There is no point in me reinventing the wheel so I have put Mark's video above to help explain what the Metaverse (specifically for Facebook) is all about.
After seeing the video do you get it? I mean "really" get it?
This is why I cannot sleep. I am SO excited about the Metaverse my mind will not stop thinking about all of the possibilities.
I described it to my dad this morning as he lay in bed. This is what I said in a language he would understand:
Think of the metaverse as futuristic websites which instead of viewing them in 2D (like a book page) you instead view them in 3D and can also interact with what you see on them (like you click a mouse now, in the metaverse you will be able to touch things to act like a click). So, for example, you know you go on websites like Facebook.com, Google.com and eBay.com, well those are all on the World Wide Web and Internet. Those same websites will most likely move across into being on the metaverse and so instead of seeing things on them in 2D you will actually be able to (with a headset on) walk into an eBay auction room or someone's actual room in their virtual house, and you will be able to view that object in 3D as if it was real life.
Amazingly, at 92 he got it. Maybe because we had already spoken about NFTs - but that's another story!
As we watched the rays of sun coming in through the windows we kept coming up with more and more things the metaverse could do. Here are a few of the mind-blowing ideas - With a metaverse headset on:
- You can meet with your friends in a virtual room (any room type you want) and play games or chat or whatever. Your friends could be on the other side of the world, it would not matter, as long as they are on the internet connected to the metaverse, they can join you.
- You can sit and have dinner with your family who may be scattered around the world - you could even bring in old recorded metaverse clips of family who have passed on and have them sitting with you.
- You can bring a specialist doctor who lives in another country into an operation room to give specialist advice to the doctor who is operating on a patient but may not have the expertise.
- You can give those who are disabled or elderly an opportunity to do anything they want in the virtual realm of the metaverse.
- You could walk down a Google street and actually view the houses and everything else in 3D as if you were standing there in real life.
- You could teach children in virtual classrooms. The benefits being things like actually placing them in a history lesson. You could place them in the dinasaur era to interact with their surroundings. We know this type of interactive self and tutored teaching is far more powerful. Note, you would not need to take them to school and you would not need home care because you too could work from home via your VR headset ready for when they need you to take them to the loo (if they are toddlers of course)!
- You can hold work meetings and properly interact as if in real life - actually - better than real life! For example, whilst you are talking with your colleagues around a table you could stop and ask "Alexa" or "Siri" (or whatever the name is of the computer) to take notes, or add a risk to a risk register - and whilst you carry on talking to your colleagues that computer is also assessing that risk and then later in the meeting presenting you with a risk assessment based on the world's leading risk assessment scores. [Sorry appreciate this one is a bit of a nerdy office worker one!]
I can literally go on and on and on. Ideas keep popping into my mind, hence I cannot sleep. I feel like a kid again.
I haven't even got onto the impacts of virtual / augmented reality mixing with the real world. For example, you could have some kind of Alexa projection box on your ceiling, to which you could ask it to project a screen in front of you. So instead of holding a heavy iPad to watch YouTube, instead the Alex ceiling device would beam down a projection in mid-air of a screen. Sensing your finger tips you could also touch that screen like an iPad. And because this is virtual reality where the realms of the physical stop, you could also ask Alexa to expand that screen to be a big cinema screen.
Like I said at the beginning, this is all mind blowing, and so exciting.
Still not convinced? Still firmly wanting to exist in the real physical world?
No problem, of course you can live in the real physical world. You can still play in parks, walk the streets and go shopping (although, wouldn't you also like to walk through a remade shopping centre from your childhood so you could reminisce about old times and perhaps take your child shopping there with you to show them how you experienced shopping).
The physical world would improve too, as you may find that although the population is growing, the fact that more people are on their virtual reality headsets, they will mostly stay indoors, leaving the outdoors more empty for you to enjoy.
Plus there are the new industries that will emerge providing exciting new jobs. Remember the metaverse is endless, there are pretty much no limitations on what you can do in it and the fun jobs it will create.
I hope you feel as excited as I do. I wanted to share this excitement with you and hope it makes you feel better thinking about the future. In fact, you should feel better about the present because virtual reality / the metaverse is already here! Enjoy!
Author: Christian Jacques Bennett*
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