A whole new world - Web 3.0 and the metaverse

four people sitting on stools in a gallery space wearing VR helmets while experiencing a virtual reality presentation

What is it?

The metaverse is a catch-all term for the next generation of the internet: Web 3.0. It’s a new virtual land where people from around the world can come together to socialize, work, engage in commerce, and play.

Today, digital experiences are largely limited to what can be seen on-screen, like a mobile device or computer, but this will change in the coming years. It’s likely that a growing number of users will move away from scrolling on a 2D device, like an iPhone, and begin strolling through 3D virtual environments, through a device like Oculus. Virtual and augmented reality will become fully immersive, and our profile pictures will be replaced by avatars — a novel character representing an individual in a digital space.

young woman in VR headset and hand controls interacting with a virtual environment

Immersive digital experiences will be built on the foundations of gaming — visual grammar, gamification, user interfaces, and social experiences — which have defined the genre for the last 20 years. Designers will leverage these elements to springboard users into the metaverse, and VR headsets will be tool that grants users access into this new world; they will become as ubiquitous as a web camera on a desktop computer.

Personal information and intellectual property, which are under constant threat of compromise or theft in the digital world of today, will become more secure in the future through tools like blockchain — a digitally distributed, decentralized, and public ledger. New currencies, commonly known as crypto, will supplement or replace national currencies altogether and make it easier for businesses to transact with consumers.

Perhaps the greatest promise of the metaverse is that it has the potential to democratize the digital space, as well as improve efficiencies in the way we work, collaborate, and care for each other.

Perhaps the greatest promise of the metaverse is that it has the potential to democratize the digital space, as well as improve efficiencies in the way we work, collaborate, and care for each other. Individuals will have the tools at their fingertips to better control the ownership of what they create online, and they won’t necessarily need to cede control of their creations to platforms like FACEBOOK or TikTok.

The building blocks are in place for Web 3.0, and it’s going to change a lot of our daily lives, much like the internet a quarter century ago. Let’s take a look.

It will change how we work

‘Hopping on a Zoom call’ for work during the pandemic was the first step into the metaverse for many people. It allowed them to be physically located in multiple geographies, while meeting in the same virtual space. What seemed futuristic just months before the outbreak became commonplace overnight and changed the workplace forever.

image of a laptop showing the participants of a virtual meeting

In the the near future, more meetings will be held via Zoom, but we can also expect that 3D virtual spaces — facilitated by headsets, or perhaps other novel immersive technologies — will emerge. Meeting in the metaverse could have the look and feel of a conference room in a physical office and could enhance remote of hybrid work.

“The immediate implication is that commuting times for many knowledge workers may shorten, or could be eliminated altogether. “

The immediate implication is that commuting times for many knowledge workers may shorten, or could be eliminated altogether. The shift to more virtual work could also pave the way for employers to trim their physical office footprint, which could have significant implications for commercial real estate values.

It will change how we shop

The pandemic shifted a number of consumer behaviors, and a growing cohort got online to shop for everything from groceries to furniture. This was no different for older customers, who embraced the change en masse and became the fastest growing group of online shoppers in 2020, according to NPD Group’s Checkout Tracking. While some have returned to brick and mortar post-vaccination, it is likely that the number of older digital consumers will grow as Generation X ages into the space.

the exterior of an IKEA

Early iterations of the metaverse are already changing the shopping landscape. Swedish retailer, IKEA, leverages augmented reality to simulate furniture placement in a customers home, which makes it easier to answer the questions “will it fit” and “will it look good.”

Future digital shopping environments may be a representation of the physical store. This would allow customers to “walk” through aisles and “touch” goods all in the comfort of their home.

It can enhance social learning and may build empathy too

One of the early takeaways from VR is that it has the power to improve peoples understanding of the real world, which is a good thing. Research already suggests that most interactions with a virtual human or an avatar can be very similar to interactions with a real human, which means that our connections in the metaverse could have some very positive effects, including building empathy in users.

...our connections in the metaverse could have some very positive effects, including building empathy in users.

Take, for example, the opportunity for VR users to transport themselves into a real life situation. Instead of watching a documentary about refugee camps in Jordan, users will get a 360-degree experience of the camp, seemingly placing them in the middle of a family having dinner or playing a pickup game of soccer. They may even get the chance to meet these refugees “in-person” and have conversations with them in real time.

This type of experience creates a lasting impression on users and enhances their view of the world. Because of its immersive nature, VR users have reported a more visceral memory of the experience. They didn’t necessarily remember they were in a VR headset; they remembered the experience as if they were there.

Empathetic experience will be one of the foundational aspects of work and play inside the metaverse, and heightened emotional states will be a hallmark of this next evolution of the virtual world, but it doesn’t come without some caution. Older adults have long fallen prey to bad actors; this is true for the analog and the digital worlds. And, the metaverse could prove to be fertile ground for scam artists and fraudsters. For all of the promise of this new space, there is potential for peril as well, and users should approach it with a degree of caution.

Blockchain will enhance the supply chain

Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger system where “blocks” of encrypted data are “chained” together – one block of data is coded to connect to the previous block, and the next block, and so on. This ledger is then copied and distributed across thousands of computers, making forgeries of digital transactions nearly impossible.

digital billboard wrapped around a building in a large city that reads, 'Blockchain making transactions safer and faster Nasdaq Rewrite Tomorrow'

Blockchain may also improve efficiencies by breaking down complex and siloed systems of procurement that can lead to redundancies. It can also help establish trust between organizations and individuals that may be operating in different parts of the world. And, it has the potential to protect consumers from fraud.

The future is already here

It’s easy right now to look at what’s developing – and the techie buzzwords surrounding it – and write it off as marketing puffery. But we’ve seen this story play out before. If you were able to travel back in time to 1995 and shake your younger self and say: “Get on this, the internet will change everything”, how much different might your life be right now?

We’re at the beginning of a paradigm shift as large as the internet, if not greater, and we’re at the dial-up modem phase right now.

Rick Plautz

Rick Plautz is a Web 3.0 futurist and expert on the metaverse, as well as motion designer and adjunct professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brandcenter.

https://www.rickplautz.com/
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