The future of internet is 3D. Are you ready?
Dive with me the rabbit hole of Metaverse and how it will revolutionise everything
1 nugget to remember
“The hardest technology challenge of our time may be fitting a supercomputer into the frame of normal-looking glasses.”
— Mark Zuckerberg
2 quotes to reflect on
“It [the metaverse] is a 3D extension of the internet that is going to be much, much bigger than the 3D physical world that we enjoy today. The economy of the virtual world will be much, much bigger than the economy of the physical world.
— Jensen Huang, CEO Nvidia
“This vision of the Metaverse is similar to how the average person understood the internet in the 1990s—it was “The Information Superhighway” or “World Wide Web,” which we’d “surf” with our keyboards and “mouse”—just now in 3D.”
— The Metaverse, Matthew Ball
5 key facts about the universe metaverse…
1. Popularised by “Snow Crash”
The term "Metaverse" was coined in 1992-novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
It imagines a "whole new world" parallel to ours — a Metaverse accessible through TV: 2.5x the Earth size and occupied by 2x population of New York 🌎
Fast Forward 30 years to 2022, we still seem far away from a world like this. But…
2. The BIG COMPANIES are building it
Some BIG companies are moving fast, quite fast on metaverse:
Meta to spend $30-33 billion capital in 2023 💰
Microsoft already has a suite of offerings: Minecraft, Activision, HoloLens, XBox, Azure, OpenAI 👽
Apple is secretively filing 100s of patents on AR/VR/etc a year ㊙️
But, what are they building?
3. Let’s define the metaverse
It's TOO EARLY to imagine what EXACTLY is the metaverse, but a few themes are emerging: 🎢
Massively scaled
Interoperable network
of Real-time Rendered 3D Virtual Worlds
Experienced Synchronously & Persistently
With Continuity of data
and unlimited users
and Individual sense of presence
Is it sounding too technical? Oh well, there are many attempts to define it right. A few below:
4. Gaming Orgs are making their own metaverses
Gaming companies are creating their own virtual worlds for decades e.g. "Adpot Me!" game by Roblox was played over 30 billion times in 2017-21
75% children aged 9-12 in the US regularly played a Roblox game in Q2 2020
But unlike THE internet, there are many "metaverses" today. The internet was propelled and developed by governments with non-profit ethos
Hence, we can send ANY file ANYWHERE today over the internet and the receiver can easily decode the content
But metaverses today are being developed privately in closed circles. This is limiting innovation and scale
5. A billion-user metaverse will require a BIG RESET
With today’s technology, we can build a "by-definition" Metaverse with JUST 150 individuals 🐙
To let “billions” of us access the Metaverse, we’d need to come together and solve these 5 key problems:
Interoperability
Synchronous and Persistent
Real-time Computations
Physical Devices
Universal Standard Protocols
The road to Metaverse is full of HUGE challenges and troughs 🎢
But I’m extremely excited for how it’ll impact our work, play, leisure, learnings and relationships 🈺
Are you excited? Let me know in comments ✍️
Source
Metaverse: and How it Will Revolutionise Everything
Thanks for reading,
Curious Carrot 🥕