Metaverse has been the buzzword among the tech industries these days. Imagination is the only limit in the virtual world. But without leaving home, meetings could be less fantastical.
Tech companies have found the next great way to make money as well.
In the 1990s, personal computers and web browsers were the centrepieces of a new business. Later on, smartphones and apps ruled this and now metaverse and virtual reality.
Zuckerberg has recently made the surprising move to change Facebook to Meta. On the other side, metaverse-related technology has been under work for years at Google. Apple also has their own devices under work. And Microsoft is planning to put a corporate spin on the metaverse by offering a headset to businesses and government agencies.
Alex Kipman, who has spent a decade working on such tech at Microsoft, said that this is the evolution of the internet. And added that for companies like Microsoft, it was a need to participate in this.
The term metaverse was coined by a sci-fi writer, Neal Stephenson in 1992 and is not a new idea. The concept is common among gaming companies. While tracing its history, we can see that multiplayer online games have played a role in creating a place for people to meet, chat and do business online.
Oculus was a startup that made virtual reality headsets. It was acquired by Facebook back in 2014, with a deal valued at more than $2 billion. The startup was making goggles that trick your brain into thinking you are inside a digital landscape.
The next big computing platform was expected to be virtual reality and Zuckerberg already described it even though when exactly this would happen was hard to predict.
Intel produced a prototype augmented reality project called Vaunt. It was tested among consumers. Jerry Bautista, who was leading the project said in a recent interview that the glasses showed promise as personal technology and as a computing platform. It could give fresh sources of revenue.
Intel shut the Vaunt project in 2018 before it sold many of its patents to North which is a startup acquired by Google. Bautista said that the company had problems in answering many questions which were arisen about the technology.
In Europe and other parts of the world, privacy was a big concern and the fear that the project could end up harming the bottom section more than it helped them.
Currently, many of the big tech companies are being questioned for the same. Data and its leakage is the ultimate concern of the public and something that needs to be addressed.
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