will the metaverse change how we work play and socialize is this the first version or v1 of ready player one or even worse the matrix oh hi everyone kevin here today we are going to look at the metaverse or maybe i should say meta versus because you know you can have more than just one what is it why would you use it is it even something that you asked for how do you access it right now these are just a few of the questions that we’ll try to answer in this video first off what is this thing called the metaverse and the easiest way to make this real is to just share an example of technology that you use today and to look at how things might change now so many of us are familiar with joining a zoom or a microsoft teams meeting you see your classmates or all of your co-workers in these little boxes with their video feed now imagine instead of that you’re now in a 3d environment where you can interact with all of them or imagine that you’re in an astronomy class and you’re learning about planets and stars you can now fully immerse yourself in the content that’s pretty cool it makes me think about what i could do with my youtube channel to teach and show some of these different apps or imagine that you want to attend a concert in 3d like i don’t know maybe a justin bieber concert which recently happened and i seem to know a lot about it and i might have attended this concert i just just cut right there uh i i shouldn’t have shared that all of these are examples of how experiences become a lot more just immersive and rich in the metaverse you might be wondering where does this word metaverse even come from well it’s the combination of two separate words first you have meta which in greek stands for next or beyond and then you have the word universe so basically the next or beyond universe pretty clever huh the term metaverse first appeared in the 1992 novel snow crash by author neil stevenson in this book humans connected to the metaverse using high quality goggles or just a basic terminal and that reminds me i should probably talk to neil about my stock picks he seems to have a really good sense for the future the term stuck and now when people refer to a highly immersive 3d space people say metaverse we’ll have to see if this term sticks around for the long haul i mean who actually says cyberspace anymore from my time working at microsoft anytime you develop a product you want it to be at least 10 times better than existing solutions at least if you want it to be a runaway success otherwise you’re just building a better mousetrap the problem that the metaverse aims to solve is when you meet and collaborate with others on the internet it just doesn’t feel that personal that is after all why people fly halfway around the world for a one hour business meeting and if you look at the last two years despite having all of this technology that claims to connect us we all still feel so isolated and alone or at least i do down here in my youtube basement studio hello the reason so many of us prefer meeting in person is you can see all of the facial expressions you can read the body language you can hear the tone of the voice the metaverse aims to replicate as much of this as possible so when you meet in a digital environment you get a similar experience you might be thinking we already have experiences like this i mean i spent half my life playing second life you’ve even had people get married in the game’s second life and despite what you might be thinking that was not me you have games like roblox minecraft fortnite and all of these have highly immersive 3d worlds and in a sense you could describe all of these as the metaverse but the metaverse aims to make them even richer and more immersive today when you play these games you’re typically sitting in front of your computer screen or maybe on your phone with a metaverse you’ll wear vr or ar goggles maybe you have haptic gloves so you can interact using your hands with objects in this 3d space the metaverse aims to make everything feel just more lifelike and just more real so how do you even access the metaverse [Music] well today you already have some metaverse experiences facebook as an example has a line of products called horizon that allow you to meet together with others in a highly immersive 3d world microsoft has mesh for microsoft teams they also have spaces for sharepoint and you also have all the different games that we mentioned up above in a sense all of these are already the metaverse but over time these experiences will become even richer and even more immersive and you’ll likely start to access more of them with vr goggles so what are the benefits of the metaverse well first off companies like meta previously known as facebook microsoft epic games will likely make billions of dollars off of all of this now kevin kevin the consumer benefit oh the consumer benefits okay for consumers you’ll have a more lifelike and rich meeting experience and hopefully this cuts down on things like your commute maybe it’ll cut down on the business traveling that you have to do and that should be a net positive for the planet and also this should generate millions and millions of jobs i mean after all you need someone to build these 3d worlds these 3d buildings you’ll probably even have people offering services within these 3d worlds i mean after all who’s going to style my hair in the metaverse i need it to look good before we see any broad adoption of the metaverse there are some serious challenges that need to be worked through and i think elon musk says it best i don’t see someone strapping a friggin you know screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave there seems no way yeah i mean seriously i don’t think i could wear this for more than an hour at a time and adding to that if i want the best possible graphics i have to hard wire onto my computer and goodbye to any free movement and also battery life is a serious concern snap just released their latest version of their spectacles they’re pretty comfortable to wear but you can only use them continuously for about 30 minutes aside from all of the hardware concerns you also have issues related to privacy meta or facebook is one of the leading companies pushing for the metaverse and they’re not exactly a model citizen for limiting how much data they track about you and imagine what advertising is going to look like in the metaverse it’ll probably be even more aggressive not to mention the potential for trolling in the metaverse imagine all the bullying and the harassment that happens just online and now put that into a 3d environment lastly you also have cost concerns to get these fancy goggles these different sensors and haptics that’s going to cost a lot of money and probably only a few people will be able to afford that at least initially many companies are already investing substantially in making the metaverse a reality and probably one of the best examples of this is the company meta or previously known as facebook mark zuckerberg is literally betting the entire company on the metaverse he’s already investing billions of dollars and billions more will follow at the 2021 connect event mark officially renamed the company from facebook to meta and this way it better aligns with their new charter of course nothing to do with all of the negativity associated with the name facebook he’s even gone so far as to rename all employees metamates yes i’m serious i’m not making that up it’s kind of like how the navy refers to all of their sailors as shipmates but here all employees are now metamates you can’t make this stuff up facebook already has an entire product line called horizon dedicated to the metaverse they also have hardware to go along with it you can use the oculus quest 2 goggles they also have project cambria which is the next generation set of goggles which include even more sensors facebook also has tremendous assets in its existing products you have facebook messenger whatsapp it’s easy to imagine that vr meetings will come to messenger at some point i think there are three main reasons why meta is investing so heavily into the metaverse first off mark zuckerberg truly believes that this is going to be the next paradigm of computing you started with desktop computers then it shifted to the web and then you had mobile computing he believes this is going to be that next step and by investing so heavily meta will have the first mover advantage the second reason this gives meta the potential to own the platform today when you use instagram or facebook or whatsapp you’re using these apps on other people’s platforms like ios or android and meta has had some issues with this apple recently restricted how much data could be shared back with meta turns out people don’t want that much tract about them and this has materially affected meta’s revenue and now alphabet with android is doing the exact same thing where they want to give users control over their data and third meta has recently had trouble at both attracting and retaining younger users it turns out your business is not very sustainable if your users just keep getting older and older i guess young users just don’t like sharing their lives with uncle bob on facebook by investing so heavily in the metaverse this gives meta a fresh opportunity at pulling in some younger users microsoft my former employer is also investing aggressively into the metaverse microsoft recently acquired activision blizzard which owns popular franchises like call of duty world of warcraft and diablo you could describe many of these as metaverses already they’ve also been experimenting with mesh for microsoft teams and spaces for sharepoint they also have hardware with the hololens microsoft has a massive community of business customers and usually when you see new technology like this emerge usually it first grows up on the business side before making its way to consumers you also have other companies like zoom alphabet amazon and they have tremendous assets but they haven’t yet made any announcements related to the metaverse and this is likely more reflective of the fact that it’s just still so early in its development all in all the metaverse will likely eventually come but i personally think we’re still decades out from realizing the full dream and vision there’s still so much advancement that needs to happen just look at where the hardware is today it’s kind of like talking about the internet in the 1970s there were lots of ideas of what it could become but i don’t think anyone truly saw the full potential alright well that’s a quick look at the metaverse let me know down below in the comments what do you think about the metaverse do you think it’ll have a positive impact or do you think it’s all just hype to watch more videos like this please consider subscribing and i’ll see you in the next one [Music] you