What is the metaverse?
S&P Global defines the metaverse as the long-term vision for the next phase of the internet, which will feature a single, shared, immersive and persistent 3D virtual space where humans and machines interact with one another and with data, enhancing the physical world as much as replacing it. While many people will have taken on board the basics of avatars in a virtual space, the concept of the metaverse, and some of the implementations today, go far wider. For example, the metaverse affects industrial applications through the development of digital twins, in which entire factories and processes can be built in digital form before physical construction, saving time, money, and resources. Industrial deployment of digital twins includes their use in accurate, virtual simulation environments to train staff and autonomous robots before a facility goes live.
Digital twin: A term typically used to describe the real-time collection of data, for example from a process, machine or building. This often includes a 3D model, location, and spatial information that can then be used in other digital applications to understand or manage the physical version of the process, machine or building. Digital twins have evolved from the need to combine multiple internet of things (IoT) sensor data readings into a contextual representation of the whole. "Digital twin" is also used to describe a digital-first design, in which decisions, simulations and even training can be performed before a physical build is produced. This digital design then becomes an operational digital twin mirroring the physical build.
Metaverse applications also support enterprise collaboration and communication within hybrid working environments. Using metaverse technologies, workers can break free of video squares and use virtual spaces and objects to communicate and work dynamically with colleagues. In the business-to-consumer space, brands, entertainers, and even colleges and universities are using the metaverse to facilitate interactions with virtual products, mass shared performance events, and online courses and tutorials. These applications and experiences do not exist in a single application. However, standards and requirements for interoperability between platforms will continue to bring the vision of a single metaverse closer to reality.
A common misconception is that participating in the metaverse requires constantly wearing a virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) headset. In reality, users will be able to access applications in multiple ways, suited to their needs and the context, just as we have multiple means of interacting with electronic media today. Being fully immersed in a virtual world application via a headset may sometimes be the best experience for either total immersion (VR) or adding digital information to the physical world (AR), while, at other times, the preferred tool may remain a smartphone.
We've been here before
This is not the first time the metaverse has received lots of enterprise interest. The previous wave was between 2006 and 2009, before the ubiquity of smartphones and the massive uptake of social media. In that wave, many use cases were explored and found to be useful and interesting, but the technical and social drivers for adoption were not there. Now we have many more connected devices, broader access to wi-fi, 5G cellular networks, and cloud and streaming services. People routinely shop, bank, socialize, and game online, and we even have hybrid working patterns catalyzed by the pandemic. All of these factors are raising questions on how we can better interact online, be it with digital content or one another.
The metaverse also offers important use cases that could reduce society’s deleterious effects on the environment. Namely, metaverse technologies and the ability to “digitally meet” friends, family, and co-workers offer a path to disrupt air travel, which accounts for 4% of human-induced global warming. The ability to communicate in a way that sufficiently proxies in-person interactions remains some way off, but it is achievable through a mix of technological and socioeconomic advancement, as long as two main issues improve. First, the technology needs to provide a smooth, seamless experience to enable the subtleties of human communication. Second, we need to reduce the “digital divide,” where access to internet connectivity remains largely the province of the developed world.
On the first point, we have found firsthand while working through the COVID-19 pandemic that enabling workers to effectively execute their duties remotely requires intention, care, and diligence. From physical paradigms, such as eye contact, to the need for higher bandwidth to support video and audio quality capable of transmitting the subtleties of body language and tone, there is a gap to address. However, in the same relatively short period, we’ve seen a rise in camera technologies that follow eye contact, audio technologies for noise reduction, and virtual backgrounds for privacy, among others, which help mitigate some of these factors. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies would likely provide pattern recognition capabilities to enable material advancements and further close the gap.
On the second point, it is imperative to recognize and address the digital divide, where the developed world has significantly higher levels of internet connectivity than the developing world and thus an imbalanced potential to benefit from internet-based technology. According to the Brookings Institution, internet penetration is 89% in Europe, over 80% in the Americas, and 70% in the Arab states, compared with 61% in Asia and 40% in Africa. These gaps expand when combined with factors such as gender, age, and rural versus urban populations.
Why does this matter? The metaverse offers a promising way to close geographical gaps and enable more effective digital communication between friends, family members, colleagues, teachers and students, and individuals across a variety of other relationships, provided that the digital infrastructure and technology will support it. Further, advancements in generative AI could improve expansion into imaginative worlds beyond the physical world we live in, supporting both human creativity and better inclusion of people from all walks of life.
Additionally, advancements in technologies that support the metaverse as well as the “hyper-analytical” functions of machine learning and artificial intelligence will invariably lead to advancements in computing technologies, such as quantum computing. Excitingly, the computational benefits offered by quantum computing could be used to analyze patterns more effectively in the physical world to enable virtual experimentation on physical processes. Nuclear power is a promising example. Many experiments in nuclear power generation have stalled due to safety concerns and cost considerations, but effectively emulating these experiments in digital form may indeed mitigate some of those concerns, leading to advancements in physical nuclear power processes. Such advancements could significantly improve conditions in the current energy and climate crisis.
