WTF is the metaverse? | PCMag

The metaverse is in the air. Mark Zuckerberg keeps talking about turning Facebook into one. Fortnite strewn with zombies says it’s on its way to becoming so. Microsoft is going to build a business out of it, which sounds like fun. But what is it?

If you’ve nodded and hoped people will eventually stop talking about it, we’ve got good news and bad news. News of the metaverse will only increase. This is obviously the bad news. In better news, we’ve got a quick primer to help you with the basics. So here are your (hopefully) answered questions.

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Salvation.
Salvation.

It will sound weird, but are you really there?
Sure. Let’s say yes.

I ask because I was fair read on Mark Zuckerberg and that metaverse thing, and it got me into an existential loop. What exactly does he want to do?
Zuckerberg says he wants to create the “feeling that you’re really there with another person or in another place,” in part with avatars and digital products.

But the only reason I’m on Facebook is that I don’t have to be with the people there.
Then you see the problem.

So what must be happening in this metaverse?
People exist there as an avatar and basically do what they would do in normal but virtually life: socialize, attend events, shop, work. According to Andrew Bosworth, vice president of AR / VR at Facebook, the metaverse will “build the connective tissue” between devices like Portal and Oculus headsets “so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease. than moving from one room in your house to another. “

Where did this idea of ​​the metaverse even come from?
The name and the idea come from the book Snow accident by Neal Stephenson. It is a shared 3D virtual universe. In the Metaverse, you can shed your body form and step into an avatar that lives a life created by the pixels of your choosing.

So we’re all meant to live inside VR headsets as our real lives unfold in a rickety pile of trashed trailers like in Loan Player One?
Please never mention this book again. But somehow.

Where will this metaverse be then?
Everywhere, essentially. The idea of ​​a metaverse encompasses its persistence, so it would be available on all devices that connect to the internet and some new ones as well. Facebook owns Oculus, so you can expect headsets like in this book we’re not talking about. But it’s also launching AR-powered smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban that Zuckerberg says are part of the company’s metaverse plans.

It looks like Google Glass.
Facebook has never come across an idea that it hasn’t tried to steal and, failing that, buy.

Are other companies building a metaverse?
Many. The Roblox online gaming platform intends to grow into a metaverse. Epic, the creator of Fortnite, just raised $ 1 billion for its own metaverse. Microsoft believes people will be working and shopping soon.

Purchases? Does this have anything to do with *whispers * cryptocurrency?
What is wrong?

OKAY. I would like to move on and not talk about it now.
It’s okay with me.

You know, come to think of it, I feel like it’s happened before. Is this already seen?
It has happened before. It was called Second Life.

Oh that’s right. Wait, are there still people in Second Life?
Yes.

Should we save them?
They are probably better off where they are than here, with climate change and a pandemic.

You are right. Is this metaverse happening because of the pandemic?
Some of these plans predate the pandemic, but a year and a half of life for the most part seems to have practically accelerated them and there are certainly some CEOs and investors who now see it as more of a possibility.

I didn’t know I could hate the pandemic more.
It is always possible.