The Metaverse

The Metaverse

By Udita Gulati, JS Global Business

The Metaverse is a virtual location that allows our physical and digital lives to converge in order to “work, play, relax, transact, and socialize.” The idea is still very fresh and therefore lacks a structured definition. The creation of a well-developed understanding of the Metaverse is still a work in progress and is subject to change based on how the technology advances in the coming years. However, the underlying goal is to enable users to socially interact and complete tasks in an alternate virtual reality.

The company formerly known as Facebook is the owner of the three largest social media apps – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Its recent rebrand to Meta focuses on the effort to augment reality by creating interconnected virtual communities. This will be facilitated through “headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps, and other devices.” Mark Zuckerberg firmly believes “AR systems will be ubiquitous within the next decade,” to accommodate avatars teleporting from one experience to another. Meta has already patented technologies that will employ people’s biometric data to construct digital avatars that are as realistic as possible. Examples of these patents include eye-to-face tracking technology using sensors or cameras in headsets to ensure avatars perfectly mirror real-life behaviour. The goal is to keep the technology such as the headsets inexpensive to encourage adoption and then raise revenue in the metaverse itself, using advertising and selling digital goods and services.

An example of a company utilizing the Metaverse is Forever 21’s Metaverse branch that users can enter using their own avatar. There are multiple floors for the avatar to browse and purchase digital clothes using virtual currency. Nike has utilized Roblox to develop Nikeland, where customers are greeted by an avatar reincarnation of LeBron James and can then view their digital products. Even Chipotle has become involved with its own virtual restaurant, and awarded its first 30,000 users with a voucher for a real burrito. E-commerce in the Metaverse is shifting even further away from the traditional brick and mortar style of shopping, and has begun to adopt virtual spaces to drive e-commerce by making users attached to their digital selves. In lieu of running physical stores in every city, there could be a shift in the future to large retailers building “a global hub in the Metaverse that is able to serve millions of customers.” This would be attractive to retailers due to lower overheads and the possibility of a high margin e-commerce business.

Opportunities to further enhance life using the Metaverse also exist within educational and working environments. For example, a virtual reality world would be a cost-effective means to access training and development programs. In addition, the workforce in low income countries could gain entry to job opportunities in the west without needing to migrate. Moreover, product testing such as experimenting as to how a robotic system will interact with its physical environment could also be conducted at lower costs.

Although the concept is still in its research and development stage, if Meta and various other firms meet their Metaverse goals it would drastically transform our means of interaction such that it will shift from being grounded in the physical world to being supplemented by a tenacious digital presence. Facebook’s resources, capabilities, and acquisition of Oculus will allow the firm to become a leader in the development of the Metaverse; however, a major element of the Metaverse is the existence of not one, but multiple virtual worlds that people can transport and jump to and from. Hence, there are “swaths of other big-name brands [joining] the race to build their own–” such as Microsoft focusing on AR efforts on “industrial applications like design, manufacturing, and advertising.”

The immersive experience of the Metaverse will be an impressive leap in technology and how people can express themselves and interact with each other. But there are challenges that accompany this advancement.

Significantly, there could be varying opinions on the social costs of people becoming addicted to living in an alternate virtual reality as a means of escapism from the often-times grim reality of the real world. There are also considerable privacy challenges to consider as companies such as Meta begin to collect biometric data to develop realistic avatars or to sell to advertisers.

The Metaverse will enable the monetisation of deeply personal information such as analysis of where and for how long individuals gaze at certain objects – which is not only disconcerting, but also dangerous from a legal perspective.

Technology such as VR glasses, haptic gloves to feel VR objects, 3D cameras, sensors, microphones, etc. will allow companies to mine information on users’ facial expressions, physiological reactions, and make inferences about psychological reactions, process information about the users’ private home environment, and more. Regulations such as the GDPR and UK’s Data Protection Act would need to be updated to ensure that users have “simple ways to exercise their rights.” It will be interesting to see how Meta will convince people to replace their time in the real world with spending it in the Metaverse instead and how it will garner trust from the public while grappling with privacy and political scandals.