The Metaverse

Initially, to understand the term "Metaverse" it is important to know that the term used by Facebook CEO Mark Zukemberg was already used a few decades ago. The term "Metaverse" first appeared in 1992 with the American writer Neal Stephenson, in a book Snow Crash. In his novel Snow Crash he described a kind of collective virtual space compatible and convergent with reality. In 2019, Facebook popularized the term by launching Facebook Horizon and then launched META, which everyone knows today.

The metaverse is a network of virtual worlds that replicate reality and is everything that is not in the virtual world and we can replicate, create and interact in the virtual world. Many companies that are investing are in the development of games, and this is natural because of the approximation of technologies.

The possibilities are endless, there are no limits to the creation of content within the metaverse, however, like every new technology, it needs others to evolve, thus, with the advancement of the 5g internet, artificial intelligence, headsets that enable experiences like the virtual reality glasses. All this and much more is part of the metaverse and the elements that make its existence possible.

The Metaverse is still seen by most as a great market speculation, however, it is something that in the near future will be strongly present in everyone's day-to-day and there are already several companies in the world investing billions in the development and evolution of this technology. .

People already experience the metaverse and currently there are several applications, but we can point to games as one of the great markets, for example Fortnite, Roblox, among others. But, despite everything, we are still at the beginning of this whole movement that is very promising for the coming years. Expectations are more than positive, as the largest companies in the world, not only in the technology field, are investing hugely in this market and the metaverse expects to move US $800 billion by 2023.

Medicine is also one of the markets that has invested a lot and there are already experiments with treatments performed within the virtual environment. Another sector that moved and sought experiences within the virtual world is Real Estate, with the sale of land and properties in the metaverse.

Virtual land sold in the millions, many people have already done it, but how much is a virtual land worth? This is a question still unanswered.

And also the market for NFTs or Non Fungible Tokens, which in addition to games has several other businesses being moved, an example of the market for virtual works of art, however, there is a certain difficulty in understanding the value of this asset.

But, even with so many doubts and uncertainties in the Metaverse, there is much to explore, and with so many investments from large companies such as Fortnite, EA, Nintendo, Gather, Netflix, Google, Facebook, Steam, Microsoft, IBM, VIVE, Amazon, among others. several others, it is important to be connected to this market trend.

And like everything, whether in life or in art, it has its positive and negative sides. And one of the risks that I can point out is the one referring to the impacts on society, on people. Dependence on technology can become so great that the possibility of a global collapse can lead to a widespread and unexpected problem for everyone. The possibility of population control and also the control of access to information can be another future problem, because when everything is in the virtual environment, whoever is not contained in this world will be automatically disconnected and out of it. Thus, it is important to be aware of the laws, and following this direction, the LGPD emerged.

I believe that in the virtual world of the metaverse, people will be able to interact and perform any activity, work, play, shop, have fun, in short, I believe that the metaverse will reach a point where the real and virtual worlds will cease to exist separately and will become one.

Jai Souza | CEO na MOOVInova Tecnologia e Inovação