Uncle Marco, do you know what the Metaverse is? If the answer is no, don’t worry, you are in good company! Few people can answer this question accurately, because the Metaverse as we imagine it does not exist (yet)! All we have are proto-metaverses that try to approach this innovation… even though its history begins in the 1980s. In this article, we will try to shed some light on the virtual universe that promises to revolutionize the way we live, work and play! Here’s a brief guide to the metaverse!

The history of the Metaverse

Contrary to what we might think, the concept of the Metaverse or synthetic universe is by no means recent but has existed for 40 years in science fiction and 20 years in the real world, in various more or less refined forms. It is fair to say, however, that in the last 3 years, technological advancement around matter has radically accelerated.

Hiro Protagonist’s Metaverse

The idea of a virtual square, created to interact with other users, became popular with films such as Tron (1982) and Total Recall (1990). But the term Metaverse appeared for the first in 1992, in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The story’s protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, is among the first people to invest in the Metaverse, like the good hacker he is, earning the perfect escape from a not-so-pleasant life in the real world. In the book, the origin of the word can be traced back to the concept of metaphor. The virtual place is a metaphor for the real one, and its similarities with the actual sense we give to the word Metaverse today do not end there: Stephenson’s metaverse is also three-dimensional, accessible through special headsets, experienceable in first person and has partially customizable avatars.

The Metaverse of Gen Xs

Even in real life, the metaverse concept has long fascinated many. Active Worlds, a 3D platform created in 1995 and still functioning today, allows users to create their little universes with customized 3D content. Second Life followed in 2003, allowing players to create an avatar, for a kind of parallel life, using text and voice chat in a virtual world!

The META dream

It is only since 2021 that the term Metaverse has become part of our everyday life, thanks to the rebranding signed META, formerly Facebook. Since then, major players in the tech industry have set their sights on this branch of research: Microsoft, NVIDIA, Roblox, Epic Games, and Niantic, to name a few.

What’s the Metaverse for?

Even though this is a guide to the Metaverse made by CHRONES., we will not be the ones to define its potential! We will let the very companies mentioned above speak for us! For the CEO of NVIDIA, the Metaverse is a 3D extension of the Internet today, with an economy much larger than the real-world economy. For Mark Zuckerberg, it is a successor to the mobile Internet that will elevate physical world experiences and be co-created and built responsibly. And for the CEO of Epic Games, the Metaverse is an expansive, communal, and virtual world where people can interact with brands, intellectual properties, and one another with experiences spanning all categories, beyond gaming.

So… How do I visit the Metaverse?

According to predictions, the Metaverse has yet to be a reality and will not be fully ready for another decade. There are two main reasons for this delay:

• Lack of interoperability

The different platforms that exist today do not communicate with each other. This means that it is not currently possible to share experiences, data, information or other resources between these virtual worlds.

• Technology still immature

Although hardware and software are making great strides, a closer look at the overall architecture of the Metaverse suggests that we have not yet reached the necessary maturity. 

We are at a stage of proto-metaverses, that is, virtual worlds that anticipate its main features but do not fully realize them.

We strongly believe in the potentialities of the Metaverse… and while waiting for our personal SEPHIROT ® – verse, let’s play anytime we can!

Photo by Phil Shaw on Unsplash