science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

, the "metaverse" is a hypothetical iteration of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usage, a "metaverse" is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection. The term "metaverse" originated in the 1992 science fiction novel '' Snow Crash'' as a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsmeta" and "

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...

". Metaverse development is often linked to advancing virtual reality technology due to the increasing demands for immersion. Recent interest in metaverse development is influenced by Web3, a concept for a decentralized iteration of the internet. ''Web3'' and ''metaverse'' have been used as buzzwords to exaggerate the development progress of various related technologies and projects for public relations purposes. Information privacy, user addiction, and user safety are concerns within the metaverse, stemming from challenges facing the social media and video game industries as a whole.

Implementations

Second Life 11th Birthday Live Drax Files Radio Hour

Components of metaverse technology have already been developed within online

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

s. The 2003 virtual world platform '' Second Life'' is often described as the first metaverse, as it incorporated many aspects of social media into a persistent three-dimensional world with the user represented as an

avatar Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appear ...

, however historical claims of metaverse development started soon after the term was coined. Early projects included '' Active Worlds'' and '' The Palace''. Popular games described as part of the metaverse include ''Habbo Hotel'', '' World of Warcraft'', '' Minecraft'', '' Fortnite'', '' VRChat'', and game creation platform '' Roblox'' which has since employed significant usage of the term in marketing. In a January 2022 interview with ''Wired'', Second Life creator Philip Rosedale described metaverses as a

three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called '' parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the inform ...

Internet that is populated with live people. Social interaction and 3D virtual worlds are often an integral feature in many massively multiplayer online games. In 2017,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

acquired the VR company AltspaceVR, and has since implemented virtual avatars and meetings held in virtual reality into Microsoft Teams. In 2019, the social network company Facebook launched a social VR world called '' Facebook Horizon''. In 2021, Facebook was renamed " Meta Platforms" and its chairman Mark Zuckerberg declared a company commitment to developing a metaverse. Many of the virtual reality technologies advertised by Meta Platforms remain to be developed. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen criticised the move, adding that Meta Platforms' continued focus on growth-oriented projects is largely done to the detriment of ensuring safety on their platforms. Meta Platforms has also faced user safety criticism regarding ''Horizon Worlds'' due to sexual harassment occurring on the platform. In 2021, Meta made a loss of over $10 billion on its metaverse development department, with Mark Zuckerberg saying he expected operating losses to "increase meaningfully" in 2022. Some metaverse implementations rely on digital currencies, and often cryptocurrency. Assets within the metaverse are sometimes traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and track ownership using blockchain technology. Proposed applications for metaverse technology include improving work productivity, interactive learning environments,

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manag ...

, mass-audience interaction, real estate and fashion.

Technology

Hardware

Access points for the metaverse includes general-purpose computers and smartphones, augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality. Dependence on VR technology has limited metaverse development and wide-scale adoption. Limitations of portable hardware and the need to balance cost and design have caused a lack of high-quality graphics and mobility. Lightweight wireless headsets have struggled to achieve retina display pixel density needed for visual immersion. Another issue for wide-scale adoption of the technology is cost, with consumer VR headsets ranging in price from $300 to $3500 as of 2022. Current hardware development is focused on overcoming limitations of VR headsets, sensors, and increasing immersion with haptic technology.

Software

There has been no wide-scale adoption of a standardized technical specification for metaverse implementations, and existing implementations rely primarily on proprietary technology. Interoperability is a major concern in metaverse development, stemming from concerns about transparency and privacy. There have been several virtual environment standardization projects. Universal Scene Description is a specification for 3D computer graphics interchange created by Pixar and supported by Blender,

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

SceneKit SceneKit, sometimes rendered Scene Kit, is a 3D graphics application programming interface (API) for Apple Inc. platforms written in Objective-C. It is a high-level framework designed to provide an easy-to-use layer over the lower level APIs like O ...

and Autodesk 3ds Max. The technology company

NVIDIA Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

announced in 2021 they would adopt USD for their metaverse development tools. glTF is a specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by engines and applications created by the Khronos Group, an industry consortium developing royalty free open standards. In August 2022 it was announced that glTF 2.0 had been released as the ISO/

IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...

12113:2022 International Standard. OpenXR is an open standard for access to virtual and augmented reality devices and experiences. It has been adopted by

for HoloLens 2, Meta Platforms for the Oculus Quest, HTC for the HTC Vive, Qualcomm for the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, and Valve for SteamVR.

Criticism and concerns

Feasibility

In a February 2022 article for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', Lauren Jackson argued that the metaverse is "stalled from achieving scale by a lack of infrastructure for both hardware and software, a monopolistic approach to platform development, and a lack of clear governance standards." In December 2021,

Raja Koduri Raja M. Koduri (Rajabali Makaradhwaja Koduri) is an Indian-American computer engineer and executive for computer graphics hardware. He is currently the chief architect and senior vice president of Intel's architecture, graphics and software (I ...

, senior vice president of Intel, claimed that "Truly persistent and immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time, will require even more: a 1,000-times increase in computational efficiency from today’s state of the art." In an article for ''

'' on October 26, 2022, Ryan Mac, a technology reporter, claimed that for the past year, Mark Zuckerberg has struggled to find the best way to achieve the metaverse. Unfortunately, he failed.

Privacy

Information privacy is an area of concern for the metaverse because related companies will likely collect users' personal information through interactions and biometric data from wearable virtual and augmented reality devices. Meta Platforms (previously Facebook) is planning on employing targeted advertising within their metaverse, raising further worries related to the spread of misinformation and loss of personal privacy. In 2021, David Reid of Liverpool Hope University argued the amount of data collection in the metaverse would be greater than that on the internet stating "If you think about the amount of data a company could collect on the World Wide Web right now, compared to what it could collect with the metaverse, there is just no comparison." In fact, the current metaverse technology is very immature. Abdulsattar Jaber, a professor at Iraq's Middle Technical University, found that the new technology used by the metaverse may cause many problems related to the security and privacy of system users.

User safety

User addiction and problematic social media use is another concern.

Internet addiction disorder Problematic internet use or pathological internet use is generally defined as problematic, compulsive use of the internet, that results in significant impairment in an individual's function in various life domains over a prolonged period of time ...

, social media, and video game addiction can have mental and physical repercussions over a prolonged period of time, such as depression, anxiety, and various other harms related to having a sedentary lifestyle such as an increased risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease. Experts are also concerned that the metaverse could be used as an 'escape' from reality in a similar fashion to existing internet technologies. Virtual crime like sex abuse, child grooming, and harassment are significant challenges within existing virtual reality social platforms, and may be similarly prevalent in the metaverse. In February 2022, investigations by BBC News and ''The Washington Post'' found minors engaging in adult activities in applications such as VRChat and Horizon Worlds despite an age requirement of 13 years or older. In an October 2022 interview, Roblox Chief Scientist Morgan McGuire stated that it is "a challenge to moderate 3D", and also compared moderating Roblox to shutting down speakeasies.

Social issues

Metaverse development may magnify the social impacts of online echo chambers and digitally alienating spaces or abuse common social media engagement strategies to manipulate users with biased content. Keza MacDonald of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' criticized the utopianism of technology companies who claim that a metaverse could be a reprieve from worker exploitation, prejudice, and discrimination. MacDonald stated that they would be more positive towards metaverse development if it was not dominated by "companies and disaster capitalists trying to figure out a way to make more money as the real world's resources are dwindling." Marketing professor Andreas Kaplan, citing their experience studying '' Second Life'' users, argues that the metaverse may have a generally negative societal impact due to their strongly addictive potential.

Fiction

''Snow Crash'', 1992

The term ''metaverse'' was coined in Neal Stephenson's 1992

novel '' Snow Crash'', where humans, as programmable avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a

virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world. Stephenson used the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. Neal Stephenson's metaverse appears to its users as an urban environment developed along a 100-meter-wide road, called the Street, which spans the entire 65,536 km (2¹⁶ km) circumference of a featureless, black, perfectly spherical planet. The virtual

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more genera ...

is owned by the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, a fictional part of the real Association for Computing Machinery, and is available to be bought and buildings developed thereupon. Users of the metaverse access it through personal terminals that project a high-quality virtual reality display onto goggles worn by the user, or from grainy black and white public terminals in booths. The users experience it from a first-person perspective. Stephenson describes a sub-culture of people choosing to remain continuously connected to the metaverse; they are given the sobriquet "

gargoyle In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle () is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry wa ...

s" due to their grotesque appearance. Within the metaverse, individual users appear as avatars of any form, with the sole restriction of height, "to prevent people from walking around a mile high". Transport within the metaverse is limited to analogs of reality by foot or vehicle, such as the monorail that runs the entire length of the Street, stopping at 256 ''Express Ports'', located evenly at 256 km intervals, and ''Local Ports'', one kilometer apart.

''Ready Player One'', 2011

'' Ready Player One'' is a dystopian science fiction franchise created by Ernest Cline which depicts a shared VR landscape called "The OASIS". The first novel was released in 2011, with a 2018 film adaptation, and second novel in 2020. The franchise depicts the year 2045 as being gripped by an energy crisis and global warming, causing widespread social problems and economic stagnation. The primary escape for people is a shared VR landscape called "the OASIS" which is accessed with a VR headset and wired gloves. The OASIS functions both as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and as a virtual society.