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29 juin 2022

Metaverse A Silicon Valley View

What is the metaverse ?

The term metaverse means different things depending on who you ask. Whilst originally coined by Neal Stephenson1 in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, it symbolizes the emergence of a new internet to many. This is enabled by the presence of a strong social element in the design of the digital metaverse, i.e. the ability for you and/or your avatar to interact humanly by looking into each other’s eyes, perceive body language and maybe even shake hands.

It is enabled by a set of novel technologies; most importantly by augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices. And it is accelerated by Web 3.0, blockchains, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 5G, digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI). It is important to understand that the metaverse could probably exist without most of these tech ingredients, but uptake and scale could not be achieved without them.


Metaverse technologies

Two of above technologies stand out: blockchains and AR/VR devices.

Blockchain technologies allow for decentralized ownership structures. This poses serious challenges2 in terms of operational and energy3 efficiencies but offers unique opportunities by making users a central part of this new internet and its economy. It also offers interoperability between applications in the same way as IP offers interoperability between networks and devices.

These infrastructure...

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Auteur

Mischa Dohler

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