Everyone is working on “The Metaverse” or trying to justify adding a component of their business in “The Metaverse”. It is like saying we are working on “The internet” back in the 90s when everyone was trying to build just a webpage. Just like websites are part of the internet, and the companies have websites as their digital presence, metaverse worlds are part of “The Metaverse” and companies will have a 3D presence in these metaverse worlds.
Tech giants are competing to build their own Metaverse or OASIS equivalent (Ready Player One). But are they really building the real open Decentralized Metaverse? Or more like centralized controlled multiple Metaverse worlds which don’t communicate with each other. Well, only time will tell us. Currently, we cannot call it a metaverse as it is more like a Betaverse. (My autocorrect still doesn’t have the word Metaverse in it which proves we are still in the embryo phase)
So what is really the Metaverse? According to our favorite Wikipedia, the term “metaverse” has its origins in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash as a portmanteau of “meta” and “universe.” If we compare it to the real world or the universe, the metaverse is the digital universe. Just like the universe has infinite worlds, the metaverse also consists of infinite worlds. So saying you are working on the metaverse means you are building the universe with multiple worlds that talk to each other. OASIS (Ready Player One) was a metaverse as users could jump between multiple worlds. But it was also centralized. So are we building the Metaverse? Will the worlds developed by Meta, EPIC, SandBox, etc talk to each other? Will they be decentralized or multiple centralized worlds talking to each other with treaties? I guess it is too early to say.
There are three types of civilizations based on the Kardashev scale. Humans are still not considered a Type I civilization yet. In simple words, it means we are not even inter-planetary nor have we discovered other alien worlds out there. We are still trying to survive on this planet.
Currently, the Metaverse is also not Type I. We have barely even scratched the surface to build the first worlds and many companies are trying to build these. In these worlds, having more than 100 players in the same room at the same time is a challenge that companies are trying to solve. We have to solve and build on many fundamental blocks of the metaverse before we can call it “The Metaverse”. So lets settle for “Betaverse” for now!! (Or Alphaverse or add verse to anything)
Metaverse will be considered built when millions or people will travel between the worlds with their own digital identity, trade, socialize, interact, have jobs and maybe even live in it apart from essential human body functions. We will get there and the work has already started. Our World in future is going to be weirder and more exciting (maybe cleaner and safer with people spending more time in the digital world 🤷🏽♂️).
“Rome was not build in a day” — Someone
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Full Disclosure: Yes, I am also building a metaverse world called Varaverse.
Fun fact: Type III civilizations can tame the earth and build supercomputers around it with an infinite source of energy. They then have uploaded their consciousness into that super-computer so they can become immortal. Essentially they have chosen to live in the metaverse instead of the real world.