Metaverse - the inevitable digital transformation?

A digital parallel universe that co-exists with the physical world that’s become the buzzword of the next biggest digital disruption – Metaverse seems to dominate the state of play of the technology and social media. There have always been signs of why this would be and looking back it seems obvious that we’ve ended up here. I tried to back track and try to figure out why this was perhaps inevitable.

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The hard code in our brains

Human beings have an innate need of belonging – the constructs of family, friends, and nations all are manifestations of this at different scales. It probably stems from our lack of better physical tools to protect ourselves from other hunters in the wild, which meant you wanted to belong to a group of people – and not just any group the ones who were the strongest and most likely to survive or ensure the power dynamics swayed your way.

Social media blew the doors on the range of people you could build your tribe with wide open. Metaverse is simply going to make it that much easier to belong and build custom spaces and interactions with people who are on the same wavelength as you. The numbers in such digital tribes could very well go into the millions (if not more) with the degree of pull in the shared interest. We could have multiple Westviews (if you are a WandaVision fan) built in the minutest detail and set in whatever era you’d like with the people you handpick around you.

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Unlocking the self

We constantly hear the phrase - ‘Be yourself’, but most of us struggle to understand really who we are while also being driven by it. In the Matrix there are rules to existence that everyone is conditioned to adhere to until Neo breaks them, to find out who he really is. With the multiverse, we could all be Neo.

When the rules of who you are and what abilities you were born with fall off as you pass through the digital barrier, you are left with a blank canvas of what you could be. So what will you paint in it? A virtual Avatar has infinite possibilities of who you could be minus the baggage of your environment, access to travel, physical abilities etc.

Agreed that that is an infinite edged sword in a world that struggles daily with self-acceptance, but it could also act as a chance at self-discovery – Who will you be when you could be anybody? The answer could be within the Metaverse.

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Our fatal flaw – curiosity

As a species we are constantly curious about what we can do to make things better, faster and easier for ourselves. We are constantly on the lookout for the next big adventure. We weren’t happy when we discovered how to cultivate land, we needed to scale it. We weren’t happy just knowing about the things we could see, touch and feel – we broke atoms and reached out into the universe. We weren’t happy just knowing things about ourselves and our neighborhoods, we built social media as a window to each other’s lives through screens.

We are driven by the curiosity to unveil the unknown. What will happen if we have another world to dwell in, will we be consumed by it? How can we adapt to it? What can we accomplish with it? How can we sell my products, skills and services on it?

These questions will ultimately get us to try it out at least, and ‘Inception’ worlds within worlds.

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What do you think of the Metaverse? Is this all just much ado about nothing?

Let me know in the comments.