Metaverse And Beyond: The Future Of Digital Emergence
Over the last 10 years the pace of technology change has accelerated with multiple new technologies changing the landscape and effecting huge changes to business and personal life. Over the last year or so, one of the technologies that has been getting a lot of buzz and attention is the metaverse. While this technology holds much potential, experts are still split on the extent and especially the pace at which we will see this technology impacting our lifestyle.
While the term metaverse has been around since 1992, it truly became a part of the mainstream lexicon with Facebook’s bold move to rebrand itself as Meta. The current form of the metaverse consists of multiple technologies that have been around for some time – AR/VR, Digital Twins etc – and in some cases, people tend to represent these technologies as the metaverse. The gaming industry was one of the first to adopt many of the concepts underpinning the metaverse. A couple of technology advancements have made the concept of the metaverse possible – rapid improvements in computing power and storage, new paradigms in data engineering that have made possible the management of huge quantities of data, with AI becoming more mainstream among others. Other technologies that will act as a catalyst for adoption would be Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0.
A harbinger of the future for metaverse is the bold investments being made by many of the technology companies. Earlier last year, Microsoft announced its intentions to acquire Activision Blizzard for USD 68.7 billion, which could give them a leg up in terms of establishing a significant presence in the metaverse by bolstering its gaming portfolio and giving them depth in many of the metaverse paradigms and technologies. Other tech companies that are critical to building the backbone of the metaverse such as the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm have also made their intentions very clear.
However, despite this frenzied activity from tech giants, the best marker of interest and adoption is to be had from large consumer brands and enterprises that will be the early innovators in embracing this emerging landscape. There are several early encouraging signs – Boeing plans to build its next plane in the metaverse while BMW is leveraging Nvidia’s Omniverse to create factories of the future. While both these examples focus on creating manufacturing efficiencies, there are instances of compelling and engaging customer experiences like BMW’s JOYTOPIA, an entirely virtual experience including individual avatars, future of mobility virtual events, Nike’s virtual world of Nikeland and Coca-Cola’s NFT drop that included everything from NFT puffer jackets to friendship cards. In addition, many other recognizable names like Samsung, Hyundai, Wendy’s, and Tommy Hilfiger have already made their presence felt in the metaverse.
However, these are early days and there are still a few areas that need be to be figured out before we see wholesale adoption. The first one being the portal into the metaverse – the current devices are not intuitive, quite intrusive and do not blend into our normal way of life. We need to have a device that would allow us to seamlessly cohabit in the real and the meta world. Another area would be the ability of the tech platform companies to address user concerns around security, privacy, and other related threats. Finally, as with all other technology adoptions, we are still on the hunt for the killer app or use case that would attract a broad set of users and lead to rapid and irreversible adoption.
Having said that, no one can deny the potential of the metaverse to be a major game changer in personal computing, internet and cloud to profoundly transform how we live our lives and interact with each other.
For now, the playground is ripe with opportunities for those early innovators who have a clear vision to make bold moves, think big, fail fast and utilize their learnings to forever change how they create future proof products and experiences that clearly distinguish them from competition.
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