The term “metaverse” first appeared in Neal Stephensen’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, referring to the virtual world. In this world, people exist and communicate digitally.
Metaverse has become a new concept, which means a new form of Internet application and a new form of society that integrates virtual and real. Its essence is the process of virtualization, digitization of the real world.
To put it bluntly, the metaverse is the application of virtual technology to human life, in fact it has participated in all aspects of human life for a long time, but the concept of “metaverse” has not been clearly proposed before. For example, you pay your bills with your mobile phone every day, shop online or play games every day, all of which are within the scope of the metaverse, but they were not previously considered metaverse.
There is still no unified concept of the metaverse, but technology companies believe that the virtual universe is not only a place to vividly reproduce real-life experiences in a digital environment, but also can integrate the two. .
Metaverse is a parallel universe?
Some people consider the correspondence between the virtual world and the real world to be a parallel universe, and believe that humans will travel between these two universes in the future. In fact, many people argue that the so-called metaverse is not a universe that separates from the real universe, rather, it is increasingly mixing with the real universe.
As digitalization becomes more and more involved in social life, people will become increasingly unable to separate these two different worlds.
Currently, the healthcare industry is gradually using some of the key essential components of Metaverse including technology (Virtual Reality-VR), augmented reality (AR), and augmented reality technology. mixed reality (MR) and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as software and hardware to power certain applications.
For example, in the future of medicine, doctors sitting in the virtual operating room of a hospital in Eurasia could examine and treat patients on the Australian continent, perform open thoracic surgery and laparotomy on a patient on the Australian mainland, removing the tumor; or repair an aneurysm in a patient’s brain through minimally invasive intervention.
All of this is done with a computer to convert the doctor’s activity in Eurasia into digital, through the linkage of various sensors and mechanical instruments, to reproduce doctor’s activity in Eurasia on the Australian mainland, this is the process of going from reality to virtual, and then from virtual back to reality, this process cannot be separated from reality, because So whether the metaverse is a parallel universe to the real universe, is still a matter of controversy.
The future development trend of virtual technology
The virtual technology of the future is called the metaverse, which can penetrate every corner of life and into every cell of the human body. That is to say, the so-called metaverse will penetrate into any aspect of our lives, such as studying, training, working, producing, traveling, making friends and even dating with lovers, all through virtual means.
This is because, in theory, all human behavior is controlled by the brain, whether it is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and feeling, it is due to the stimulation of various organs of the human body, transmitted by nerves to the brain, and then through the brain to form perception or memory based on accumulated experience, feedback to the behavior of individual tissues and organs in the body to respond.
The potential benefits of the metaverse are still unknown, but at the heart of the metaverse concept is the idea that a virtual, 3D, accessible and real-time environment will become a transformative vehicle for communication. social and business participation. Currently, a number of companies use the platform of metaverse to conduct distance training, sports, entertainment and healthcare fields.
In this way, as long as modern advanced technology can transmit certain specific signals to the brain through different methods, it can make people not need to actually see, hear, smell, taste, touch. but can still feel these sensations and react accordingly.
For example, by implanting certain memories, you can acquire certain knowledge and skills without going through several years of college; if you can’t actually go to the moon, you can also experience the “real” feeling of going to the moon in the virtual world; work and production, we can also transmit signals to machines in a virtual process.
This kind of futuristic experience has been vividly depicted in sci-fi movies such as “The Matrix”, “Source Code”, “Total Recall”, “Ready Player One”, but to really reach In that state, technology still has many problems to be overcome, and it will probably take us decades to achieve those achievements.
The current state of the metaverse and its impact on the future
The Metaverse is not a purely technological development, but a tremendous social change that will accelerate the advancement of human technological civilization as a whole. Therefore, it is impossible to overstate the influence of the metaverse on the future, its constant development will completely change the way people live.
The concept of metaverse is still quite new and it is still in its infancy for many people, but the top bigwigs in the world are all preparing and there are people already involved, exploiting the potential of the metaverse, some already make great progress. For example, Elon Musk’s brain-computer neural interface research has achieved breakthrough success in animal experiments, and is preparing for clinical application.
Musk claims that the problem of paralysis due to spinal cord injury will be solved first, and then possibly immortality of human consciousness through brain-computer technology. When the human body faces death from disease in the future and memory can be transferred and stored.
The idea of the metaverse looks promising, which is why many of the world’s top tech companies are investing in it.
Digital tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu, and Tencent have all been involved in metaverse research and development. People call these companies “head players”, and they are using AI, VR/AR as well as technology development and some infrastructure to build the metaverse.
The advent and development of quantum computers will more strongly support the maturation and popularity of the metaverse. It is believed that in the near future, scenes of realistic virtual worlds in sci-fi movies will appear in our world, the virtual world. It will be organically combined with the real world, greatly improving the level of human civilization, and human society will enter a new era.