Yes, yes and no. Say Fortnite being “metaverse” would be the same as saying Google is “internet”. Even if you could theoretically spend a lot of time Fortnite, socializing, shopping, learning, and playing games, that doesn’t necessarily mean it covers the entire scope of the metaverse.
On the other hand, it is also correct to say that Google builds parts of the internet — from physical data center to layers of security—It is also correct to say that Fortnite Epic Games creators are building parts of the metaverse. And it’s not the only company to do so. Some of that work will be done by tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook — the more recent ones rebranded to Meta to reflect this work, although we are still unfamiliar with the name. Various companies — including Nvidia, Unity, Roblox, and even Snap — are working on building infrastructure that can become supermarkets.
At this point, most discussion of what the metaverse entails begins to stall. We have a vague sense of what currently exists that we can type call metaverse and we know which company is investing in this idea, but we still don’t know what it is To be. Facebook — sorry, Meta, still don’t understand — thought it would including fake houses you can invite all your friends to hangout. Microsoft seems to think this might be related to virtual meeting room to train new employees or chat with your remote colleagues.
The pitches for these visions of the future range from optimistic to purely fan fiction. At one point during the presentation… Meta… about the metaverse, the company show a scenario in which a young woman was sitting on the couch scrolling through Instagram when she saw a video a friend posted of a concert taking place halfway around the world.
The video then cuts to the concert, where the woman appears in an Avengers-style hologram. She could make eye contact with her friend who was there, they could both hear the concert and they could see the braille floating above the stage. This looks great, but it’s not really advertising an actual product, or even a possible future product. In fact, it brings us to the biggest problem with the “metaverse.”
Why does Metaverse include holograms?
When the Internet first appeared, it started with a series of technological innovations, like the ability to allow computers to talk to each other over long distances or the ability to hyperlink from one website to another. These technical features are the building blocks that are then used to create the abstract structures we know on the internet: websites, apps, social networks, and everything else based on elements. that core. And that’s to say nothing of the convergence of interface innovations that aren’t quite part of the Internet but are still necessary to make it work, such as monitors, keyboards, mice, and touchscreens. .
With the metaverse, yes some new building blocks in place, like the ability to hold hundreds of people in a single server instance (ideally future versions of the metaverse will be able to handle thousands or even millions of people at once), or Motion tracking tools can distinguish where a person is looking or where their hand is. These new technologies can be very exciting and feel futuristic.
