THE LOOMING METAVERSE
If you are very familiar with the most recent trends in technology you’d most likely have heard these two words. If you haven’t then get ready to have the time of your life. This represents a significant innovation in technology especially in regards to social media.
The website Lexico
defines the metaverse as “A
virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated
environment and other users.”USA Today calls the metaverse “a
combination of multiple elements of technology, including virtual reality,
augmented reality and video where users live within a digital universe.”If
you’ve ever played game wearing special “googles” headset and it seems as real
as you are in it that’s virtual reality. It is said that as the metaverse
expands, it will offer a hyper-real alternative world for people to coexist in.
Traces of it already exist in games like Fortnite and Minecraft. Supporters of
the metaverse envisage its users working, playing and staying connected through
many things such as conferences to virtual trips around the world. Matthew Ball,
a managing partner of a venture capital firm calls it “the next internet” of
which we “are on its cusp.”
Many of us would have
been aware of Meta Facebook’s new name which certainly would have been fuelled
by the race for dominance of the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Meta
estimates it taking up to a decade or half before the key features of metaverse
become mainstream although aspects of it already exist currently; virtual
reality headsets, persistent always-on online worlds and ultra-fast broadband
speeds.
Examples of major
things happening today that could lead to tomorrow’s metaverse.
*Meta: Formerly Facebook,
has made a lot of investments in virtual reality; including the acquisition of
Oculus, now a division of Meta Platforms that produces virtual reality headsets,
in 2014. Meta’s Oculus VR companion app has gained approximately 2 million
downloads since late December of 2021. Meta envisions a virtual world where
digital avatars (if you’ve seen the 2009 movie with the same name where a
paraplegic enters a booth to get into another ‘reality') connect through work,
travel or entertainment using VR headsets. Zuckerberg says it will get to be an
even “more immersive and embodied internet when you’re in the experience not
just looking at it.”
* Microsoft: The
software giant calls the metaverse “a digital representation of people,
things…” They already use holograms (a special type of photograph or image made
with a laser in which the objects look solid and real rather than flat; like
the type of reality created by Marvel’s Mysterio in Far From Home)and are now
developing mixed and extended reality applications. They’re in works to
introduce virtual avatars as well as explorable 3D virtual connected spaces.
There’s work currently going on an augmented reality Hololens 2 headset for US
army soldiers training. Their Xbox live currently connects millions of video
game players across the world.
* Epic games. The
company that developed Fortnite has held concerts by American artistes in there
developing metaverse.
These are only some of
the many existing concepts of the developing metaverse. There’s an online haven, Nowhere, with virtual spaces for public and private use – holding festivals.
concerts, conferences and reunions
Potential
for healthcare
A lot of potential
exists for the healthcare industry. In medical training especially in this era
of covid-19, it presents a lot of opportunity for medical education. Simulation
training can be carried out. Procedures carried out in the real can easily be
replicated. In a decade or less, medical students should see themselves giving
case presentations in the metaverse.
There’s a lot of
promise showing for it in surgical procedures. The first augmented reality
minimally invasive surgery took place in June 2020. Some months after a cardiac
hologram was developed which allows the visualization of a patient’s heart in
3D with trials. It could improve accuracy of minimally invasive arrhythmia
surgery
There’s the opportunity
of bringing consumers and healthcare providers together. Wellness and fitness
apps can be further gamified by guidance from virtual instructors. It’ll also bring
more progress to tele-consultation.
All these signify a
shift from the orthodox person-to-person albeit progress in the future of
technology and healthcare.
Like every technology
the metaverse is a two-edged sword with benefits as well as disadvantages. It
is best avoided except there is need from which benefit can be derived. It is
something in which if one engages for too long in it as those who play games
one can lose track of time as well as the reality of this world. Some critics have
even fired at the CEO of Meta saying that his only thought is to get richer in
reality while others get caught up in virtual reality even though he claims to
have the intention of making our lives easier.
Sources
USA Today
Meta for Medicine
Saka Muhammad
Oluwatimilehin
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