The world of metaphysics.. what does the future hold for us?

"There is no limit to reality except your imagination.. you can do what you want and appear the way you want.. you can go anywhere, without leaving your place.." These phrases were mentioned by the hero Wade Watts, in his description of the virtual oasis in the science fiction novel. Ready Player One by American author Ernest Klein, which Steven Spielberg made into a 2018 movie.

The film revolves around the year 2045, about a competition taking place in a virtual world (Oasis), in which the heroes move through virtual reality glasses. This film paints a picture similar to the Metaverse that is being prepared today.

There has been widespread talk about metaverses recently, and some see it as a 3D version of the web, the detailed features of which are still vague. The metaverse merges entities from the real world through their digital twins, in 3D digital worlds using virtual reality technologies and avatars, and holograms may join them in the future.

Metaverse in general is a virtual place where we work, learn and entertain ourselves, earn and spend money, and most tech experts agree that it will fundamentally change our lives. Metaverse will change not only the way we see the world, but how we participate in it, from the factory to the boardroom, says Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

Metaverse Momentum

Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, currently employs about 10,000 people on the Metaverse project and has committed $10 billion to spend this year alone on this project. Major global companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are also paying unprecedented attention to preparing for metaverses, reorganizing their internals and writing job descriptions suitable for the metaverse era, and preparing to launch billions of dollars' worth of products suitable for this era.

McKinsey, a management consulting firm, estimates the amount of investment related to metaverses during the first five months of this year alone at about $120 billion.

Metaverse and social activities

Fortnite is one of the most successful games over the past decade, with 350 million registered users in 2020. The developers of this game began years ago to work on integrating the ideas of metaverses within its worlds, so that its users could organize public or private virtual parties with friends and even create Make new friends in this virtual world.

A few years ago, the developers of Fortnite released a series called Sound Wave. And in April 2020, musician Travis Scott held a virtual party within the game, which was watched by 12.3 million people.

The virtual "Wave of Sound" series includes singers from all over the world, in one of its episodes, the Egyptian singer Mohamed Hamaki participated in a musical show that includes the song "Lailat Omar".

And last April, the Japanese Sony group and the parent group of the Danish company Lego, announced an investment of two billion dollars in the company that developed the game Fortnite to contribute to the development of the world of metaverses within this game, which is directed not only to children but also to social activities in general, which raised the market value of the company to $31.5 billion.

Metaverse and e-commerce

Metaverse will change retail websites from their current status as web pages to virtual 3D shopping centers. appropriate if you ask for advice.

Not only do you buy physical goods that have to be delivered to you in the real world, you can also buy original NFT-protected software, movies, and digital photos that are delivered to you online. And the online store allows you to choose the method of payment with bank cards and perhaps one of the cryptocurrencies.

Metaverse and virtual conferences

It is expected that many future meetings and conferences will be designed and implemented with metaverse technologies, where representatives of companies meet together in their physical or symbolic forms (avatars) in virtual halls. The future use of hologram technology may support metaverse conferences, allowing virtual reality glasses to be dispensed with.

Metaverse and Collaborative Design

Metaverse technologies allow products to be designed in innovative ways. Suppose a car company plans to build a new model of a car. When using metaverse technologies, we can see how people interact with the proposed design and their reactions in a virtual world similar to the real world, allowing the design to be modified to suit people's needs. Metaverse also provides great marketing opportunities for designing contests and promotions, which raises the level of public awareness of these companies' brands.

Metaviruses and governments

The South Korean capital, Seoul, announced in November 2021 that it would be the first major city in the world to adopt the Metaverse platform. This platform is supposed to provide a new form of government services in their various fields using technology.

Over the course of 5 years, the city authorities will work to create a complete virtual system that will overcome many challenges and raise the level of services provided to citizens and visitors.

This master plan includes 20 promotional missions spread over 7 areas, namely economy, education, culture, tourism, communications, urban development, administration and infrastructure. The platform is a high-performance project that represents a parallel system to the city of Seoul, but it is completely based on virtual and augmented reality, and includes the municipal administration of the city with its seven areas identified by the government.

The Seoul Metaverse project will include avatars of government employees, who will provide advice, complete transactions and finalize civil procedures, services that are usually only available through the Civil Service Center located in the Seoul Government Central Building. To increase the efficiency of employees, the local government is working to expand the application of the statute to include all areas of municipal administration.

Metaverse and Training Centers

Metaverse provides training scenarios that are traditionally difficult to implement except at a very high financial cost, as trainees move in the virtual world of metavirs with their full bodies, just as in real life. Training via metaverse saves on equipment usage, consumables and travel, making optimal use of available training budgets. It also provides video and audio recording of all training scenarios, replaying them whenever required.

Metavirus and artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is expanding the world of metaverse by automating commercial, educational and entertainment activities, more than any other technology. Chatbots enhanced by natural language processing make it possible to understand words, images, videos and texts and respond to interlocutors according to that understanding and independently of the language they are speaking in, but achieving this requires a large amount of data necessary for training.

AI will enhance the world of metaverse by creating 3D images, animations, stories, articles and musical works within this digital world.

The future of metavirs

A recent study by Gartner Research predicts that nearly a quarter of Internet users will spend at least one hour per day working, shopping, learning, social and recreational activities within the digital metaverse space by 2026.

The study also expected that 30% of institutions would participate with their products and services around the world in the metaverse space, due to the opportunities for communication and cooperation that it provides at various levels, and the impact of this on how to accomplish business, as institutions will not need to create their own infrastructure to do their work, given the provision of metaverses. Possibility to work in virtual offices.

The world of metaverse promises innovative achievements in all areas of life, but will the necessity of using virtual reality glasses limit its spread? Will some areas of metaverses, such as virtual meetings, be supported in the future by the holographic “holodeck” room techniques presented by the movie “Star Wars”, which do not need to use virtual reality glasses to participate in virtual reality?

This is what Mark Zuckerberg sees, who says, "In the future, instead of calling me on a phone call, you'll be able to sit like a hologram on my couch, or I'll sit like a hologram on your couch, and you'll actually feel like we're in the same place, even if We were in different places or hundreds of miles away."