Throughout the years, we’ve seen internet technology transforming and bringing us impressive opportunities. From being introduced to the Web 2.0 experiences and making the most of digital evolution to the metaverse, this dynamic is pushing society forward and pressuring organizations into adjusting to the new conditions on the market and demands from their customers.
Metaverse is the next step of internet advancement. It refers to the virtual world where physical objects are being represented and users have avatars to communicate, buy, and even travel through the metaverse. The term comes from the author Neal Stephenson and his novel Snow Crash in 1992, however, it evolved significantly from then.
During the pandemic, metaverse as a concept has become even more popular because people wanted to avoid in-person interactions, they started working remotely, and adopted digital ways of doing business. This resulted in the need of creating an additional world that will eliminate all the things we don’t want in the real world and add all the things we love about it. This is when the interest of the general public in the metaverse began increasing.
Currently, there are many metaverse use cases that confirm that this is not just another trend that will vanish in the next few months or years. Metaverse is here to stay and this concept plans to change how we live our lives and communicate with other human beings for good.
Metaverse Use Cases
To truly understand the metaverse, we need to go back to the Web 3.0 definition. As the latest version of the web, Web 3.0 aims to decentralize the internet completely by giving power to everyone, not only the privileged ones like big organizations. Also, it aims to enhance transparency, openness, and honesty among all web users, but also within the web itself.
Decentralized technology is vital for the mass adoption of the metaverse. Besides supporting cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, blockchain technology can have the role of a distributed ledger for recording peer-to-peer transactions and help in creating decentralized applications and digital assets such as non-fungible tokens. By using metaverse, companies can create more realistic NFT marketplaces where users can interact with each other, take a look at their desired NFTs, and make more informed purchasing decisions.
Currently, these are the two most advanced metaverse use cases:
- Virtual work and learning spaces that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic stayed the predominant way to work and learn.
- Virtual businesses and markets are creating new opportunities for promoting services but also launching products, and interacting with their target audiences more efficiently.
Metaverse Benefits
As the telecommuting trends continued growing even after the COVID-19 pandemic, people have become more dependent on virtual spaces and digital ways of communication, such as video and web conferencing, to socialize and interact with each other online. In its unique way, metaverse brought a number of real-world capabilities to its users in this immersive world.
Metaverse can address all the existing challenges of working remotely. It offers managers a virtual environment where they can meet with their employees, communicate and delegate work to them, read their body language, and retain most of the in-person interaction. Also, employers can resolve problems such as goldbrick and time theft at the workplace by properly managing and tracking the team in their virtual office.
Also, the metaverse is an excellent tool for healthcare professionals and medical staff who weren’t able to visit their patients because of the distance. In the metaverse, they can interact with their patients regardless of their geographical location. This allows them to have clear insight into their patient’s health conditions and help them with proper treatment or therapy.
Obviously, video game playing is much more exciting with the metaverse. Most metaverse games are already decentralized and have an integrated economic model that allows players to maximize play-to-earn gaming. This game type allows users to purchase, sell, and trade in-game objects in the form of non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Also, the idea of avatars exploring the virtual space surrounding them is becoming more and more interesting to video game players.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the metaverse will continue impacting other industries, just like the internet and blockchain technology did. Such emerging technologies and concepts have a way of slowly entering our lives and changing them completely. From metaverse digital real estate applications, where users can utilize their digitized land to play games and communicate with other users, to turning video gaming into a more profound and exciting experience, the metaverse is here to stay. The only question is which industry will make the most of it first.
I am a computer science professor. Being a tech enthusiast I keep close tabs on trends and will be glad to share and discuss the latest wrapups in the field with the community.
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