Have you ever heard of the metaverse ? No, this is not an unknown Earth but a virtual ecosystem. This is the project announced by Mark Zuckerberg which aims to create a digital “new world” in which to live the experiences that distinguish our life in proximity to other users. For the realization of the metaverse, Zuckerberg initiated the rebranding of the Facebook company.
If you still feel confused, let’s find out together what it is.
A new digital universe
The term metaverse was first coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992, within the book “Snow Crash”. The author identifies the concept as a form of virtual reality shared across the Internet, in which users can create anything from shops to entertainment venues in 3D.
However, Zuckerberg does not refer to a simple virtual reality but to the ” successor to the mobile network “. A real ecosystem made up of collaborative and immersive virtual worlds, in which you can use avatars to interact, work and shop. In addition, the CEO of Facebook defined the metaverse as “Network that you can enter instead of just looking at it.” Not everyone gives the same interpretations of the concept but we agree on one aspect: experience . A sort of parallel world is structured in which you can dance, participate in a concert on your smartphone in 3D, invest and sell, in which users can interact with each other as if they were in the same place.
Mark’s vision
A foretaste of the implementation of the new digital environment is Horizon Workrooms , conceived by the Zuckerberg team. It is a video conferencing program in which, wearing Oculus VR glasses, employees are brought into a virtual office with avatars mimicking their actions.
The creation of the metaverse is a complex process and as Zuckerberg states “it is a vision that embraces many companies. It is certainly not something a company will be able to build on its own“. The hardware that should make it possible to use the virtual ecosystem has yet to be optimized in order to be able to adopt it on a large scale. Despite this, the CEO of Facebook has launched a new project that aims to create a bridge with the new digital reality. In particular, in collaboration with Ray-Ban, Facebook has launched “ Ray-Ban Stories ”, smart sunglasses that allow you to take photos, videos, phone calls and listen to music. In the future, accessories of this type will have many other features in relation to the metaverse.
GOAL: the beginning of a new era
Zuckerberg has started the countdown to launch into the metaverse . During the annual “ Connect ” conference, held on October 28th, the CEO of Facebook announced the new name of his brand: META . It is clear that the company’s main mission has become the creation of the new digital universe. Already according to the first rumors on TheVerge , the CEO of Facebook was ready to activate a rebranding action probably to try to unmark the company (which also includes WhatsApp and Instagram) from the social network. During his long speech, Zuckerberg tells us how the choice of the name refers to the metaverse and, as a lover of classical culture, takes up the Greek term meta to indicate “what lies behind”. Zuckerberg’s idea is that “there is always something more to be built and a new chapter in history to be realized”: to place people at the center of technology, in order to guarantee a real connection and bring everyday life into the virtual world.
“ The future is gonna be behind everything we can imagine . “
With this sentence the first session of the conference ended, with an invitation from Zuckerberg to share with him and his team the future they imagine: the metaverse .
Are you ready to immerse yourself in a parallel world? We can’t wait to discover the new digital reality. To learn about new developments, stay up to date with the articles on our blog and follow us on Facebook , Instagram and Linkedin .
