Metaverse
Metaverse: A new revolution in the world of technology
The next chapter beyond the Internet
Facebook became Meta. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has decided that Metaverse will be the future direction of the company’s technology roadmap, and hence the rechristening. Not only Facebook, but many famous and not-so-famous organizations all over the world have made Metaverse as their target. Multiple market research firms estimate that Metaverse market will soon reach at USD 600 billion globally. It is being said that Metaverse is going to revolutionize people’s lives in the near future, just as the Internet did. What is this metaverse, the excitement that is going on in the world of technology?
The idea of metaverse and what it entails have remained areas of active research over the last few years. But one thing is for certain - the future is going to belong to this technology. The term “metaverse” was first coined by the American novelist Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. The acclaimed sci-fi book was selected by the Times magazine among the 100 Best English novels since 1923. The word “avatar” used today in Metaverse technology, which Yahoo used in their email and chat software in the past, and even the name of the famous Hollywood movie that has recently been made, was originally a Sanskrit word, but it was first coined in the Western world in this novel. Interestingly, Neil Stephenson used the word metaverse in his novels in a dystopian context. In that sense, a discussion on Netflix’s famous anthology series Black Mirror may be relevant. Bandersnatch was an “interactive film” in the same series, where the flow of events is determined by the viewer’s real-time interaction - that is, the outcome of the movie is dependent on the viewer, where each viewer can change the climax by individual choices. The film, which was made in the style of a computer game, made a splash in the alternative cinema world in 2016. This freedom of the creator and the admirer of that creation is the keynote of Metaverse. In reality, however, the complexity, impact, and spread of metaverse technology are going to be much wider and more direct.
What is Metaverse then? In short, Metaverse is a technology that combines three-dimensional holograms, duality, pluralistic social media, and creativity. Sounds confusing? Let me explain one by one with examples.
Imagine the bride’s dead father himself welcoming the guests in a wedding! He is walking, taking care of stuff, and even blessing the future couple. This is reality. This is exactly what happened in February of this year, a few days ago, in a marriage held in Tamil Nadu, which was the first metaverse marriage in India. The dead man, however, did not appear physically, but as a three-dimensional incarnation in the metaverse. Metaverse is a world where technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality create a magical mix of imagination and reality. Those who have played the popular game Pokemon Go on their mobile phones are familiar with augmented reality. With the help of augmented reality, familiar imaginary characters or objects can be blended into the real environment. And those who had a 360-degree experience of visualizing Lionel Messi’s games and various historical moments by wearing VR headsets at Messi’s old football club FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium are familiar with virtual reality. Suppose, while working-from-home, you wear some of the Extended Reality instruments around your head and hands, with which you can use your Metaverse avatar to go to your Metaverse office, in the same old familiar environment, discuss stuff with your colleagues and have important meetings. Then you solve some difficult business problem by working out on the whiteboard, praise the work of your subordinates by clapping in person, do hi-five with someone, and pat someone on the back. Then in the evening, after work, you go on to hang out in front of the Eiffel Tower on the streets of Paris. This is the dual reality - where your three-dimensional incarnation is representing you, living a life parallel to your real existence while wandering in the metaverse and doing almost everything that you would do in real life - such is the future presented by Mark Zuckerberg. In not-so-distant future, before you order a pizza, you may arrive at the respective pizza outlet via Metaverse, where you will check it out for yourself with all your sensory perceptions, then make the order, pay the bill in cryptocurrency, and finally the pizza will get delivered to your home. Or before you buy your favorite brand of jeans, your Metaverse avatar might go to the trial room of the store and test the fittings and then order. Or in the times of Corona, your child may attend school through Metaverse and take classes with friends. The void and eternal longing for the company of a loved one who is far away or lost forever may not be fulfilled by metaverse. But metaverse can break many barriers, the means of social exchange, the way of life. It will be a huge paradigm shift. The three-dimensional experience that augmented reality, virtual reality, and extended reality can bring to Metaverse, transcending boundaries of the maps, would not make it too incorrect to call it nothing short of surrealism.
However, this vision of Mark Zuckerberg is not the end of Metaverse. Metaverse is actually a technology whose scope is wider and farther-reaching. It is being said that within a decade people will start using Metaverse instead of the Internet. The state-of-the-art 5G communication system in the telecom world will accelerate this change. In the nineties, when the Internet was slowly entering the lives of ordinary people, the Internet’s relationship with people was one-sided and static. Information could then be retrieved from the Internet, blogs could be read - but an average user could not change that information or content. It was called Web 1.0. During the mid of the new millennium, various social media platforms like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook etc. came up, and then came platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok where the average user could share their pictures, speeches, videos, and life experiences with other users. The Internet’s relationship with people became multifaceted and dynamic. This is called Web 2.0. The problem is, in this system, the interaction between people and the Internet is two-dimensional, but in reality, it is all three-dimensional. On the other hand, Web 2.0 created an inequality where the keys to the data around the world came into the hands of a handful of well-known giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft. Today, indirectly, they are largely determining world politics, the extent of your knowledge - from the results of a vote to what you are eating and what you are wearing! With the help of sophisticated artificial intelligence, the details of your personal information, your likes and dislikes are under their control. Using a variety of hyper-personalization algorithms, they determine exactly what type of ad should be shown to you at which times of the day and how often, so that you would buy a product without hesitation! They control your thoughts, your thinking, your friends and foes, your mannerisms, your social status, your joys and sorrows. In developed countries, especially in Europe, and in some states in the United States, the enactment of strict data protection laws is present. Yet, the general public’s awareness of sensitive information protection is not growing. As a result, attacks on personal data continue to happen through the many holes of the law. Metaverse can reduce this insecurity, misuse, and inequality in personal information security. You own your data on Metaverse. According to experts, thousands of similar-sized companies will provide services on Metaverse instead of the handful of giant companies, and the general consumer will benefit from this competition. In addition, Metaverse will not force you to share your information in any fixed way - as a result, you will be relieved of the obligation to “like” your neighbor’s Goa picture reluctantly! Metaverse’s control-free pluralistic three-dimensional social media is called Web 3.0, the Internet of the Future.
In the early stages, Metaverse applications might popularize themselves through a kind of gamification. “NFT” or non-fungible tokens can play a significant role in this gamification. NFT is a kind of immutable object. Using the powerful copyright protection capability of blockchain technology, owning a single copy of a rare digital object in the world of Metaverse can become a symbol of your social status. Such a digital object is called NFT. The rarer the NFT, the more valuable it is. Just as Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” painting has no practical value in reality but it is invaluable to art connoisseurs, the value of all these rare NFTs in the metaverse world can also be infinite. A combination of psychological research and artificial intelligence can create NFTs of different characters in Metaverse, and can be served to the common public with a gamification twist. With the help of artificial intelligence, a creative inventor can create the original image of Kolkata’s yellow taxi in the style of Van Gogh, or a sci-fi story in the writing style of Tulsidas! The more attractive that NFT is, the more demand it has. This business of NFT transactions, is already quite booming.
There is so much discussion about cryptocurrencies and digital currencies like Bitcoin these days, but they are all actually a part of this metaverse empire. And at the root of all this is a technology called blockchain. Bitcoin brought blockchain to the forefront of popularity. In 2006, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto showed the possibility of Bitcoin as a digital currency without any banking system or government control. The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still unknown, but just as Narendranath introduced Ramakrishna to the world, Bitcoin popularized the blockchain. Satoshi Nakamoto was thought by many to be Elon Musk, the proverbial co-founder of SpaceX and Tesla, but Musk himself has denied this. Numerous digital currencies such as Dodgecoin, Litecoin, etc. have been developed on the basis of blockchain technology, many smart contracting systems such as Etherium, Solana, etc., and many peer-to-peer transaction and settlement platforms such as Cardano, Ripple etc. Over the past few decades, there was a flurry of artificial intelligence in the world of technology. Blockchain is enjoying similar level of enthusiasm right now. Blockchain is a type of “DLT”, meaning distributed ledger technology that allows you to keep track of huge databases in a decentralized and very secure manner. A blockchain is made by encrypting numerous blocks of data together by using cryptographic links. The key to the chain is not concentrated in one place, so the information is very secure. In this decentralized system, unauthorized alteration or hacking of information is almost impossible, since alteration of one block requires alteration of all subsequent blocks in the chain. This strong security of blockchain and decentralized technology saw its usage in various peer-to-peer network transactions, smart contract and settlement systems, “defi” (“decentralized finance”), and “dapp” (“decentralized application”). The importance of this blockchain ecosystem will be immense in economic transactions and agreements in Metaverse.
Finally, let’s talk about the dark side of Metaverse. When the digital environment gets much closer to reality, the amount of unwanted harassment will also increase. Crimes like online bullying or deepfake will increase, and the victim of that crime will find his or her digital harassment experience as horrific as the actual experience. Metaverse can increase digital addiction among young folks. But every coins has two sides, and too much of anything is not good. With the rise of Metaverse in the future, the responsibility of proper management and administration will have to rest on the shoulders of responsible and conscious people, to create the appropriate underlying structure on which this technology can add value to people and evolve. Only then can Metaverse truly become Internet 3.0.
