Will Metaverse End The Internet?
Is the world we know about to change? Think back to the world before 1994. If you need to remember, I will ask this question this way. Remember the world before the internet became a basic human need? In other words, do you remember the society before people used the internet for their daily work? Think about it. What would happen to the world if the internet disappeared at this moment? Can you read this article? Can you live without the Internet? You think yes you can. But you know? The production of goods and services in this world depends on the Internet. So, if the internet disappears, human beings will no longer be able to move forward as a society. The internet has become essential for us to do most of our daily life activities including communication, learning, and purchasing. But is the nature of the Internet about to change?
I am talking about an idea that has been building for some time. At present, this idea has reached a certain milestone. It happened much faster than I thought. The reason for that is the human desire to have new experiences. We can explain this in different ways from different knowledge frameworks. Whatever the reason, it’s human nature. If an experience is something special than what we experience every day, the value of that experience increases even more. About 600 wealthy people applied for the space travel launched by Virgin Galactic at a cost of about 350,000 US dollars. This explains that they have spent a lot of money to experience something that cannot be experienced on Earth.
When people observed the process of having an experience in modern science, what people saw was that an experience is the result of the signals coming from the five senses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, and skin, being processed by the neuron network in the human brain. That’s what an experience is. Even as you read this article, the signals coming from your eyes are being processed by your neuronal system and giving you an experience. Can we recreate any experience we want by changing the signals that are received naturally or the way the received signals are processed by the neuron network? This idea has been in the mind of man since many decades ago. Even science fiction has been written about this. I meant that can we use technology to go to a virtual world whenever we want.
I will explain this with a simple example. Imagine you are standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt. At this point, think about the signals you receive from your five senses. That said things like what the eyes can see, what the skin can feel, and the smell of the nose. What if you could artificially send these signals to all five of your senses while you are standing in your living room? Do you think that this is now in the living room of the house?
There is another method for this. What would you think if the neuronal patterns generated in your brain while you are standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt could be transmitted directly to your brain without artificial external signals?
If you do one of these two methods exactly, even if you are sitting on a chair in the living room, you will feel that you are standing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. There is no reason for you to think that this is an artificially created virtual world.
The first of these methods, i.e. creating a virtual world by artificially giving signals outside the five senses, is relatively easy. Nowadays, people are experimenting with the second method as well. The Neuralink project is an example of that. But currently, man is trying more for the first method. That means creating a virtual world by giving artificial signals from outside. At present, these tests are showing success. The best example of that success is the virtual reality headset. This device tries to give the signals to the eyes more realistically. Through this, we can see the depth and size of the frames more realistically. Virtual reality visuals are still not as realistic as real-world visuals, but my idea is that they have come very close.
Now let’s think about the signal received by the ear, i.e. the sound. With devices like noise-canceling earbuds, we can artificially hear only the sounds we want.
A device like Teslasuit can provide different sensations to the whole body. If something in the environment shown by the eyes hits your body, these special clothes can create a sensation as well as the sensation you feel when it hits you. Devices like the catwalk treadmill can make you walk in the virtual world as you walk in the real world.
Think about this. Can a man able to tell the difference between the virtual world and the real world while walking on a catwalk treadmill wearing a virtual reality headset, noise-canceling earbuds, and a Teslasuit?
Several large organizations in the world are now working in this sector. Many leading organizations in the world with money and power such as Google, Microsoft, FaceBook, Samsung, Nvidia, Unreal, and Apple have been investing money to develop this virtual reality concept for some time. What do you think is the reason?
Big rich companies believe that a big change will happen through Virtual reality like in the year 1994, the Internet became social and the world completely changed. This is also the opinion of scholars who have been looking at this sector for some time. All of them want to be the forerunners of this revolution that is about to happen. In the technical world, this concept is called metaverse.
Because of the value of this concept in the business world, FaceBook, which owns many companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, changed its brand name to Meta a few months ago. By this, they mean that they are the pioneers of the metaverse concept. However several other companies are conducting tests even at this moment to make the metaverse concept a reality.
Let’s see what this metaverse is. It is difficult to fully explain this in a short article. But I will try to give a basic idea about this through this article.
You may be a student, a job seeker, or a business person. Because of this, some identity is formed for you as a person in the society. Your identity can have value in society. In this way, the value built up in society for various things becomes a consensus. For example, your degree, job, or business may have some value in society. And the value of some things may vary according to different societies. I will give you an example. There is a financial difference in value between water in a glass cup at home and water in a bottle sold in a store. A bottle of water is expensive. But in a country like southern Madagascar where there is an acute water shortage, there is no difference in value between the water in the bottle and the water in the glass cup. The reason for that is that water is important to the people of that country. The plastic bottle with water is not important to them.
I will now tell you the reason for the above example. This happened in 2011. A certain person buys a digital sword from a computer game for US$16,000. Think about it. A digital sword is not something to be caught between. It can only be used within the relevant computer game.
Why did that happen? The reason for that is the value given to the goods in the computer world in that person’s personal reality. In other words, he has more desire to buy something in the computer world than to buy something in the real world. That means he prefers to do something in the computer world rather than doing something in the real world. I will give another example. A person named Stephen Barnes has spent 2 million US dollars on the digital game called Modern War.
People are getting addicted to virtual worlds in different ways like computer games. Let us explain this from our own lives. You have social network accounts like Facebook. Most of the time you post only important, successful, and positive things in your life on social media. By that, you are creating another identity in the social network. Some people go to great lengths to post something on social media. Therefore, gradually people are getting used to giving more value to the digital world. Some already value digital worlds more than their real world.
Think for yourself. Sometimes the identity you create in the digital world may be more valuable to you than the identity you have in the real world. You may feel that the social or financial transactions you make in the digital world are more valuable than what happens in the real world.
I will give an example of this. Think of a time with your best friends. Even in such a case, you may be using social media without talking to each other. That means that at that time, you have felt the events happening in the digital world are more valuable than the events in the real world.
This is a characteristic of a metaverse. Simply, a place where there is a group of people created digitally and operated by various conventions and legal systems can be called a metaverse. According to a certain report, between 2 and 3 billion people in this world are playing digital games at any given time. People on social networks have not calculated this. There are between 2 and 3 billion people who play computer games alone.
I will give an example of how close the concept of Metaverse is to man. About 2 lakh people participated in the music concert which is said to have the largest number of people in the world. However, 12 million people participated in the concert held by a certain famous singer in the Fortnite metaverse in 2020.
Still, these happen only from computer or mobile phone screens. It’s all two-dimensional. Think about this. Even if it is a two-dimensional screen, how much we are addicted to mobile phones? The companies researching to develop Metaverse are trying to create it in 3D. Nowadays, when we need some information, we use a service like Google. With this kind of service, we get websites with details. But this system is going to change in the future. That said, the way data is displayed is going to be changed. In the future, we will not get two-dimensional data. We will get 3D data which are difficult to distinguish from the real world.
I will explain this also with an example. Imagine that you are searching for information about Greek history within the Metaverse. Then you will not get something written by someone. What you get is ancient Greece in 3D within the Metaverse. You can walk the streets of ancient Greece. You can talk to people. Can touch things around. The virtual world is created and displayed in front of your five senses. Huge companies are trying to bring the whole life of man, including work and entertainment, into a digital world.
I will tell you about another wonderful test. This is done by the Nvidia company. They are trying to create a digital copy of the earth as realistically as possible. If this design is successful, you can see 3D images anywhere in the world from your room. The trick they use to keep you there for a long time is to create a large number of virtual worlds. Then you can switch from one Metaverse to another Metaverse whenever you like. Think for yourself how much people will be addicted to this kind of Metaverse world. All big companies want your time. The longer you stay in the Metaverse, the more money they can earn.
Something that goes very well with the Metaverse concept is already gaining popularity among people. That is cryptocurrency. In this article, I will not write about cryptocurrency. Because cryptocurrency is a wide-ranging topic that needs to be discussed separately. I will simply say this about it. This is also a type of currency. Society has given a certain value to a currency note that you have. It’s a convention. That means a value created by human society. In reality, a currency note is just a piece of paper. Cryptocurrency is like that. A digital currency. I want to say this. Cryptocurrency helps a lot to build the Metaverse concept.
The value of digital things in today’s society is gradually increasing. Many things like digital clothes, digital lands, and digital artworks are now being sold all over the world. These are called non-fungible tokens.
The opinion of the scholars is that after about 10 years, all these things will become common things used by ordinary people daily. But if there is a third world war, the concept of Metaverse will not be usable by ordinary people for a long time. But if not, this technological revolution will definitely happen in the next ten years. Maybe sooner than we think. Because newly born children grow up with this technology. So they get used to it faster than us.
How will the world change because of things like this? Will everything be digital, except for a few things like air, water, food, clothes, housing, medicine, and the basic needs of man? On the one hand, robotics and artificial intelligence are developing. Therefore, most of the work that needs to be done by human labor is now done by artificial intelligence and robotics. Will man be a creature trapped in the Metaverse due to this technological advancement?
Another said: In the future, two extreme groups with different views will emerge. One group lives in digital worlds like the Metaverse. Others reject virtual things like the Metaverse. The reason for that is that there is a spiritual concept taking place in the world today. They are a group of people who want to live in harmony with nature.
I have a question about the future of human society. According to Eastern sciences, the world we think of as the real world is also an illusion created in the mind. Buddha also preached that this world is an illusion that we have imagined. But now man is trying to create another magical world called Metaverse. One can think like this. If the Metaverse is developed to the maximum, people will not be able to distinguish it from the real world. So is it possible that we are now in a fully developed Metaverse?
I hope this article provided valuable knowledge and understand to you. There can be many people who would like to read this article. Please be kind to share this on social media. It is a big help to me. Furthermore, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment in the below comment section. Your comments are highly appreciated. Thanks for your time in visiting and reading.
