Facebook, Inc. changed its name to ‘Meta, Inc.’ to set up something called Metaverse.
Why Meta?
I think many people aren’t talking about it as it’s going to change your lives and all the people living around us.
So, without wasting time, let’s get to the point:
- What's Metaverse?
- Why are people excited about it?
- Why is it frightening?
What is Metaverse?
For the past two decades, we have been moving towards more and more engaging mediums. The first text, then photos, and now videos.
In today’s world, we all have two personas:
The first one is of Real-world where we live.
The second one is on the Internet through Instagram, Facebook, and all other mediums.
And Metaverse is an attempt to combine them both. Now you won’t be just looking into the internet through your mobile screens but inside of it. In Meta’s words;
“A living shared everlasting virtual Universe through Augmented Reality and virtual reality.”
Why people are excited about it?
Metaverse comes with some pretty undeniable benefits; in a single day you could be playing chess in the streets of Moscow in the morning, surfing in the Bahamas in the afternoon, slaying beasts in the evening, and attending The Chainsmokers concert at night. Oh! So much fun all
around the globe.
On the other hand, you could be able to express yourself more. It’s like a dream come true for people who are facing severe disabilities. Forget about walking when you can experience flying above the mountains.
You will have more flexibility to join any meeting or party. Just one click and you will be there. It will be like teleportation but with your virtual avatar.
The things about how we study will also be changing. We all know that we don’t find information in books now when we can just google it. But forget about googling, we will be interacting with the data like never before. Now you won’t just study dinosaurs but will be experiencing living with the dinosaurs. OOH….Watch out!!!
Also, our Avatars are going to be very realistic and even interpret our facial expressions with the help of advanced VR headsets. So overall Metaverse seems pretty cool. Right?
But there are also some things to be afraid of.
Why is it Frightening?
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Facebook is DATA. To be honest Facebook’s image is pretty bad when it comes to user data privacy and what it does with this. And when we are going to be in the Metaverse, we are going to operate devices with just our mental activities. And we are sharing some of the personal information which we don't even share with our families but in the future that could be shared with Meta.
The more concerning thing is that we are talking about the companies that would be creating virtual experiences, and at one point we could be so submerged in it that we could lose the grip of Reality. It will be very hard to distinguish what's real and what's virtual.
Then comes the tricky part: Moderation. Many of you might be already aware that moderating content in social media is a hell of a task. There is a force of people in social media companies just checking whatever is posted so that they can remove posts on hate speech, terrorism encouragement, exploitation, etc. But in Metaverse, every action and everything we created has to be monitored how is this avatar? What is this shirt print saying? And many such things like that.
And then comes the fundamental psychological part. You can have all the fun in the Metaverse but when you put down your VR headsets and from being a stylish handsome king who just conquered a Kingdom or a Voyager of an intergalactic spaceship; you look in the mirror and feel that you are not that good as a person. And that feeling drives you to put your headsets back and spend more time in Metaverse. Our relations with friends, family and other people will drastically change.
One way to minimize the fear is to make all the code of Metaverse open source. Maybe it could help us to be less concerned about data privacy, hacking, and cybercrimes.
So let's see how will Metaverse be a gamechanger for Mr. Mark and his empire or will it lead to its doom?