Throughout the numerous keynotes of tech companies from April to June, major executives and presenters commonly mentioned one term, the “Metaverse.” Notably (and obviously…), Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook F8 Refresh, and Jensen Huang at GTC (GPU Technology Conference) April 2021; the list goes on. Here’s what you should know about.
Illustrate some of the world-leading video games that are commonly played by gamers globally. Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Grand Theft Auto V, Cyperpunk 2077… you name it. Players create their own story through playing the game, compete each other — either individually or as a group — or unite for collective creation.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok enabled instantaneous expression of individuals, by allowing the sharing of creations and ideas to the public. People often having rapid conversations and debates regarding a certain topic or issue, further sharing their opinions.
These are the early phases of the Metaverse, where people can interact virtually “on-screen” via wireless connection on a locally-hosted server; actualizing things that can’t be achieved in the real world.
The concept of the Metaverse was introduced on the novel Snow Crash, written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. You can check the overall synopsis from Wikipedia.
If Snow Crash is unfamiliar, picture the OASIS from the movie Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, a novel-originated film, which the movie adopted the exact same title.
So, what exactly is the Metaverse? People like Jensen Huang and the Winklevoss twins define the Metaverse as a “digital-virtual copy of the real world.” Additionally, to add my own definition of the Metaverse, it is the copy of our real world, which has the potential to outstandingly enhance human abilities and perform veritably further than current reality.
Putting into more detailed words, the Metaverse is a “collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet.”
The introduction of the internet to the public in January 1st, 1983 became the inception of any individual becoming a semi-cyborg via collective intelligence. What this simply means, is that the entire humanity throughout the planet gained access to a remarkably wider range and depth of knowledge, relative to the era when printed media were the only source of information. With the integration of technological development on the internet, now the Sapiens are capable of persistently storing massive amount of rudimental data that surpasses their average brain capacity, on offline device or cloud storage; learning necessary information quickly than ever, whenever required. At present, they provide access to wearable devices to track themselves — quantifying, thus analyzing, apprehending, and providing more access to normal individuals on the human body and mind, which are considered to be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
Just a single smartphone, computer, or watch, enabled, and is/are enabling the human species to transcend their past-selves, in the units of hours (or even seconds). They became more intelligent, and the cost and time duration for knowledge acquisition and distribution is getting significantly cheaper and shorter; will ultimately reach zero.
Now here’s where Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) take place, in further reducing the cost and time for knowledge acquisition and distribution; founding the novel era for Sapiens intercommunication (and more).
