Imagine a virtual world where billions of people live, work, shop, learn and interact with each other - all from the comfort of their sofas in the physical world.
In this reality, the computer screens we use to connect to the worldwide web of information have become portals to a tangible 3D virtual space - just like real life, only bigger and better. Digital copies of ourselves, or avatars, move freely from one place to another, along with our identity and resources.
This is the future.
The Metaverse is a vision for what many in the computing industry see as the next iteration of the Internet: a single, shared, immersive, permanent, virtual 3D space where people live in ways they couldn't in the physical world.
Some of the technologies that provide access to this virtual world, such as virtual reality (VR) headsets and augmented reality (AR) glasses, are rapidly evolving; other critical components of the metaverse, such as adequate bandwidth or interoperability standards, are likely to appear soon.
The metaverse might look like:
- artificial intelligence
- augmented reality
- brain-computer interfaces
- 3D modeling and reconstruction
- blockchain
Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done to achieve the ideal vision, but the main steps have already been taken. And besides huge companies like Meta, more accessible projects are already implementing Metaverses. For example, the international blockchain community The Key.