The metaverse is coming. Are you ready for it?

 

Facebook – the social media behemoth everyone loves to hate – recently made a huge announcement: It is transitioning from a social media company to a metaverse company. To boot, it is rebranding itself as Meta and discarding its iconic name, Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO, had earlier spoken about how the metaverse would be a core focus for Facebook moving forward, but this rebranding exercise has made it crystal clear how seriously he takes it and where he thinks the technological battlefield of the future lies.

The announcement sent shockwaves through the tech industry, causing the valuations of some crypto-based metaverse players such as Decentraland and Sandbox to rally by hundreds of percent in response.

It even appears to have nudged Microsoft to announce its own foray into the metaverse space, albeit in a seemingly knee-jerk, muted way.

I have no doubt that this announcement from one of the biggest tech companies in the world will be judged by our descendants as a watershed moment in the history of technology. It will be as seminal as Steve Jobs’ 2007 keynote address in which he announced the launch of the iPhone, if not even more.

And even though many in the tech scene – including me – have been quite certain that the metaverse is the natural evolution of the internet, it hadn’t been an idea that the general public was faced with – until now.

So, what is this metaverse, you ask?

In a nutshell, the metaverse is an amalgamation of persistent virtual worlds that we will interact, play and even work in. It is the natural successor to the internet and the social media platforms that occupy it today.

For instance, we would wear a pair of virtual reality glasses or headset that will transport us into a virtual world where we can hang out with friends while donning a virtual avatar of our choice.

When we’re bored, they can choose to play much more immersive versions of today’s most popular games. Not our cup of tea? We can opt to take a walk in a virtual city and walk into a virtual mall that sells virtual Nikes that our avatars can wear. Have a work meeting? No problem, we can hop into a virtual meeting room where we can collaborate with our colleagues in real time.

Even though the idea of the metaverse isn’t exactly novel (the term was coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson all the way back in 1992), it hadn’t manifested itself because the technology necessary to enable such a reality hadn’t been invented yet.

That’s all about to change.

Meta (formerly Facebook) made the far-sighted move of acquiring a promising virtual reality headset startup called Oculus in 2014. The technology Oculus worked on enabled Meta to develop a metaverse of its own, called Horizon.

In order to explore this nascent metaverse, all a person needs is an Oculus headset and a Meta account. With these, the user can walk around in a virtual world, play games, even attend work meetings with colleagues – all while nestled in the comfort of their own home.

As impressive as this is, Meta’s vision of the metaverse could be a dangerous one as it will be developed, and its rules enforced, by a corporation that has a chequered history when it comes to user privacy and data protection.

In addition, even though it will enable users to have some digital ownership rights, it will invariably be a walled garden, with Meta dictating how and what the users can and cannot do.

It will also most likely be chock full of advertisements which promote the products of those that pay the most, and incorrigibly harvest user data to bolster its bottom line (as it does now).

This is not the metaverse we deserve.

I am much more bullish about crypto-based metaverse players such as Decentraland, Sandbox, Somnium Space and Treeverse which started developing their versions of the metaverse earlier. These too are in a nascent or embryonic stage.

These metaverses enable their users to own virtual plots of land and populate these with digital assets and even develop experiences of their own choosing.

For instance, a person can buy up a plot of land in the Sandbox and develop a game. In order to play this game, they can charge those who want to play it a fee. If the game becomes popular and users flock to it, this can be a source of passive income for the landowner.

Similarly, a person can buy up a plot of land in Decentraland and set up a virtual mall that can house virtual stores that sell digital merchandise in the form of non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Whenever someone buys digital merchandise here, the landowner would earn a cut from the profits.

Although the metaverse is still developing, Meta’s announcement will surely give it a huge push forward.

Just as we have physical property rights and the ability to earn using them in the real world, the metaverse of the future should give us, its users, digital property rights and the ability to earn using them.

In this future, instead of staring for hours into our laptops and smartphones while browsing Instagram or playing Call of Duty with friends or attending a Zoom conference with colleagues, we’ll tote virtual reality headsets that transport us into an immersive metaverse that will allow us to do all this and much more – and in a way that would oddly enough feel a lot more natural.

But there is a lot at stake. We need to ensure that unlike today – where Google, Meta (Facebook), Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have become the internet’s de facto gatekeepers and exert so much control over our lives – the coming metaverse gives control back to us, the users.

We should be able to dictate how the metaverse develops and even more importantly, own our very own pieces of the metaverse.

And we need to empower ourselves for this future which is already at our doorstep. - FMT

The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@protonmail.com.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.