The year is 1995. It's 11:35 p.m. and the "Late Show with David Letterman" is airing nationally. Tonight's guest? A fledgling CEO of Microsoft (MSFT), one Bill Gates, who was several years ahead of the antitrust problems he would soon face. Tonight's topic? The Internet.
Letterman kicks things off. "What about this Internet thing ... What the hell is that exactly?" A brief pause, then the audience erupts in laughter. Young Bill puts on a brave, if somewhat bemused, face. It's certainly not the first time he's explained the meaning of technology to an unyielding audience.
Winston Robson is the co-founder of WeMeta. This article is part of "Metaverse Week".
"It's become a place where people can publish information," Bill responds enthusiastically. "It's incredible what's happening here!" Letterman, unimpressed, presses on. "I've heard that on the Internet or on some ... computer ... There's a baseball game being broadcast."
Letterman pauses for effect. "And I was just thinking ... Does radio mean anything to you?"
The audience erupts in laughter.
In 1995, the Internet - an aspect of our lives so important today that the United Nations General Assembly declared access to it a human right in 2016 - was a joke. History is littered with similar stories.
The electric light bulb was "unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." The telephone was "little more than a toy." And television - "people will soon tire of staring at a plywood box every night." In 2010, astronaut Neil Armstrong testified before Congress that privatized spaceflight would cost the U.S. its status as a space pioneer.
But even when confronted with dogma or disbelief, innovation is rarely slowed. The truth gets around. And so it will with the Metaverse, the latest technology that was declared dead on arrival.
The Metaverse Similarto the
Internet in 1995, the metaverse has recently entered a breakthrough phase. The metaverse is a way to tap into the freedom of the embodied online experience and transcend the limitations of our physical lives. You can think of it like living social media.
Imagine it's 1 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2021, you're in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y., and your partner's flight from London has been canceled. The NYE ball drop is 11 hours away, and you were hoping to catch a glimpse. The barriers to entry are high, even if you're traveling alone. To be live at One Times Square, you'll have to take the 7 subway line into Manhattan, buy one of the limited tickets, dress warmly, etc.
Or you can simply log on to Decentraland experience the event live in the Metaverse with her. Tens of thousands of people actually did, just this past New Year's Eve. That's almost as many as showed up in reality under the impression of the coronavirus. Soon you'll even be able to order food as apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash enter the metaverse. Sounds a lot better than Twitter to me.
After the fireworks, you're still keen to talk. Well, sports is another aspect of connecting the metaverse. Think back to Wii Sports. Tennis was fun, but the game became too easy, movement was limited, cognitive dissonance was high, and my mom was always afraid the remote would slip out of my hand and crash into her vase.
Now, with a virtual reality headset, you can immerse yourself in Somnium Space, a leading VR city in the metaverse, and be immersed in a 4K digital reality. With the suit, your full-body movements are reflected in the game. Let's play Wimbledon?
Kayaking, car racing, paintball, and pole dancing are just a few of the possibilities Somnium offers. As the technology evolves, you can join your team or new friends for a game of basketball or baseball, no matter where you are.
Past live environments, time periods such as conferences or public announcements, can be digitized and preserved by the metaverse, meaning they can be relived by anyone in the future. IRLArt did this for ETHDenver 2022, and you can return forever to the conference's main attraction, the Sports Castle - artwork, booths, artifacts and all.
More than events, e-commerce reaches new dimensions in the metaverse. Similar to Web 2, the cost of providing goods and services is lower than physical real estate for both large brands and small and medium-sized businesses. However, in the metaverse, shopping with friends, family and others is taken to a new level by the social appeal.
At Samsung 837X, for example, players can immerse themselves in a spectacular light show and see their purchases rendered in 3D, rather than scrolling on a flat page. Fashion Week in Decentraland, another example, has featured names like Vogue and Forever 21.
When I created my Roblox account fourteen years ago, I found a community. We played social games with sub-economies like Plane Wars or Divide & Conquer. In both of these games, players earn digital currency for completing tasks, defeating an enemy, or growing resources, and then use that money to invest and build their own empire. It's similar to Civilization or Grand Theft Auto, but with completely player-created content. Some of my best friends and I have spent hours, even days, developing similar experiences in hopes of making it to the main roblox.com site.
Years later, big brands are striving to do the same.
Society creates connections, technology creates new landscapes for those connections. It started with people, then letters, then newspapers, the telephone, the Internet, and now the metaverse.
Right now, the metaverse seems simple, more like a cartoon. But with engines like Unity and Unreal, immersion is improving daily. Soon social engagement and shopping will be on decentraland.com/zara instead of zara.com, I believe.
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Rather than allowing players to port weapons or powers between games, non-fungible tokens will serve as building blocks for new games and virtual worlds
. The Metaverse Will Make Gamers of Us All Essentially,the "Metaverse" is a game - but one with real-world consequences and possibilities
. What can you do in the Metaverse in 2022?The future possibilities of the Metaverse are probably limitless, but is there anything you can do in the Metaverse right now?