“I think the metaverse is the next chapter for the Internet. And it is also the next chapter for our company. ” That was one of the phrases with which Mark Zuckerberg announced the change of name of his company from Facebook to Meta, to begin to focus on the development of a new virtual environment in which, eventually, we interact through avatars and / or holograms.
The metaverse, as a term, had now been used primarily in a futuristic way to describe the next frontier of computing and the web, following the advent of personal computers and smartphones. It is a virtual world without screens, immersive, as science fiction has already described on several occasions. However, is nothing new, and has more failures than successes so far.
The metaverse is Facebook's opportunity to dominate the next frontier of computing, perhaps even establishing the metaverse equivalent of an app store ahead of its rivals. The results could be deeply lucrative, like Fortnite add-ons, or they could be like Second Life, where everything ended up becoming almost nothing.
Welcome and welcome to the metaverse that does not exist (yet)
Zuckerberg says the metaverse is the next evolution of social media, going beyond static user profiles that allow people to just post comments and photos. To get there, people would have to wear virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses that overlap the digital realm on the physical world. There could also be realistic holograms transmitted to the real world from state-of-the-art projection systems.
“When you play a game with your friends, you will feel like you are right there in a different world, and not just on your computer,” Zuckerberg said. “And when you are in a meeting in the metaverse, you will have the feeling of being together in the room making eye contact, having a sense of shared space, and not just looking at a grid of faces on a screen,” he said, while in the presentation. an avatar of Zuck was seen wandering around various somewhat laconic environments.
People could use various digital avatars to represent themselves: a more serious avatar for work, a relaxed and cartoonish one for hanging out with friends, and a great one as a robot for playing video games.
New economic systems, based on cryptocurrencies and digital collectibles known as NFTs, would allow people to buy and sell goods and services.
All that is yet to be developed , and the closest thing to a metaverse that we have had so far is a congregation of millions of users in Fortnite to see a Travis Scott concert. Real people living virtual experiences … but from their devices as a barrier. That is what Zuckerberg wants to change in his attempt between sleep and fleeing forward to escape the many scandals of the name of his previous brand.
Snow Crash: the metaverse origin
Snow Crash cover fragment The concept of metaverse -called as such- was popularized in the science fiction novel Snow Crash , by Neal Stephenson, published in 1992, although in Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson, they were already used similar ideas.
In Stephenson's novel the metaverse was effectively a virtual world with its own rules, and where its users greatly changed their image. Since then we have not stopped being it, being a plot point widely used in many recent works of science fiction, such as the Matrix films and the novel and film Ready Player One.
Current technology is not yet good enough to create realistic virtual worlds. Despite the proposals of devices such as the Oculus de Meta or the Hololens, until now these metaverses have been very marked by access devices. From the first computers that allowed access to MUD games , to the current VR glasses themselves, that seeing someone use them from the outside become a better spectacle almost than the metaverse itself.
And I want and I can't from Second Life
This is how fun was the celebration of 11 years of Second Life Perhaps the most genuine approach to something similar to what Facebook proposes has been Second Life. Despite continuing (surprise) active, this mix between community and game devised by Philip Rosedale in 2003 under his company Linden Lab became a phenomenon. Effervescent but a phenomenon.
Like a kind of Sims online (at the time), but with the ability that you could wear a crocodile tail if you wanted, technology and fashion companies opened their stores on the platform, TV shows also created their parallel versions and, In a way, it looked like the future.
Until the iPhone arrived, the rise of the smartphone, and it was seen that the future of the internet would pivot beyond computers
In the first half of 2011, the company reported that an average of around 1 million users connected each month. During the same period, Facebook already had an average of 500 million logins per month.
That future, the one proposed by Second Life, did not last long. We don't know if the same will happen with this new metaverse.
