The term Metaverse is a hot topic of conversation recently, with many tech giants like Facebook and Microsoft staking claims. But what is the Metaverse?
Author Neal Stephenson is credited with coining the term “metaverse” in his 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash,” in which he envisioned lifelike avatars who live in realistic 3D buildings and other virtual reality environments. Correspondingly, Metaverse in a technical sense is another name of Internet of Everything (IoE), a concept started in the early 2000’s which led to Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications, a scale down version of IoE.
Since then, various developments have made milestones on the way toward a real Metaverse, an online virtual world which incorporates augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 3D holographic avatars, video and other means of communication. As the Metaverse expands, it will offer a hyper-real alternative world or what Comic fans call parallel universe. But this description is like talking about “Frontend “in apps development only without explaining “Backend” side of the apps, to understand that side of this new X-verse we need to look at Metaverse from a different perspective.
Different Perspective of The Metaverse
The Metaverse” is bringing together people, process, data, and things (real and virtual) to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before-turning information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries”.
In simple terms: Metaverse is the intelligent connection of people, process, data and things. The Metaverse describes a world where billions of objects have sensors to detect measure and assess their status; all connected over public or private networks using standard and proprietary protocols.
Pillars of The Metaverse
- People: Connecting people in more relevant, valuable ways
- Data: Converting data into intelligence to make better decisions
- Process: Delivering the right information to the right person (or machine) at the right time
- Things: Physical and virtual devices and objects connected to the Internet and each other for intelligent decision making.
Challenges facing the Metaverse
No new technologies or concepts without challenges, and the Metaverse is no exception:
- Identity Management: it’s difficult to confirm ID in current Web 2.0 apps, with Metaverse the problem is scaled up as we expand the use of the products and services, the last thing you want is to create a wild west in Metaverse.
- Security, Safety, and Privacy (SSP): As devices/people get more connected and collect more data resulting in accelerating the Metaverse expansion at a speed close to the speed of the real universe, privacy, safety and security concerns will increase too. How companies decide to balance customer SSP with this wealth of Metaverse data will be critical for the future of the Metaverse and more important customers’ trust of the Metaverse and any future X-verse versions.
- Finance in Metaverse: using cryptocurrency is a challenge by itself, using it as a way of payment in Metaverse will add more complications to what is still unregulated payment system, one of the options to overcome this is to consider CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency)
- Laws, regulations, and protections: new world and new territory for the law to explore and define the responsible parties and create new regulations to protect everyone using Metaverse including Intellectual Properties with the new found businesses like NFTs
- The emotional and mental impact of living in Metaverse: the same issues of non-stop social media usage and online gaming will transfer to the Metaverse on a large scale with another dimension added with near real-time interactions, this could create a lot of mental issues in the real world, and the line between real and imaginary world will be blurred with actions and words used in both worlds.
- Standardization of the Metaverse: this is usually one of the toughest parts in the early lifecycle of any new technology as everyone wants to be the “standard” and dominate the market, standards will cover all hardware/software, process, protocols and make interoperability fundamental to the design and implementation of the Metaverse.
The Future?
Data is embedded in everything we do; every business needs its own flavor of data strategy which requires a comprehensive data leadership. The Metaverse will create tens of millions of new objects and sensors, all generating real-time data which will add more value to their products and services for all the companies who will use Metaverse as another avenue of business. Enterprises will make extensive use of Metaverse technology, and there will be a wide range of products sold into various markets vertical and horizontal, an endless list of products and services.
For example: In E-commerce the Metaverse provides a whole new revenue stream for digital goods in a synchronous way instead of the current traditional 2D way of click and buy. In human resources (HR) significant training resources will be done with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) that are overlaying instructions in a real-world environment and giving somebody a step-by-step playbook on how to put complex machine together or run a device or try a new product all will be done with virtual objects at the heart of the Metaverse. While in sales/marketing, connecting with customers virtually and sharing virtual experience of the product or service will be common similar to our virtual meetings during the past two years in the middle of Covid but the Metaverse will make it more real and more productive. Crypto products including NFTs will be the natives of the Metaverse adding another block to Web 3.0 puzzle.
The pandemic forced us to be more online and accept many actions to be virtual which was like a preview for the Metaverse in 2D, the real Metaverse is 3D with time as the 4th dimension, but in the Metaverse we control time and space because we crate both in the Metaverse.
Finally, similar to Cloud Computing we will have Private-Metaverse, Hybrid-Metaverse and Public-Metaverse with all possible applications and services in each type, and companies will benefit from all options based on their capabilities and needs. The main goal here is to reach Metaverse as a Service (MaaS) and see a label of “Metaverse Certified “on products and services.
Ahmed Banafa, Author the Books:
Secure and Smart Internet of Things (IoT) Using Blockchain and AI
Blockchain Technology and Applications
References
New tribes of the Metaverse — Community-owned economies
Top business applications for the metaverse
Everyone wants to own the metaverse including Facebook and Microsoft. But what exactly is it?
Internet of Everything gains momentum
Gartner’s Internet of Everything
Internet of Everything gains momentum
Gartner’s Internet of Everything
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