What is the MetaVerse?

In 2021 a friend of mine was stuck in Japan due to Covid. He approached me to help him with several projects, one of them was interviewing people in VRChat and ask them a question “What is the MetaVerse?”. This happened around the time that Facebook announced its name change to Meta and that they will start building the “Metaverse”.

While recording the interviews, I realized nobody gave a unanimous answer. Everyone had wildly different opinions about the subject. I also noticed that people less familiar with Virtual Reality (VR) were not particularly kind towards the name MetaVerse.
And only recently it dawned on me that I was not asked this question. Ah well, after all I was given the role of being the interviewer.
But this gave me time to think about the question.

Around July 2022 things surrounding the "MetaVerse" started to become a hot topic again. For example a 3D interface and VR pioneer tweeted this:

「いいか、メタバースが何かは知らないがメタバースの外からメタバースを語る人間を信用するな」-VoxelKei

It roughly translates to : “Look, I don't know what the Metaverse is, but don't trust anyone who talks about it from outside the Metaverse”.

Wait, does that mean the Metaverse already exists? Can we already access it? Well, first we need to find out what the general public thinks what the Metaverse is.

So what is currently the MetaVerse?

From Matthew Ball:
“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

From Binance:
“The metaverse is a concept of a persistent, online, 3D universe that combines multiple different virtual spaces. You can think of it as a future iteration of the internet. The metaverse will allow users to work, meet, game, and socialize together in these 3D spaces.”

From Wikipedia:
“In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.”

Looking at these definitions, anything could be the MetaVerse. Some people reading this will probably think “Eh? Second Life?”, "Sounds like NEOS" or “Big 3D Internet!”.

Well, on that point I beg to differ.

The mindset on the metaverse is too much aimed at “a place to go” or “a program“ and they are way to specific about details how it should look like or how we should use it. Just like the early days of the mobile phone. Everyone was focusing on the fact you could make phone calls with it, without giving any thought what additional opportunities it could bring.

And here the missing link comes in view, the device that will facilitate the Metaverse.

What should the MetaVerse be?

When a complex device or system that is designed for a certain purpose, people tend to do different things with it than the creator originally intended.

Computers were introduced as room sized devices to do calculations, it revolutionised pc hardware and operating systems, but most new users got introduced to it as a machine to play games on.

The internet was lauded as a network for scientists to share knowledge around the world, it revolutionized servers and network infrastructure, but many people these days rather use it to share pictures of animals on social media.

The mobile phone was the tool to always have the option to reach someone with a simple phone call, it brought forth the era of smartphones and cell towers, but in reality it's mostly utilized to play games on and send text messages to friends.

The future "Metaverse" is going to be as disruptive to our lives as the the Personal computer, the Internet and the Smartphone.

A future "MetaVerse" will force a change on how we think about computer devices. But how the details of that future will look like and how we will use it is most like impossible to predict. 

“Incomplete Metaverse“ 

The idea of a Metaverse has been planted a couple of decades ago.
But the devices and infrastructure that are going to be used for the Metaverse are not entirely here yet.

I believe that in a future Metaverse the devices like physical keyboards, tablets, mice, monitors, smartphones, controllers, pentablets, joysticks… in other words all human interface devices and displays, will be obsolete and replaced with most likely one device.
As easy to carry as a smartphone, as intuitive as a mouse and as accessible as the Internet.

This device will decimate the borders between VR applications and desktop applications on all levels and will probably make the knowledge we build up about our current IT interfaces obsolete within one decade. It will change the way we think about computers and the internet. And it will leave people that don't catch up to it stranded in the past.

When will this become a reality? I don't know, but what I do know is that the people that are now active in what will become this future are at this very moment writing the rules of how this future will look like and inventing the devices that will be needed to build this future.

But this future will not be created by people that, without participating, say they are building the Metaverse.

It will be done by people that unknowingly already are in the Metaverse.

Artwork generated by Midjourney AI.