for both users and metaverse creators. 

Users get to shape the virtual world according to their preferences, while metaverse creators don't really have to invest a lot of time and resources constructing each digital object from ground-up. 

Games such as Minecraft and Roblox demonstrate that metaverses with simple building blocks can leverage network effects and user ingenuity to generate a wide range of in-world masterpieces. However, virtual goods in the metaverse will still not be enough by simply allowing users to create. Control, moderation, and copyright infringement might become highly important in this context, particularly if your metaverse is owned by a company that aims to reap benefits from all that user-generated content or the users want to share the profits.

If the Metaverse ever comes up short of sci-fi authors' extravagant aspirations, it is expected to generate trillions of dollars in revenue as a new computer platform or content channel. 

When its ambition can be accomplished, the Metaverse would become the path that leads to an even bigger technology platform, a critical component for our digital and physical realities, and the next global labour framework. 

Users and creators can benefit as much from the metaverse as the internet leaders in the industry are ranked among the most valuable companies on earth even though there isn’t any particular owner of the internet. Which is why we hope for the Metaverse to truly serve as a viable "successor" to the web. 

In general, the metaverse has the potential to change how we distribute and commercialize modern resources. 

For generations, industrialized economies have altered as labour and real-estate scarcity fluctuates.  Potential  laborer who reside outside of cities will be motivated to partake in the "higher value-added" economy through virtual labour in the Metaverse. As more household consumption switches to virtual products, services, and experiences, we will see more changes in where we reside, infrastructure developed, and also who executes specific responsibilities.Not long after in-game trade economies established, many "players" – usually employed by a bigger corporation and frequently from lower-income nations – would spend their workday accumulating digital resources for sale within or outside the metaverse. While this type of labour is generally low skilled, redundant, and restricted to a few applications, the variety and worth of this "work" will rise in tandem with the metaverse.

Many company owners had already recognized the advantages of virtual meetings over physical meetings, including cost savings, easier engagement with people all over the world, and more. Unfortunately, Zoom meetings will soon become tedious and uninteresting, while many attendees are experiencing significant levels of Zoom exhaustion. This is something that the metaverse concept tries to change. 

Rather than just a standard Zoom call with a camera and a two-dimensional experience, you'll be able to put on goggles or a hood to totally immerse yourself in that area. 

In many circumstances, the metaverse option can help individuals connect more deeply than a traditional Zoom conference. People will be able to truly socialize rather than always staring at a computer which might vastly improve the purpose of Zoom meetings for many firms.

The metaverse also enables users to own virtual property in the same way as you would with actual property. That may be everything from a Neopets JPG linked to your account to a stockpile of strong DOTA items. 

In any instance, your virtual asset remains associated with you and will not vanish between sessions or you could use, view, edit, display and even sell your virtual property. 

People have recently attempted to employ non-fungible token (NFT) as a decentralized method of tracking and establishing ownership of virtual products, independent of any governing authority or corporate server. In principle, such NFTs might enable unrestricted movement of virtual products between metaverses owned by different firms. 

As for the current age, the amount of standardization and inter-corporate cooperation required for this level of mobility remains a pipe dream.

The capability of the metaverse may be deemed unnecessary for some but when a pooled universe of intellectual property from several big corporations can be achieved, who wouldn’t want to enjoy a  better form of e-commerce?

This aspect of the metaverse concept was popularized by Ready Player One, a 2011 novel and 2018 film about a virtual world that combines features from a plethora of nostalgic media products. The pop-culture references may be seen as a new way of psychographic marketing, with media consolidation assisting this approach. 

This could enable us to see events like Darth Vader battles Buzz Lightyear in virtual worlds and Fortnite have proven to execute this strategy flawlessly after successfully hosting crossovers with Marvel, DC Comics, John Wick, Ghostbusters and many more.

Ultimately, the metaverse should provide the same variety of opportunities as the web did. 

We expect to obtain economic benefit when there’s more accessibility, hours spent, and commercial activity. Plenty of new businesses, products, and services will emerge to organize everything from financial transactions to proof of identity, employment, advertising placement, content production, security and so on. 

As a result, most existing incumbents are expected to lose their relevance if they do not adopt the technology when it’s trending. We believe that the metaverse has the power to transform how individuals interact with technology on a daily basis, including the people they ought to contact in order to complete their tasks. 

The metaverse has the ability to boost meaningful relationships, restoring some of the human component beyond these two-dimensional virtual encounters. As there are  more people looking for remote jobs, many firms have been providing more remote opportunities. It may be a milestone into the future - but it could happen sooner than you think.

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