What the metaverse will (and won’t) be, according to 28 experts

metaverse (hopefully) won’t be the virtual world of ‘Snow Crash,’ or ‘Ready Player One.’ It will likely be something more complex, diverse, and wild.

The metaverse concept clearly means very different things to different people. What exists right now is a series of embryonic digital spaces, such as Facebook’s Horizon, Epic Games’ Fortnite, Roblox‘s digital space for gaming and game creation, and the blockchain-based digital world Decentraland–all of which have clear borders, different rules and objectives, and differing rates of growth.

TIFFANY ROLFE

different layers of realities that we can all be experiencing, even in the same environment or physical space. We’re already doing that with our phones to a certain extent—passively in a physical environment while mentally in a digital one. But we’ll see more experiences beyond your phone, where our whole bodies are fully engaged, and that’s where the metaverse starts to get interesting—we genuinely begin to explore and live in these alternate realities simultaneously.

RONY ABOVITZ, FOUNDER, MAGIC LEAP

Xverse

It will have legacy parts that look and feel like the web today, but it will have new nodes and capabilities that will look and feel like the Ready Player One Oasis (amazing gaming worlds), immersion leaking into our world (like my Magicverse concept), and every imaginable permutation of these. I feel that the Xverse will have gradients of sentience and autonomy, and we will have the emergence of synthetic life (things Sun and Thunder is working on) and a multitude of amazing worlds to explore. Building a world will become something everyone can do (like building a webpage or a blog) and people will be able to share richer parts of their external and inner lives at incredibly high-speed across the planet.

YAT SIU, COFOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF GAMING AND BLOCKCHAIN COMPANY ANIMOCA BRANDS

Reality will exist on a spectrum ranging from physical to virtual (VR), but a significant chunk of our time will be spent somewhere between those extremes, in some form of augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality will be a normal part of daily life. Virtual companions will provide information, commentary, updates and advice on matters relevant to you at that point in time, including your assets and activities, in both virtual and real spaces.

TIMONI WEST, VP OF AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY, UNITY:

I think we can all agree our initial dreams of a fully immersive, separate digital world is not only unrealistic, but maybe not what we actually want. So I’ve started defining the metaverse differently to capture the zeitgeist: we’re entering an era where every computer we interact with, big or small, is increasingly world-aware. They can recognize faces, voices, hands, relative and absolute position, velocity, and they can react to this data in a useful way. These contextually aware computers are the path to unlocking ambient computing: where computers fade from the foreground to the background of everyday, useful tools. The metaverse is less of a ‘thing’ and more of a computing era. Contextual computing enables a multitude of new types of interactions and apps: VR sculpting tools and social hangouts, self-driving cars, robotics, smart homes.

SAM HAMILTON, HEAD OF COMMUNITY & EVENTS FOR BLOCKCHAIN-BASED METAVERSE CREATOR THE DECENTRALAND FOUNDATION

NITZAN MEKEL-BOBROV, CHIEF AI OFFICER, EBAY

as carbon is to the organic world, AI will be both the matrix that provides the necessary structural support and the material from which digital representation will be made. Of all the ways in which AI will shape the form of the metaverse, perhaps most essential is the role it will play in the physical-digital interface. Translating human actions into digital input–language, eye movement, hand gestures, locomotion–these are all actions which AI companies and researchers have already made tremendous progress on.

HUGO SWART, VICE PRESIDENT AND GM OF XR, QUALCOMM

Qualcomm views the metaverse as an ever-present spatial internet complete with personalized digital experiences that spans the physical and virtual worlds, where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly.

IBRAHIM BAGGILI, FOUNDING DIRECTOR, CONNECTICUT INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAVEN

As an active researcher in the security and forensics of VR systems, should the metaverse come into existence, we should explore and hypothesize the ways it will be misused.

CHITRA RAGAVAN, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER AT BLOCKCHAIN DATA ANALYTICS COMPANY ELEMENTUS 

I picture [the metaverse] almost like The Truman Show. Only, instead of walking into a television set, you walk into the internet and can explore any number of different realities

JOHN HANKE, CEO OF POKÉMON GO CREATOR NIANTIC

We imagine the metaverse as reality made better, a world infused with magic, stories, and functionality at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds.

CAROLINA ARGUELLES NAVAS, GLOBAL PRODUCT MARKETING, AUGMENTED REALITY, SNAP

Rather than building the “metaverse,” a separate and fully virtual reality that is disconnected from the physical world, we are focused on augmenting reality, not replacing it. We believe AR–or computing overlaid on the world around us–has a smoother path to mass adoption, but will also be better for the world than a fully virtual world.

URHO KONTTORI, COFOUNDER AND CTO OF AR/VR HEADSET MAKER VARJO

In the reality-based metaverse, we will be able to more effectively design products of the future, meet and collaborate with our colleagues far away, and experience any remote place in real-time.

ATHERINE ALLEN, CEO OF IMMERSIVE TECH RESEARCH CONSULTANCY LIMINA IMMERSIVE

I prefer to think of the metaverse as simply bringing our bodies into the internet.

BRANDS IN THE METAVERSE

VISHAL SHAH, VP OF METAVERSE, FACEBOOK

The metaverse isn’t just VR! Those spaces will connect to AR glasses and to 2D spaces like Instagram. And most importantly, there will be a real sense of continuity where the things you buy are always available to you.

SAYON DEB, MANAGER, MARKET RESEARCH, CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION

At its core will be a self-contained economy that allows individuals and businesses to create, own or invest in a range of activities and experiences.

NANDI NOBELL, SENIOR ASSOCIATE AT GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN FIRM CALLISONRTKL

the metaverse experience can be altered from the individual’s point of view and shaped or curated by any number of agents—whether human or A.I. In that sense, the metaverse does not have an objective look beyond its backend. In essence, the metaverse, together with our physical locations, forms a spatial continuum.

NICK CHERUKURI, CEO AND FOUNDER OF MIXED REALITY GLASSES MAKER THIRDEYE

The AR applications of the metaverse are limitless and it really can become the next great version of the internet.

SAM TABAR, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, BITCOIN MINING COMPANY BIT DIGITAL

It seems fair to predict that the actual aesthetic of any given metaverse will be determined by user demand. If users want to exist in a gamified world populated by outrageous avatars and fantastic landscapes then the metaverse will respond to that demand. Like all things in this world the metaverse will be market driven

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More on meta-verse in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=metaverse