The Metaverse Era Has Already Come

We always have a desire to create a new world. Sometimes we go beyond research and draw a new future ourselves. The new world we are talking about these days is mixing artificial intelligence, big data, and AR or VR technology with our daily lives. If we look more closely, we use them online, especially in SNS and platform services. And a new word is being created by collectively referring to these changes. It is the so-called “metaverse.” In general, it is a compound word of ‘meta’ meaning ‘transcendence’ and ‘verse’ meaning ‘world, universe.’ These changes are becoming a trend in the world as computer, phone, and internet become a part of our daily lives.

such as releasing digital fashion items.

We should pay attention to Metaverse because the core age of metaverse users is mainly teenagers. 80% of ‘Naver ZEPETO’ users are teenagers, and 67% of ‘Roblox’ users are also teenagers. These generations are more familiar with communication in the virtual world than anyone else, and they will lead the future metaverse ecosystem. As they will emerge as a significant consumer group in 10-20 years, Metaverse seems to emerge as a critical economic activity platform in the future.

In addition to the cultural domain, we can use Metaverse in other fields. For example, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital held a conference, ‘the Asian Society of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons Online Conference,’ with about 200 thoracic surgeons from around the world. They presented a Metaverse operating room, a virtual classroom, to learn surgery techniques. Metaverse uses extended reality (XR) technology to educate medical students worldwide and those who have visited Korea to learn medical technology. And it is attracting attention as a non-face-to-face educational tool that can reduce the risk of infection or medical accidents.

We must begin preparing for the new world! Although Metaverse is still being used mainly in the cultural field as the initial stage of the market, it will be helpful in various industries in the future. The continuous investment and technological innovation of global companies and the proliferation of platforms that can satisfy people’s needs will accelerate the growth of Metaverse.

Baek Ga-gyeong

The biggest reason for spreading the Metaverse concept is replacing the real world, contracted by the prolonged coronavirus, with a virtual world. As face-to-face activities decrease, various non-face-to-face services have been prevalent to satisfy the basic human need for social communication. Metaverse is one of them. The public and professionals that require contact with the public, such as celebrities and politicians, have begun to use the Metaverse as a virtual communication channel. Fashion companies are also using the metaverse ecosystem as a channel to make up for the reduced offline consumption activity,