Tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella would have you believe that the Metaverse is the future of the internet. The concept of the Metaverse is not new. It’s blip on the technology radar has been tracked for more than a decade as Virtual Reality. If you are familiar with the movie name Avatar, which refers to a genetically engineered body operated from the brain of a remotely located human, you are nearly half the way into understanding the Metaverse. At the most basic level, the Metaverse is virtual reality.
Inside the Internet
Metaverse – an embodied internet that you’re inside of instead of just looking at
For decades human beings have interacted with the internet through elements such as a website, a game, a chat program, bots and more recently virtual assistants. The Metaverse wants to take this a step further by putting the human at the centre of the action – An embodied internet that the human is inside of instead of outside. One way to get your head around the concept of the Metaverse is with the help of the pop group Abba. Mamma mia! Yes, hold that thought.
Bjorn again
We’re truly sailing in uncharted waters. With the help of our younger selves, we travel into the future
If you, like me, have been an Abba fan, then you would have been delighted to hear that Abba are back. But not as you’ve ever seen them before. It’s been four decades since the Swedish pop band, responsible for some of the most recognisable songs in music history, last released new music. But Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad are back with a new album – Abba Voyages. Even more astonishing is that there will be new live shows too in 2022. One finer detail is that Abba themselves won’t be present at the shows. Instead, they’ll be there in digital form. De-aged to appear just how they were at the height of their career in the 1970s.
This time around the talent behind the camera is as astounding as the talent in front of it. A team of tech experts will take 3D footage from 160 cameras and together with 1,000 digital artists use archive footage of the band and roll back the four decades of ageing to teleport the 70s band to the roaring Covid world of the 2020s. Fans who will attend the Abba concert in May 2002 in London, will be interacting with a digital world. Now, imagine if the fans were not present in person but their digital versions attended the Abba concert. That will be the Metaverse! A place where all our senses are engaged and stimulated, while we access the experience unfettered as the digital, online world.
Metaverse
A metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection
The Metaverse is a mega scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously by a limitless number of users. Individuals who are part of the Metaverse will have an individual sense of presence, together with all their digital artefacts, such as avatars, identity, history, and digital objects continuing to exist as if they were real physical things. The technologies that make up the Metaverse are Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). However, you do not need AR and VR kits to access the Metaverse.
A Metaverse is a place where the merging of the real and digital domains creates an environment that is as interactive and experiential as the real world. When online we can access information that we want in a matter of seconds, but we can’t live it, feel it, experience it or share it with friends like we can with real-life experiences. The Metaverse will enable us to create virtual environments and avatars/actors who can react and interact with us in real-time. At present many platforms enable us to create virtual identities, avatars, and inventories. But these are all tied to just one platform. The Metaverse could allow the digital elements (personas, avatars etc.) that we create to be taken everywhere just as easily as we can copy our profile picture from one social network to another.
Mamma mia, here we go again. My, my, will we be able to resist the Metaverse?
