The business element of the metaverse is central to Meta’s proposition – Workrooms, the virtual offices, are a core part of their Horizon Worlds offering, and have already been tried out by some companies (albeit to mixed reactions). These copies employ real-time data to give users greater insights on their physical counterparts and can be used to run simulations on them, enabling more detailed analysis and ambitious experimentation than is possible in the real world. The metaverse has given rise to new technologies that can make day-to-day operations more efficient, such as digital twins – virtual copies of buildings, large hardware, products, and more. The practical opportunities to enhance how businesses operate in Web3 - what McKinsey describes as the “ enterprise metaverse” - show that this new frontier extends beyond gaming. Rowley distinguishes between this new sphere and the much-loved pastime in his definition of the metaverse: “Quite simply, the Metaverse is a fusing of the connectivity of the internet with the ‘dimensionality’ of gaming, giving rise to a ‘dimensionalised internet’.” Not everyone agrees, however, with some arguing that this stance misconstrues the metaverse as just an extension of gaming. Roblox chief business officer Craig Donato goes as far as to say that the virtual world “has already happened” Tamara Sword, founder and MD of ThoughtLDR, is of the same view, telling The MadTech Podcast that “people are playing in metaverse environments every single day”. If the promise of the metaverse is to provide a virtual realm where individuals can connect with other people, buy unique digital items, and build their own slice of virtual paradise, then it seems that the space is already upon us in the form of video games. It’s just now finally fusing together into one media channel.” Even back in the era of dial-up modems there was a metaverse.” Phil Rowley, head of futures at Omnicom Media Group UK, meanwhile, argues that the components of the metaverse have been around for some time, but we are only now on the cusp of seeing it become a single entity: “People have been engaging with its constituent parts - trillions of webpages, trillions of hours of video, trillions of gaming interactions - for decades. Kingsley takes the view that the metaverse has been off the ground for a long time, having arrived with modern technology: “The metaverse has existed since computers could talk to each other, just not in such graphical magnificence as it might achieve these days. Given that it is described almost equally as ‘new’, ‘nascent’, and ‘hypothetical’, it is difficult to establish whether the metaverse actually exists. Jason Kingsley OBE, CEO of Rebellion, takes a similar view, saying “VR is a part of, but I don’t think it is the only way to access the experience”, although he adds that the immersion offered by VR can be “very powerful” and “changes how you feel about the experience of living inside data systems”. According to Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable, VR hardware is “tangential to the value proposition of the metaverse” and everyday technology - namely, computers and smartphones - will serve as the gateway to the sphere. However, this thirty-year-old image doesn’t resonate with everyone, with the necessity of virtual reality hardware being a key point of contention. It goes without saying that Stephenson’s vision has been hugely influential. Metaverse expert Matthew Ball defines the metaverse as “a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds and environments which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments”. Technologists and futurists have expanded on this concept over the past few decades. In the story, the metaverse is a virtual world that appears as an urban street, which is entered via terminals and viewed through special goggles. The term metaverse first appeared in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. What is the metaverse? What does it look like?
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