What do Facebook, Nike, Snap, Nvidia, Microsoft, Epic Games, Tencent and Roblox have in common? They’re all taking a headfirst plunge into the metaverse, which I wrote about here recently (bit.ly/3EPkgw8) and calling it a new name for existing technologies like virtual and augmented reality, multi-player video games, and digital twins. As clearly described, all mashed in one. I was not alone. Kevin Roose in The New York Times speculates that it is an ‘escape hatch’ for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (nyti.ms/3qf803Z). If so, Zuckerberg trotted down that hatch at indiscriminate speed, even renaming his $86 billion company: Meta.
While Facebook may have reason to do so, it’s worth re-examining what the metaverse actually is. Memes abound, but there are different lenses through which we can try to understand it.
Mixed Reality Lens: It looks like Facebook is aiming to use virtual and augmented reality technologies, as well as other sensors, to create a parallel immersive world. As Roose writes, “Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the Metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, first entrenched with virtual and augmented reality hardware and later with more advanced body sensors, including People can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, shop for virtual goods, collect virtual art…” Facebook is shutting down AR/VR startups.
gaming lens: Some would argue that massive multi-player online role-playing games are already the metaverse. Gamers literally live as avatars in a simulated world in Minecraft or World of Warcraft. Companies like Epic Games and Roblox, and even Microsoft, with 115 million users on the gaming platform, are sold on the scene.
Screen Avatar Lens: With our work already live on Zoom and Microsoft Teams, it’s probably a small step for us to move into a more vivid digital space as Avatar. Microsoft, which has also been bitten by the Metaverse bug, has unveiled a version called the ‘Enterprise Metaverse’ and that can enable the appearance of teams as avatars. The Financial Times reports that “… Microsoft will use AI to convert the avatar’s lips to spoken words, and to combine facial expressions and hand gestures.” It’s in the game with an arsenal of 250 million team users, AR headsets and HoloLens. Minecraft, and a built-in platform for virtual interactions, has started creating meshes.
Crypto/NFT Lens: Crypto has created a parallel world right under our noses. It started with alternative money with bitcoin and other alternative coins, and then expanded to the entire alternative financial universe of DeFi (or distributed finance), where instruments such as fixed deposits, derivative trading and bank loans are available on blockchain-run platforms. . Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) allow creative works to be monetized in a virtual environment. Education, recruitment and other aspects of life are what we consider to be ‘real’, rather than the world we see.
The metaverse, to me, is merging all of the above into a parallel universe with its own infrastructure and applications that replicate and go beyond the real world. Perhaps the best description is of Shaan Puri, the founder of Ek Serial. To clarify his Twitter thread (bit.ly/30aQIdw): Most people think that the metaverse is a virtual place…. but what if it isn’t a place? This is not the place, it is the time. Yes, a moment in time. You know, in AI, there’s the idea of ’singularity’? This is a time when AI becomes smarter than humans. The metaverse is the moment when our digital life is more valuable to us than our physical life. This is not an overnight change. This is a gradual change that has been happening for 20 years. Every important part of life is going digital. Work -> From factories to laptops, from boardrooms to Zoom. Friends -> From neighbors to followers. Games -> More kids play Fortnite than basketball and football. Identity -> Filters are the new makeup. Stories are your personal billboard to broadcast who you are. What matters more. How do you look like in real life? Or how do you look on Instagram? Everything goes digital. Your friends, your job, your identity. And now with crypto, your assets are online too. Bored apes are the new Rolex. Fortnite Skins are the new skinny jeans. If everyone hangs out online all the time, your Flex should be digital. Play it 10-20 years ahead, we’ll cross into the metaverse. The moment in time where the digital means more to us than the physical.
Or maybe the metaverse was best described by Neil Stephenson, who coined the term in his book Snow Crash, where it refers to a shared virtual space inhabited by both humans and digital “daemons”. Stephenson famously said that he was just “becoming” crap. Maybe it is.
Jaspreet Bindra is Chief Technical Whisperer in Findability Sciences, and learning AI, Ethics and Society at Cambridge University.
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