5 Uses of Metaverse
The idea of metaverse is getting popular these weeks, but why should we adopt such idea? What are the uses of metaverse?
Imagine a virtual universe indistinguishable from reality, but in which the limits of possibility would be the limits of your imagination, this idea, this imaginary, is the metaverse.
A metaverse is a virtual world controlled by Man to which one could connect partially or fully with human-machine interface tools. For a few years now, the idea has been on the minds of inventors all over the world, who are redoubling of ingenuity in order to invent all kinds of interfaces allowing to connect our world to virtual worlds. Oculus is developing its virtual reality headset, Google its glasses (although not very well known at the moment), others, such as Decentraland, are focusing on developing the virtual worlds themselves. Needless to say, the idea of the Metaverse seems to move many, and, let’s face it, scare many too.
Although the idea of allowing Man to move in other universes than ours seems appealing, it seems useful to ask ourselves for 5 minutes what would be the uses of the Metaverse?
It is therefore to this question of utility that we will try to answer today. To do so, I will allow myself to dream a little, and to project ourselves in a future where the connection will be perfect, where Man would feel the same physical and psychological sensations in the metaverse as in the real world. Please bear with me !
Social interactions
Meta, this is how the Facebook group was renamed at the end of 2021, thus affirming a clear affection for the idea of metaverse. Facebook is above all a social network, and the main idea developed in their conference on the metaverse? That of socializing in these new worlds.
The metaverse will undoubtedly lead us to rethink the way we consume these “social interactions” in the same way that e-mails have replaced letters, the metaverse will undoubtedly replace the current social networks (hence the positioning of Facebook, which, as we can imagine, does not want to lose its place).
In such a globalized society, it is more and more common to have friendly or even romantic relationships with people living hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from us. However, although video calls or constant messages allow us to keep a minimum of contact, there is always a slight gap. The metaverse could correct this lack. Imagine yourself in Taiwan, and your friends in London, in our current world your only means of communication would be via a smartphone, a simple little screen. If you are an avid video game player, you could also meet on Discord for a game of League of Legends, but still that’s it, far from being comparable to the real thing. The metaverse would bring a new solution to connect you and your peers. Put on a helmet, and find yourself in a world completely different from ours, but just as realistic. In this world, you can exchange, play, but above all live adventures that you could not even dream of before. Want to meet your friends in space for a game of hide-and-seek in the USS Enterprise? You can. Want to go fishing with your family on a remote planet on the other side of the universe? You can.
The metaverse would make social interactions easier, but also crazier, by intertwining our wildest dreams of activities.
Education
A lot of research has looked at the importance of visualization in learning science, especially math. Allowing a student to visualize what he is learning about, allows him to better understand the concept.
Our current technologies already allow many students to better understand and visualize the concepts they are learning about. PowerPoint has become a basic tool for teachers, and many online courses (such as those of 3Blue1Brown, which I would be ashamed not to recommend) emphasize the importance of visualization.
The metaverse would bring a new dimension to visual learning. What could be better for a physics class on stars than being able to visualize and interact with a 3D model of a star without even burning your fingers? A biology teacher could propose to his students to visualize live the growth of a tree or the birth of an animal, as if we were there. In a crazier way, one could even find oneself traveling through the human body and observing its various mysteries.
Not only could we expect a better understanding of the courses, but they would also become more fun, and would undoubtedly interest the students more. Who hasn’t fallen asleep during a math class? But now, how can you fall asleep when the course takes place in the very center of the numbers, in a virtual world where you would be swimming in the center of the mathematical complexes.
After the COVID crisis, the metaverse also offers us a new utility, that of attending classes from anywhere. No more crowding into crowded lecture halls, sitting in uncomfortable chairs. Learn and understand from the comfort of your home. The metaverse would give the confort of home learning but also the interactions of real life meeting.
Mini virtual worlds dedicated to education are of course already in development, Metaverse School for example offers students to walk around a school recreated in 3D to attend classes.
History
In the idea of improving education is also the notion of improving history, but it would be disrespectful not to dedicate a single point to it. Metaverses will allow us to travel through the unimaginable, but also through history.
The idea of time travel, to explore, understand and experience different cultures, has always been at the center of many debates. Modern physics agrees that such a trip might be impossible (or at least very complicated), but what about the idea behind it? There is no need to go back in time to live historical moments, to travel through history, it is enough to be able to reconstruct these worlds, and that: we can do.
The metaverse would allow us to travel through time, to live in Ancient Rome, to walk through the crowds of the French Revolution of 1789, to discover pre-Christian America. History would become more alive, more visual, more realistic perhaps.
Some companies — like Iconem — are already working on virtualizing geographical sites that are doomed to disappear. With the technologies of the metaverse, we could come back in 40 years to walk around in places that have disappeared.
Some people have been imagining such a world for a few years now. This is notably the case of the creators of the Assassin’s creed franchise. In these games, where you walk in ancient times, you actually play a modern-day man immersed in a virtual past created thanks to the animus, a man-machine interface.
Video games
I don’t think I know a single gamer (although they must exist) who has never dreamed of being able to immerse himself totally in the universe of the games he plays. For decades, we have dreamed of being able to live adventures similar to those of our favorite heroes that we control with our joysticks or keyboards. It has become common to find movies (Tron, or more recently: Ready Player One), books or comics (Sword Art Online, Overgeared…) revolving around this idea. Companies, such as Oculus, have been working for years to create virtual worlds that make the video game experience more realistic, more concrete. We try to make games more immersive, more enjoyable for the player. For the moment, the solutions are still light, although improving year after year, but in a future where the metaverse would be more widely developed, we could easily “connect” to virtual game universes. Being a superhero, or exploring the universe through a spaceship will not require waiting for science to invent ultra-powerful drugs or ships able to move faster than light, it is enough to be able to code it.
Man seems to have this avid need to explore, to live crazy adventures, the metaverse would allow to fill this thirst for adventure. Nothing would stop you from living your dreams, no matter if science has not yet developed the solution or if you are not capable, the metaverse will make your expectations come true.
Disability
This last point seems to me personally to be the most important. However, I would like to stress that this is only my opinion, I do not wish to hurt anyone’s feelings.
6% is the approximate rate of the active population with motor deficiencies, there are about 70 million hearing impaired, 36 million visually impaired, so many people who do not perceive the world in the same way as others, who can only experience part of the pleasures of life. A virtual world directly connected to our brain would be, for these people, a chance to live like everyone else (if they want to, of course).
The metaverse would be a place without any discrimination. It doesn’t matter if you have a physical disability, in these limitless worlds, you are first and foremost what you want. The metaverse is the universe where quadriplegics could run, deaf people could hear, blind people could see…
If we take a step back, we also understand that a perfect metaverse will require a perfect human-machine interface, that is to say that we would be able to connect our brain to a machine. An incredible technology when we know that the prostheses designed today only lack this. So not only could a blind man see in the metaverse, but he could also probably see in the real world. It would be “enough” to connect a camera to this person, to simulate a visual flow to his brain.
The metaverse is a place of infinite possibilities, the only limit of creation being that of our imagination. I have chosen to focus on the big ideas to avoid writing a novel. You will undoubtedly come up with other possible uses of the metaverse, so don’t hesitate to express them in the comments of this article.
Now there is the more technical question of where we are in terms of technologies? What do we have? What are we missing? More generally, will we ever be able to create metaverses?
I will try to answer this complex question in a next article, which will be published next week.
