What is the Metaverse?

Companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Google see it as the future of the Internet: the metaverse. Although it was born as a science fiction idea, the first signs of the metaverse have long since become reality. The metaverse doesn’t just stand for virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality and cyberspace – it’s all in one.

What is the Metaverse?

A clear definition of the metaverse does not exist at present. Rather, there are discussions about what the metaverse could be, what it is not, what it should or must be, and what belongs to it. If one asks Matthew Ball, whose essays on the 2020 metaverse made high waves, the metaverse is an „expansive network of persistent, real-time rendered 3D worlds and simulations that offers continuity of identities, objects, historicity, currencies, and entitlements, and can be synchronously experienced by an unlimited number of users in individual ways.“

Although big-tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Jen-Hsun Huang (Nvidia) are investing billions in it, the metaverse is currently only a thought construct. Nevertheless, characteristics can be defined that distinguish it from the Internet and technologies such as augmented reality, extended reality and virtual reality. Matthew Ball emphasizes that it is not just an evolution of the Internet, but an entirely new form of computing. Digital spaces do not exist in parallel with „reality“ in the metaverse, but as a fusion of cyberspace, virtual reality and the physical world. Mark Zuckerberg calls it an „embodied internet“ that users don’t just look at on screens, but are in.