What's Changing? - Metaverse

Please see below recent metaverse-related change.

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January 2024

In 2022, the world learned the word for what you get when the lines between the real world and the internet blur: the metaverse. By 2023, a lot of people were even able to wrap their heads around the concept, but as 2024 got underway, the metaverse economy as it has been imagined hadn’t taken off, warned Quartz. There are too many questions - what does policy and governance look like, how will children be protected, how much is a virtual shoe really worth, and so on - and not enough answers. Experts are split down the middle on whether or not a fully immersive virtual world is even possible.

December 2023

The metaverse hasn’t yet fully taken off. There are too many questions - what does policy and governance look like, how will children be protected, how much is a virtual product really worth, and so on - and not enough answers. Getting those answers will take time and money. Experts remained split down the middle on whether or not a fully-immersive virtual world is even possible.

August 2023

Virtual environments open up new opportunities to provide mental health treatments, covering a range of telemedicine applications, including prevention, diagnostics, therapy, education and research. Several gaming platforms have already been established to help people with conditions like depression and anxiety or encourage mindfulness and meditation, for example.

July 2023

CB Insights asked: remember when metaverse hype was everywhere and concluded that it seems like the moment has passed. Apple, Apple avoided using the "M word entirely" when introducing its new mixed-reality Vision Pro headset and funding to the metaverse/virtual space market dropped off in a big way. CB Insights analysed the metaverse's market’s traction (or lack thereof).

February 2023

McKinsey argued that, with a potential to generate up to US$5 trillion in value by 2030, the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore - and if CEOs don’t hop on the metaverse train, they risk being left at the station. The firm analysed the opportunities and risks of what some are calling “the next iteration of the internet,” and then dived deeper with more insights in its special collection, McKinsey on the Metaverse.

December 2022

Further reading:

November 2022

Business schools have started teaching classes in virtual worlds as they look to prepare their students for the age of the metaverse, the Financial Times reported. Virtual classrooms, which can accommodate a lecturer and hundreds of students (all in avatar form), have the potential to make learning more interactive. By learning in these virtual worlds, business students may also start to figure out the commercial opportunities that the metaverse presents.
Around US$2bn was spent on virtual land in 2022 as people and companies raced to get a foothold in the metaverse, research showed, even though may still be years away from the metaverse emerging as a single immersive space online where people can live, work and play in virtual reality.
Tuvalu announced that it would become the first nation to be recreated in the metaverse. The Pacific island nation faces an existential threat due to rising sea levels caused by global heating. "As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world's first digital nation", said Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, at COP27.

October 2022

Major global powers see the metaverse as the next strategic battleground to shape the rules of a new technological domain. Major technology platforms are betting big on its economic opportunities, and cities such as Dubai, Shanghai and Seoul are unveiling metaverse development plans. To make sense of this immensely complex ecosystem, it's worth understanding the metaverse as a space subject to competing ideals and political pressures and fragmentation. Internet scholars Kieron O’Hara and Wendy Hall discerned that at least four internets have emerged: the Silicon Valley open internet, the highly regulated European “bourgeois” internet, the Chinese authoritarian internet, and the US commercial internet. The WEF believes we can therefore equally envision a future of at least four metaverses, namely the open metaverse, the civil European metaverse, the authoritarian Chinese metaverse, and the commercial US metaverse.

September 2022

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson’s startup published its vision for the future of the metaverse. Stephenson coined the term ‘metaverse’ in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

August 2022

EY cautioned that there will be several “real-world” realities that may impact the metaverse’s evolution. For one thing, it’s a massive undertaking with no single leader and no set standards, and its adoption will be reliant in part on a deep line-up of still-evolving technologies. Business leaders will need to factor in things like network server and infrastructure architecture, new jurisdictional and legal issues, and security and safety.
BCG believes that it is hard to pinpoint where the metaverse starts and ends. It is flourishing, in part, thanks to continuing advancements in technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and VR, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain. Just as our understanding of the universe and what it encompasses has been vastly expanded by space telescopes, the nature of the metaverse is a work in progress. Were we able to define its boundaries today, some future technological advance would almost certainly cause us to reassess.
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said it would launch a campus in the metaverse. The institution would launch virtual replicas of its two main physical locations, in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

June 2022

A report by McKinsey predicted the metaverse could be worth US$5tn by 2030. Ecommerce could comprise $2.6tn, virtual learning, $270bn, advertising, $206bn, and gaming, $125bn, it said.
For the FT, the metaverse, for now, remains beyond clear definition. It is easy to understand full-on VR worlds. It is much harder to anticipate less immersive methods of merging the virtual with the real. Will it involve pasting digital information over the physical world, like the displays for fighter pilots? Being entertained in front of the digital equivalent of a giant IMAX screen? Or interacting with avatars of other people that appear to be real?
Further reading:

May 2022

Private capital is rapidly pouring into the metaverse. In 2021, metaverse-related companies reportedly raised upward of $10 billion, more than twice as much as they did in the previous year. The global value creation opportunity from the metaverse could be in the trillions, believes McKinsey.
The concept of online shopping is expanding, as the rise of the metaverse and shared virtual spaces transform how consumers interact with people and businesses. In the not-too-distant future, shoppers may be able to craft entirely personalised digital shopping experiences - from consulting with virtual advisors, to customising physical and virtual goods, to seamlessly moving between devices and platforms.
An Ipsos survey for the World Economic Forum found that opinion is mixed on the opportunities for the metaverse for public life. Half of adults in 29 countries say they are familiar with the metaverse while a similar number have positive feelings about engaging with extended reality in daily life. However, the survey also pointed to wide disparities between demographic groups and across countries. See also WEF on Shaping a Shared Future: Making the Metaverse.

April 2022

The metaverse could represent a US$1tn market by 2030, according to CB Insights. which sees the metaverse as a vision, not a specific technology, and as comprised of six key layers:
- Infrastructure (chips & processors, cloud infrastructure, etc.)
- Access/interface (haptics, headsets, smart glasses, etc.)
- Virtualisation tools (3D design engines, avatar development, etc.)
- Virtual worlds (centralised & decentralised)
- Economic infrastructure (payments, crypto wallets, NFT marketplaces, etc.)
- Experiences (gaming, virtual real estate/concerts, etc.)
- CB Insights also provided a market map to see the vendors and technologies bringing the metaverse to life.
A team is training young people “to code the next generation of the Internet”, with a broader aim of accelerating progress on the SDGs – the 17 key goals adopted by the UN for 2030. Starting with VR technology training, the programme educates and upskills participants from a low-income background to help them escape cycles of poverty. Immersive VR experiences can be designed with “no-code programming”, using a visual interface that is more accessible for new learners.
EY argued that, unconstrained from the physical limits of time and space, the metaverse presents transformational new opportunities across industries beyond gaming. Similar to the mobile internet era, the immersive era will demand a radical shift in companies’ approach to customer engagement, branding, product development, innovation and ultimately their entire business model. Already many are experimenting: leveraging existing gaming platforms to build virtual social spaces, selling virtual items like clothing or shoes for avatars, creating digital twins of factories to optimize operations, and even conducting interviews and onboarding new employees.
An EY analyst argued that, in the past, when society lived predominantly in the physical world, access to absolute scarcities that are tangible in nature like oil and land was the key to competitive advantage. The significance of the metaverse is that scarcities will increasingly be intangible, like trust and individuals’ attention. Ultimately, the eternal formula of success for businesses will remain: i.e. the ability to create products and services that offer value to customers.
Imagine a world where you could have a beachside conversation with your colleagues, take meeting notes while floating around a space station, or teleport from your office, all without taking a step outside your front door. Feeling under pressure with too many meetings scheduled ? Then why not send your AI-enabled digital twin instead to take the load off your shoulders? For HBR These examples offer a glimpse into the future vision of work promised by “the metaverse,” a term coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992 to describe a future world of virtual reality. The metaverse is generally regarded as a network of 3D virtual worlds where people can interact, do business, and forge social connections through their avatars, essentially a virtual reality version of today’s internet.
New World Same Humans argued that the most compelling version of the metaverse may be the kind Augmented Reality (AR) players are building, one in which digital objects are projected across our view of the physical environment. Enter a drinks party and see the names of each person floating above their head. Run with your life-sized AR trainer. Walk down the high street and experience (or get spammed by) a hundred and more promotional messages.
Compute-heavy metaverse commerce raises climate concerns, warned EY. yet substitution, digital twins and immersive experiences could bring sustainability benefits. While environmental sustainability is critically important, so is social sustainability and the creation of an accessible, inclusive and equitable metaverse.
A metaverse startup called Somnium Space announced plans to offer users a ‘live forever’ mode. The service would collect massive amounts of data on a participating user, including their conversations, gestures, and travels inside the Somnium world. It would then create an AI-fuelled avatar of that user, intended to be a mirror image of the real person.
A poll of 7,500 office workers conducted for Lenovo in November 2021 found that 44% would rather work in the metaverse than return to HQ, but a similar percentage didn’t believe that their employers would have the expertise to enable this once it became possible, while 59% reported that their firms already weren’t investing enough in IT advances that could improve their productivity. Bill Gates has predicted that most business meetings will be held in the metaverse by 2024, with workers wearing VR headsets and interacting as avatars, but many are still sceptical.

March 2022

Media company VICE launched an HQ in the metaverse. The new headquarters inside virtual world Decentraland were designed by Danish architecture studio BIG. VICE said it would serve as the company’s ‘virtual innovation lab’.
A Japanese startup is working on technology that will allows users to ‘feel pain in the metaverse’. H2L Technologies is working on a wristband that will deliver ‘small electric shocks’ at appropriate moments. The result, said CEO Emi Tamaki, will be virtual worlds that feel more real and are more immersive.

February 2022

The next version of the internet may be a far more immersive virtual experience. The concept of the “metaverse” has received renewed attention, though many of its basic elements - like virtual and augmented reality, or cryptocurrency transactions - have been under construction for decades. By essentially making the internet a virtual twin of the physical world, this digital do-over could enable novel ways of working, buying things, learning, and socializing. No single company will own or dominate the metaverse, and the race is on to stake out territory within it, according to the World Economic Forum.
The Free Republic of Liberland had all the trappings of nationhood when it launched in 2015. Founded by libertarian Czech politician Vít Jedlička, the micronation located on three square miles of no man’s land between Croatia and Serbia, had its own flag, a coat of arms, a national anthem, and a digital currency called a Liberland merit. In 2022, Liberland unveiled its most significant proposal yet. Working with Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, Jedlička portrayed the country as a futuristic crypto paradise through a fully realised city in the metaverse.

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