With the ongoing developments in the Blockchain technology, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the past few years, the concept of “Metaverse” or “embodied Internet” has become an increasingly hot topic in the debates among researchers, developers, entrepreneurs, and Internet users.

 

Some critics dismiss the term for being over-exhausted in marketing campaigns, and for becoming a buzzword in popular culture that no longer means anything. Yet, some others manifest a high level of enthusiasm, or anxiety, when the term is used, because they are seeing in this phenomenon the baby steps of a new human-technology interaction that will shape the ways we experience reality and communicate with each other in the future.

 

For a critical observer, both sides seem to have some relevant points. We are witnessing, on the one hand, that some major “open world” game projects are dramatically failing to meet the demands of their players despite their highly creative ways of instrumentalizing the term Metaverse in their marketing campaigns. But on the other hand, we are also witnessing that some key communication and technology companies have already started to hire highly specialized individuals for such positions as “chief Metaverse officer”, and they are investing a significant part of their R&D budget in the development of the technology and potential new use-cases.

 

This alone shows that the concept of Metaverse cannot be neglected regardless of the over-exhaustive use of the term by some marketing campaigns, and that we require further knowledge about this new world to be able to make assessments about its past, present, and anticipated future. In the fifth episode of our miniblog series, we aim to bring a new perspective on the concept of Metaverse and provide our readers an overview of its history and social-cultural significance. Let’s begin with the origins of the term and how it entered our dictionaries through popular culture.

 

As many observers have already noted, the term first appeared in a science fiction novel called Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In the novel, Stephenson depicts a dark future for humanity, where the dream of decentralization in parallel with advances in technology went awfully wrong. Stephenson’s portrayal of the use of AR and its instrumentalization in such ways as mind control and distortion of reality in a dystopian future can be read in parallel with Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series, in the sense that each key technological development to make an impact on our interconnectedness and perception of reality requires a constant questioning of where do we draw the line between use and abuse.

 

In any case, we are dealing with a strange and abstract concept that initially entered our vocabulary with a cynical meaning attached to it, which has now transformed into “the term on everyone’s lips” in the communications, software, and many other high-tech manufacturing or service industries. Among these high-tech industries, gaming and the broader entertainment industry have been the leading areas until recently, which played a vital role in the development of VR technology.

In the context of gaming, VR implies a complete alteration of the user’s perception of the real-world environment, which is entirely replaced by a simulated world. This technology has been available and widely utilized in the gaming industry for some years in various forms and shapes. But with the emergence of AR, which implies an enhancement of the user’s perception of the real-world with computer-generated audio, visual, or data, the Metaverse debate took a whole new turn.

 

In parallel with what we said about the NFTs last week, the Metaverse in its early years under the lead of the gaming industry offered very little in terms of combining our experience of the real world with that of the virtual world provided by the ecosystem, or in terms of real-life utilities. But things have radically changed since then, especially following the widespread adoption of Blockchain technologies and the announcements of Metaverse projects by communication giants.

Among many things announced by Mark Zuckerberg and other leading developers that aim to enhance our experience of reality and interconnectedness as a part of their Metaverse projects, such as gamifying our interactions on social networks and displaying our digital assets on real-life locations, perhaps the most well-anticipated feature of this new world is in the area of work.

 

As many GenZ members are turning into “digital nomads” and remote work does not seem to go away in the post-pandemic world, the Metaverse could allow us to bring our working space with us, regardless of where we are located on earth. This involves having work meetings, virtual events, workshops, and more. For the NFT community alone, this can be seen as the opening of Pandora’s box. In the near future, we can expect new ways of displaying our digital assets, new forms of utility NFTs, and further engagement with artists, creators, and enterprises that we are supporting or buying from.

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