Technological revolution is coming: the Metaverse

In the morning, people go to work and chat, work, watch videos or listen to music, staring at their mobile phones. During the day, many people sit online in front of monitors, hundreds of millions of people around the world spend their free time in front of screens or VR goggles with video games on their heads, and teenagers spend hours every day in Minecraft, Sandbox, etc., not in the square or park, but they meet in Roblox.

In fact, we already live an increasing part of our lives in the digital space, only for the time being mostly on web2 interfaces. Meta-revolutions, digital platforms whose foundations are still being laid, but where hundreds of millions or even billions of people can communicate, have fun, work and do business in a few years, can make a revolutionary change in this. The world’s largest companies are competing to be the first to provide an attractive digital environment for their customers, users, and clients to further chain them to themselves.

The word metaverse is linked to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 dystopian cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, but it was also featured in the world of experience at the heart of Earnest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One. However, the metaverse is not just from the world of sci-fi, similar online communities have grown into more and more aspects of online existence in recent decades, growing out of video games in particular.

Young people in particular are living more and more of their lives in cyberspace, and covid has only reinforced the trend. According to a study published by a German health fund, DAK, the use of social media and video games among children aged 12-17 increased by at least 60 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, with playing time on weekdays by as much as 75 percent during the first closures, and time spent on social media rose from 116 minutes to 66 percent to 193 minutes a day. According to Qustodio, the next generation of users will spend most of their time in front of the screen watching online videos or social networking sites, but games are already in third place.

2021’s biggest news about the metaverse was when Facebook announced in late October that the company would be renamed Meta, the company’s focus will be on creating the metaverse, an online world where users meet, play, work. Meta would spend 10 billion dollars on this and hire 10,000 workers in Europe.

Last September, Seoul was the first major city in the world to announce that it is “moving into the metaverse,” creating a complete virtual ecosystem in all areas of urban administration, such as economic, cultural, tourist, educational and residential services, the city’s most popular tourist attractions in cyberspace. they will recreate a platform that is scheduled to launch from 2023.

Last November, a boat was sold in the Sandbox for $ 650,000, or more than $ 200 million. The virtual ship called Metaflower is modestly called only the first luxury mega yacht in the metaverse, from which the luxury is embodied in the fact that the three-story ship also has two helipads, a hot tub and a DJ counter.

Also last November, a blockchain investor called Tokens.com bought a virtual property that claims to be the largest amount of land purchase in the metaverse to date. The "land" purchased is in a metaverse called Decentraland, and the buyer allegedly paid $ 2.4 million for a cryptocurrency for it.

Paris Hilton has also entered the metaverse, creating an island called Robox in Roblox late last year, which also houses a copy of his Beverly Hills fork and its associated dog fork. At Paris World, fans can pay for virtual outfits with microtransactions or just to tour the island of Paris Hilton with a jet ski. Hilton also held a virtual party in her little world on New Year’s Eve.

Last December, Nike acquired a digital shoe company, RTFKT, which had previously drawn attention to the fact that it had created a shoe collection in collaboration with an 18-year-old cryptographer, selling a total of 3.1 million virtual shoes in 7 minutes. for dollars. Earlier this year, Samsung created a digital version of its flagship store in New York at Decentraland, a virtual store called the 837X.

Interest in the metaversion is also evident in how Google searches on the topic have evolved. The term metaverse has been searched for by far more people since March last year than in previous years. But looking back at the graph, renaming Facebook to Meta last fall changed everything, and interest has been unbroken ever since.

I use 1text.com to check the uniqueness of my articles.

Images are sourced from Pixabay.

Resources are indicated by links in the text.