"You can imagine it as the successor to the mobile Internet," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg this week of the American news site The Verge."It is a vision that extends over numerous companies - the entire industry."Mark Zuckerberg's plan: to make Facebook a" meta-verse group ".
Zuckerberg is not alone with his enthusiasm."There are 3.5 billion people on the Internet who will be connected to the meta verse in the future," predicts Tim Sweeney, the founder of the video game manufacturer Epic Games.And the New York Times writes: "You still remember to have heard of the 'Internet'? Make yourself ready for the 'metavers'."
What does "metaverse" mean?
The term "metaverse" originally comes from the science fiction novel "Snow Crash" from 1992.There he describes a virtual reality in which people interact with each other as three-dimensional avatars.A similar concept was known by the Steven Spielberg filming of the book "Ready Player One".
In recent years, however, the term has been particularly popular in Silicon Valley and other tech strongholds.In the presentation of the influential analyst Matthew Ball, he means a common virtual space that connects all participants.In this network of the future, virtual worlds, the classic Internet and numerous elements of the real world are said to be united in a construction - and without internal borders.
What distinguishes the meta verse from the Internet?
At the moment the metaverse is still an idea and not actually existing object.Accordingly, it is difficult to imagine the meta -verses in action.
One possibility is to transfer rules of the analog world to digital: in the real world, people can transport almost all objects and thoughts from place to place and apply differently.If you buy a T -shirt in a shopping center, you can take it in any other shop in the shopping center and compare it with others - and also wear it anywhere in the world.
The Internet is currently working differently: for example, if you put together a virtual outfit for your character in a video game, you can only use it in this one game and take nowhere.It should be different in the metaverse: Because it would be a virtual space that is shared by everyone, digital information could be transported by A to B as naturally as goods and information in the analog world.
The possibilities in the metaverse
Like all technologies that do not yet exist completely, you can only speculate about the applications of the metaverse at the moment.Tech lovers and business people have painted numerous scenarios.
By virtual reality we could do our office work, together with the virtual avatars of our colleagues, in Harry Potter's magic school Hogwarts.After that we could project our friends live into our living room as digital holograms and watch the new episode of our favorite series together with them - while a virtual Darth Vader is sitting between us and commenting on the action.And if we then play a little super Mario before falling asleep, Mario would not leave us with the switching off of the game console, but could accompany us the day after as a digital assistant like Siri or Alexa on the smartphone - and that later belonged again in the video game.
The important thing for all of these applications is: digital information is transferred smoothly between all conceivable applications - as naturally as we today copy text from one email to the other.
What is still missing for the metaverse?
Even if some already see the meta verse close, there are two major challenges between today's world and a future in which the meta -verse reality has become.
The first challenge is the technical hardware.In order to maintain a constant virtual space, gigantic amounts of computing power, very fast internet, as well as progress in digital animation and artificial intelligence are required.Until all of this is technically feasible could only be a matter of time - even if countries like Germany lag behind in digitization.
The second - and perhaps greater - challenge is to avoid that the meta -verse becomes a centrally organized space - unlike the decentralized internet.Some experts warn of a possible situation in which a single company controls the meta -verse - and thus receives control over a virtual space that includes the entire earth and all digital transactions taking place there.The power of such a group would even be many times higher than that of today's Internet giants Google and Facebook.
Researchers and entrepreneurs are therefore looking for common standards for the metaverse - similar to HTML for the early internet.The key may be in the decentralized blockchain technology.The task is not easy: at the latest when it comes to compliance with the strict European data protection laws.
Where can the metaverse already exist today?
Already today some platforms are committed to enabling a first stage of the meta -verses.These can be found primarily in the video game area.
The Roblox video game platform consists of numerous different games that are built by users themselves within the virtual Roblox world.Within this world, goods can be exchanged freely and even sell.
Fortnite - at times the most popular video game in the world - now enables players to measure much more than with other players in competitions.There are virtual amusement parks, concerts and even film premieres - all in the same program.It could be a first taste of what the meta -verse has to offer over the next few decades.
