META is a Greek word and it means “beyond” or “after”, as it is used in words such as metaphysics.
THE METAVERSE, is a digital world built on top of the real physical world. The name has its roots from the novel Snow Crash* by Neal Stephenson - 1992.
Here, the world is described in a 3D virtual environment and the real people are represented by their avatars.
At the present, there is not a fully agreed international definition for “METAVERSE”, since it continues to evolve day by day.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, who changed the name of his company, Facebook, into META, "the metaverse" will be the successor of the mobile internet.
This new "internet system" allows its users to be inside of a 3D virtual world and interact with their counterparts without any physical boundaries.
METAVERSE is currently accessible only by using special physical equipment, wearables and expensive ($500+) headsets to enhance the physical world.
Games such as Roblox and Fortnite are played by millions of mostly young people around the world today. Here, the players have the opportunity to explore different digital environments by using their avatars. They also create personal experiences in their “social spaces” and get connected virtually with one another without any gameplay, if they so prefer.
Companies like FB are also building their own vision of the metaverse with virtual meeting spaces that allow remote employees to connect using this technology.
The METAVERSE isn’t just only a digital virtual 3D experience. It is about a new and very large digital economy that will support the use of different cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens - NFTs**.
At the present, the METAVERSE technologies are in their infancy stages. Many companies including FB, Google, Microsoft and Apple are looking for thousands of software programmers, hardware developers and engineers for its maturity.
The METAVERSE is a new big economic universe which represents great opportunities for the young innovators and entrepreneurs.
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(*) Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, a science fiction novel, 1992.
(**) NFT - Non-fungible token, a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain.