Over the coming years, it is expected that the metaverse will mainly be represented by VR -- a different, digital world which could be used for various purposes, both personal and business. The metaverse concept means an increasing proportion of our lives, work, recreation, time, wealth, happiness, and relationships will take place within virtual worlds, not simply assisted by digital devices. Think of the metaverse as a parallel, virtual plane of existence, one that encompasses all digital technologies, and that even comes to dominate a large part of the physical world.
The metaverse will develop in two directions simultaneously: the virtual metaverse (completely simulated worlds) and augmented metaverse (layers of rich virtual content layered on top of the real world, precisely space-registered). The gulf between virtual and real worlds will shrink, and may even disappear, within the metaverse, which allows for more immersive, multi-sensory, and near-authentic experiences for users within the metaverse. Technologies such as VR, computer-generated simulations of 3D images or environments, and AR, superimposing a computer-generated image onto a users real-world perspective, will play significant roles in making the metaverse come alive.
Advocates of augmented reality (AR) say the future metaverse will rely on the synthesis of the physical and digital worlds. Social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg predicts an embodied metaverse will be commonplace in the next five to 10 years, if we are talking about massively-scaled virtual worlds we visit using high-end hardware. According to Mark Zuckerberg, the embodied metaverse -- described by the founders of The Meta as an embodied Internet, in which rather than simply viewing content -- you are inside the content, the Meta -- is going to fundamentally transform our lives.
According to Meta, metaverse is the next evolution of social connectivity, and a successor to mobile Internet, marked by a ability to move seamlessly between spaces. First, the fully developed metaverse will probably incorporate both the physical and digital/virtual worlds into a users experience.
It is entirely possible that the term metaverse itself eventually becomes equally archaic, even if the particular technologies that it once described are becoming commonplace. In broad terms, technologies comprising the metaverse may include virtual reality (VR) -- characterised by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you are not playing -- and augmented reality (AR), which blends features from both the digital and physical worlds. If we project forward 20 years or so, given the enormous rate of metaverse development, our ability to be immersed in a virtual world will be increasing, and our ability to create those beings. At this point, I expect that we will have to learn what it means to be the gods of the worlds that we make, and I suspect we are nowhere near being prepared, either with respect to the addictive nature of these products, or with respect to how to build these virtual worlds of the metaverse in ways that could be the foundation of our digital immortality.
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