‘Metawares’: The next Internet revolution?

Imagine a world where you could sit in the same bed of a friend who lives thousands of miles away, or say the virtual version of your workplace while on the beach.

Welcome to Metawares: A vision of the future is fantastic, but tech titans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Build betting The next big leap in the evolution of the Internet.

Metawares really mean science fiction: the word was coined by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, which has no people Virtual reality headsets Communicate in the digital world like games.

The book has long enjoyed a cult status among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs – but has become one of the hottest passwords in the metawares technology industry in recent months, with companies pouring millions of dollars into its development.

Facebook sparked further excitement on Monday by announcing the creation of a new team to work on Zuckerberg’s vision of metawares.

“This will be the biggest part of the next chapter in the technology industry,” Zuckerberg told technology website The Verge last week. He predicts that over the next five years, Facebook will transform “primarily from a social media company to a metawares company.”

Like many technical terms, the definition of metawares also depends on who you are listening to. But more broadly, it involves mixing the physical world with the digital world.

With the help of zoom Reality glasses, When walking around a city, it allows you to see information before your eyes, from traffic and pollution updates to local history.

But metawares enthusiasts are dreaming about the future, in which the idea could be further expanded, allowing them to move into digital systems that can feel real, such as a nightclub or a mountain top.

Zuckerberg is particularly excited about the idea of ​​being able to reunite colleagues as workers are tired of video-conferences during epidemics. Virtual room It feels like they are face to face.

Digital Casinos and Gucci Handbags

As players enter the fast-paced digital worlds, the game offers an insight into what metawares will ultimately be, blunting virtual entertainment into the real world economy.

In the early 2000s, second life games allowed people to create digital avatars that could communicate and shop with real money.

Most recently, lands in Decentralland – a The virtual world Visitors can watch concerts, visit art galleries, and gamble in casinos. C is a cryptocurrency that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The popular video game Fortnight has expanded into other forms of entertainment, with 12.3 million people signing up for last year’s rapper Travis Scott show. Fortnight’s owners said Epic Games’ $ 1 billion fundraiser recently raised in April would support its “metawares vision.”

The digital version of the Gucci bag, which went on sale in May at Roblox, a popular gaming site among children, sold for more than version 4,100.

Kathy Hawkle, a technical consultant who advises companies on metawares, said the next generation is more comfortable with the idea of ​​connecting real meaning to virtual experiences and objects.

“My first concert was in a theater. My son’s first concert (American rapper) was at Lap Nas X in Roblox. It’s not real to him because it happened in Roblox,” he said.

Exciting, or dystopian?

Hawkle rejects the dystopian view presented in “Snow Crash” of a virtual world where people go to escape the horrors of reality, which reappeared two decades later in the novel and in the Steven Spielberg film “Ready Player One”.

She didn’t think it was necessary for Metawares to cover their neighbor’s house with virtual reality headsets that everyone could watch around the clock.

Facebook has invested heavily in its portal video calling devices, Oculus headsets and technology that allows it to feel like it is somewhere else, such as its Horizon virtual reality operating system.

But Zuckerberg also acknowledged that existing virtual reality headsets are “a bit clunky” and require a lot of development for the experiences he describes.

Wetbush technology analyst Michael Butcher said it was difficult to predict whether Facebook could truly become a “metawares company” in five years.

“But they definitely have a huge benefit because a billion people log in every day,” he said. “If they offer entertainment options, they will succeed.”

© 2021 AFP