What Exactly is the Metaverse?
In October 2021, Facebook changed its parent company name to “Meta” to align the company with its ambitions to build the “metaverse.” NASDAQ.com believes that this rebranding will help boost the price of its stock in the same way that its name change to Alphabet boosted Google. By changing its name many believe that Facebook is signaling a change in corporate direction from a simple social media platform to a ‘meta-universe company’ i.e. one that combines virtual experiences with reality.
Is “metaverse” just the newest “Buzzword” or is “The Metaverse” like trying to explain the “The Internet” to someone in the 1970s? If you talk to CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg the metaverse is the future of the internet. But is this just hype or is it the fruition of the Sci-Fi dream of virtual reality and everything running via computers and holograms?
The term “metaverse” is said to have been coined back in 1992 by Sci-Fi author Neal Stephenson in his novel, “Snow Crash.” The idea was that virtual people aka. “Avatars” travel through imaginary worlds living out their dreams. In the book, Snow Crash Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., in real life but in the Metaverse, he’s a warrior prince. By 2009, the idea of “avatars” was firmly embedded in the culture, and the movie Avatar had literal humans traveling to distant planets where they would virtually inhabit alternative bodies.
What are the implications of a shift toward the metaverse?
