The Metaverse In A Nutshell

If you are reading this, then you most likely have heard of the buzzing word right now in the tech space “The Metaverse” and you’re curious as to what it is.

If you’re like me and you’ve ever laid down on your bed, gazing lazily at your ceiling and imagining what going mountain climbing at mount Kilimanjaro would feel like, but you obviously cannot afford to do that at that point in time. Let me burst your bubble, the Metaverse will help you bring that imagination to life.

While not exactly reality, you’re going to have the full experience of what mountain climbing feels like.

As the Greek meaning of Metaverse says; "Meta" means “Beyond” and "verse" means “universe. Putting those two words together means “beyond the universe”, which is very self explanatory. The metaverse is a world beyond the universe we all live in right now.

The term “Metaverse” was first coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992 in a Sci-fi novel he wrote about two delivery guys who often traveled to the metaverse to escape from the highly Unpleasant world they lived in.

The Metaverse will be the mix of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, simply call it mixed reality.

In our world today filled with so many technological innovations, we are already experiencing augmented reality in our daily lives, and some of us don’t even know it. Augmented reality makes our physical life greater by adding digital elements to live view, through the use of digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli delivered through technology most commonly our mobile phones.

A common example of Augmented Reality is Snapchat, If you’re social media savvy, you probably have used this popular app a lot most especially the filters, YES, the filters. Snapchat Filters are common examples of what augmented reality looks like. In the sense that, the filters aren’t exactly on our faces, the application can identify objects and faces by using pixel data from a camera and through this means, can place these lenses(filters)on our faces. Google lens and Google maps are other popular examples of augmented reality.

Virtual Reality on the other hand is an immersive experience that replaces our real-life environments with simulated ones.

And this is what the metaverse is, a combination of augmented reality and virtual reality. It is the internet on a higher level than it is now. Right now we can only look at the internet but in the metaverse, we would be inside the internet, and just like in the real world, we can do whatever we wish to do in the metaverse.

Travis Scott held a virtual concert in Fortnight, a popular virtual world game, and millions of people all over the world were present.

The Metaverse encompasses almost everything we do in the real world such as:

• Entertainment

• Business

• Gaming

• Work

• Education

• Recreation And so much more that we are yet to find out.

How will Human Beings Access the Metaverse

To have access to the metaverse, users would need to use a VR headset, the most popular one right now being the Meta Oculus Quest 2. The user would also need to create an Avatar for himself or herself, this Avatar would be a digital representation of the User inside the Metaverse.

Just like our profile pictures on social media that represents us, in the metaverse, you would be able to create an Avatar, a 3 dimensional version of yourself.

You can choose to be anything you want, any gender, even an animal if that is your wish. You have the freedom to style this avatar to your comfort, so when you put on the headset, you are no longer in the real world but inside the metaverse, and your environment would change based on the place you chose to be in the metaverse, could be at the beach, it all depends on what your preferences are at the moment.

You may be wondering, what does it feel like to be in a virtual world?

The metaverse is built to make us feel and do things like we would in the real world. Your physical senses would be on the same level as it is in the real world, as well as your emotions, the only difference here is that the environment is virtual.

What we hope to gain from the Metaverse

The Metaverse poses a lot of benefits for our world today. The Metaverse is the future and It's already here, it's best to know what exactly we stand to gain when the world eventually adopts the metaverse in our daily lives.

1. Learning Enhanced

In 2020, the pandemic happened and it led to a total lockdown of the world. At that point we were living through the internet, the internet was the coping mechanism for millions of people in the world. This affected education, students all over the world were not able to learn normally anymore. In 2020, zoom a cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others, recorded 300milllion daily participants all due to the pandemic. Students now had to learn virtually through various devices.

The metaverse promises to make virtual learning feel like reality like you’re actually in a classroom. You are able to interact and see your teachers and classmates just like you would in the real world, while still being in the comfort of your home in your most comfortable clothes, after all, you’d be able to style your avatar in the metaverse with whatever clothes you desire.

Learning in the metaverse would also be faster and better, in the sense that you are not just looking at how the solar system is in a book or a video, but you can be in the solar system via the metaverse and you will be able to see these celestial bodies in real-time. So you’re not just imagining things and putting two and two together in your head about how they work, but you can see and feel how they work.

This same principle also works well for medical students, gone are the days where you would have to work on a cadavar just to practice, the metaverse would give you an equivalent of how operating on a real life person would feel like.

And it gets better, in the metaverse you would be able to teleport to the past. History was probably everyone’s worst subject in school or still is because you have to read long old notes of things that happened when you didn’t even exist, but with the metaverse, your learning experience is better and enhanced you would be able to see and experience these past events happen, and it sticks better that way because humans are known to learn better visually and through experience.

2.Better Work Experience

The pandemic acted as a huge catalyst for the increase in remote work, and right now people can work from the comfort of their homes no matter where they are in the world. But this remote work could be better and more enhanced in the metaverse.

Right now working virtually is good, but some people still find it very hard to be productive because they feel too comfortable and their workspace isn't equipped with enough tools to make their job easier and faster.

In the Metaverse, while still being in the comfort of your home, you can have a real working experience with your colleagues, not just having zoom meetings and seeing each other through your computer or phone screen, but you can actually be present and interact with your colleagues as you would in real life.

Tools would be made available in the metaverse, which would reduce a lot of work stress such as having to write down things on pen and paper, in the metaverse, even with a little hand gesture you can get work done, by just swiping and tapping on a certain part of your working screen to get your work done.

3. A New Economy

Just like we have a working economy in real life, a metaverse is going to create a new economy and that means new and higher streams of income for everyone most especially business owners.

In the metaverse, anyone can be a seller, you can create anything that people would want to use in the metaverse and sell it. Such as clothes that would be worn by various Individuals. While in the metaverse people can purchase an entire virtual wardrobe for themselves. You might be wondering;

What are we going to use as a means of the transaction? Why would anyone want to purchase virtual commodities?

To answer the first question, we are not going to be using the regular currency that we are used to using in the real world such as the dollars and pounds, but in the metaverse, cryptocurrency will be the official currency that would be used for buying and selling, so you're not just making money in the metaverse, if you have a business in the real world, you are making money as well, and crypto currencies also have a corresponding value to our real-life currency, if you ask me, I think it's a win-win on both sides. Top Companies like Nike have already started making virtual shoes for the metaverse.

Now the second question, In the world we live in today, having some presence online means a lot to people. Just like people value their likes and comments on social media. It's going to feel the same way. The metaverse is pretty much going to become part of our normal lives, it is only a matter of time before people will get comfortable acquiring virtual clothes, plots of land, and even houses.

The metaverse is highly secure, in the sense that whatever you create and decide to sell whether its clothes or some kind of NFT because the metaverse is run through the blockchain technology, everything transaction is tracked and cannot be easily altered, so nobody can just steal your creation in the metaverse.

4. Online Shopping Made Easy

A lot of us already love to stay in the comfort of our homes and just by the tap of a button we purchase a product and it gets delivered to us. But then there is a particular con to this approach that people detest a lot, the fact that you cannot know exactly what you're buying and how it looks like in real time before purchasing it, for example purchasing clothes. A lot of times people buy clothes online only to find out, that it doesn't suit them perfectly, and sometimes they cannot even make a refund.

The metaverse would solve this problem, individuals who want to shop online can virtually check how these products are exactly, in the example with clothes, they would be able to try these clothes on and get their perfect fit, thereby reducing all the disappointments that come with online shopping;

"What you ordered vs What you got"

5. A Better Planet Earth

Year in and year out, several complaints about global warming increase, and there have been no permanent solution, instead, it gets worse. The production of a lot of technological assets such as cars, trains, and buses used for transportation in real life leads to the production of greenhouse gases which isn't good for the climate.

While in the Metaverse, there is no need to own a car, or use an airplane because you would be able to go anywhere you want to go by just a tap, and then you can teleport yourself to where you want to be, it's that easy. So if people are able to work virtually in the metaverse, it is better for them because you do not have to spend half of your day in traffic just to get to work thereby it reduces the production of these automobiles as well as the production of greenhouse gases.

On the 28th day of October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced the Metaverse, he renamed Facebook "Metaverse", as we can all see on our devices today. Here is a list of things Mark Zuckerberg himself promises to bring to the world through the metaverse:

• You will get to decide where you want to be with other people.

• You can block someone from appearing in your space.

• If you want to take a break, you can teleport yourself to a private bubble to be alone and meditate.

• You can take your virtual items and project them into the physical world as holograms and augmented reality.

• You can invite your friends to join you in your home as Avatars, this would seem like the group video calls we usually have today.

• The metaverse is decentralized and you can build your world in the metaverse.

• Less Time stuck in traffic.

• Work made easy for architects and their clients, they can design homes and then the clients can see and feel in real-time how their houses would look like in real life when it is finished.

• Virtual parties, you can organize parties and concerts just like in the real world, no matter where you are whether you live in Australia and your friend lives in Canada, you can both attend the same party and it will feel like you are both in the same place.

The Metaverse seems really really promising, other big tech companies such as Microsoft are also building a metaverse that is supposed to be work focused for better online collaboration.

As everything in life has pros and cons, the Metaverse looks to have its downsides which I would be covering in another article. What do you think are some of these downsides may be, let me hear your thoughts in the comment section.

Thank you for Reading.