By Eran Elhanani
One day you won’t be able to imagine a world without the metaverse, and that day is today.
There will be no “before” or “after” the metaverse. Instead, the metaverse will seep into our daily lives as an inevitable evolution of progress. The forefront of technological innovation entering the mainstream in ways that will feel like the metaverse has been here all along, and in many ways, it has.
Coined by the writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel, “Snow Crash,” then reimagined as the Oasis in the Ernest Cline novel “Ready Player One,” the metaverse has remained boxed in the hypothetical worlds of futurism and science fiction, leaving many people skeptical of its arrival or transformative potential. Those skeptics view the metaverse as just another tech product, a marketing ploy, or an unnecessarily expensive gaming console.
But the actual “reality” of the metaverse is that it is not a giant tech drop, nor is it some futuristic virtual universe. In fact, it isn’t even some new frontier we have never seen before. On the contrary, versions of the metaverse are here today and have been here for quite some time.
What Is The Metaverse?
The metaverse is not a specific virtual space but a framework for a highly interconnected life. It is not one product or concept but a convergence of themes that creates the opportunity for digital interoperability and interconnection. As different products, services and capabilities integrate and evolve, the metaverse itself will expand, infiltrating into every sector and building upon itself to broaden its definition and solidify itself in our everyday lives.
How We Got Here
In 1973 the first-ever portable cell phone was invented; the Motorola (NYSE: MSI) DynaTAC 8000X, a 2.4 lb $10,000 prototype that offered only 30 minutes of talk time and took over 10 hours to charge. Today our phones are an integral part of our lives, from how we conduct business, socialize, access information, create, and explore. Looking at how the cell phone has evolved in the last 50 years, specifically with the implementation of Apple’s iPhone (NASDAQ: AAPL) in 2008, the cell phone gradually and then suddenly became one of the most critical pieces of technology we have ever had. Whom among us could imagine living without their smartphone today, just a mere 14 years since its mass adoption.
Technology as a whole has exhibited the same type of gradual progression as cell phones and the internet and is emerging in similarly fundamental ways. These emerging technologies, such as innovations in …
Full story available on Benzinga.com