The rise of the ‘metaverse’, the dystopia for which Silicon Valley is working
Metaverse, or meta universe, is a term that began to be used and discussed as a result of the novel Snow Crash, written by Neal Stephenson and published for the first time in 1992.
He used it to describe a virtual world , usually shared by several users, to which one can go for leisure and/or to escape from reality.
Well, it seems that this idea has already gone from science fiction to a possible reality, at least in Silicon Valley, where it is already one of the most recurring topics of conversation between investors, developers and large or small technology companies.
The idea behind the application of this metaverse is that it works as an alternative to the Internet or to programs such as Skype or Zoom. It’s not exactly about browsing, or seeing the real face of the person you’re talking to, but about interacting with other users in virtual environments through avatars. Yes, we have already entered fully into the field of science fiction dystopia.
Not by chance, in his most recent interview with investors, Mark Zuckerberg assured that he intended to turn Facebook into a “metaverse company”, where incidentally, to boast of being a visionary once again, he said that he began to think about that idea when he was still I was in high school. For the founder of Facebook, the metaverse would be the successor technology of the internet.
Added to Facebook is the video game company Epic Games, responsible for the successful Fortnite, which announced an investment of one billion dollars to develop the possibilities of a metaverse, which, of course, increased the company’s stock market value immediately.
In any case, those who fear the conversion of the world, as we know it, into something very similar to a dystopia like the ones we have seen in cinema and literature, can breathe easy for now. The idea is in the early stages of development and it will take several years and many billions of investment for it to see the light of day.
In fact, it is not even known yet if it is a viable project, much less what it will look like. Until now not even Virtual Reality has become a great economic force, not yet.