The future of the metaverse
From plans to deliver the metaverse to the NFT goldrush, 2021 was yet another year of impressive advancements in technology – with one common feature, they are taking us back to the future, they feel simultaneously new and retro in what they offer.
One of the first mentions of the metaverse was in the 1992 science fiction novel 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson which describes a world where people escape to a shared online space (known as the metaverse). Here, individuals used augmented reality to become controllable avatars that could appear in any form. With Facebook announcing a name change to Meta, we are seeing a commitment to make this vision a reality. Similarly, Microsoft has made its first steps into this space with the announcement of an avatar feature for its Teams softwarexii. Snap too has been reported to be working on a separate version of the metaverse based in AR rather than (the more sophisticated) VR with Spectaclesxiii.
If nothing else, the metaverse presents an opportunity for a new digital marketplace and the coming years will see competition begin to heat up.
On another plane we have the NFT craze. NFTs are non-fungible tokens, a means of certifying digital assets. They have primarily been used at online auctions, but with Christies’ and Louis Vuitton getting in on the action they are set to enter the mainstream.
Earlier this year we saw Beeple’s digital collage ‘Everydays: The First 5,000 Days’ sell for $69.4m in an online auction held by Christies. The piece consists of 5,000 individual digital pictures (rather retro), showing a picture for each day since May 2007. Then we saw the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a bundle of 101 cartoon apes, sell for $24 million at auction.
xii https://www.ft.com/content/62d4652f-faec-4ef7-b642-1ae7b4262563 xiii https://qz.com/2099747/snap-is-offering-the-metaverse-while-meta-talks-about-the-future/