The Matrix – film which is widely known all over the world. The first part was released in 1999 and grossed 171 mil $ only in USA, total box office gross of over $465 million worldwide. Moreover the movie’s ratings are still breaking records. But what made the film so successful? Despite many factors like shooting quality, directing, casting and etc., plot is what really made a huge impact on the success, a fantastic key idea of virtual reality.
And now imagine that virtual reality is closer day after day. Facebook spends billions of dollars to create a metaverse – a virtual world where people can interact with each other and with digital objects through their avatars, using virtual reality technologies.
In order to make you fully understand the real desire and intention of creation virtual reality world, Mark Zuckerberg announced on October 28 that Facebook had changed its name to Meta.The goal of Facebook’s rebranding is to cement the company’s connection to the new Metaverse project, the “metaverse” that Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet.
Billions of dollars have already been invested in Metaverse. At least $10 billion this year alone. The funds will go to Facebook Reality Labs, a division of Metaverse that will develop hardware, software, and content for AR and VR. Among the implemented projects of Facebook Reality Labs are the Oculus Quest virtual reality glasses and the Portal display. Now Reality Labs employs 10,000 people.
In metaverse instead of profile there will be your own avatar and instead of news feed there will be social hubs were people can gather to share news, gossips and play games. Comedy clubs, discos, meditations, many game worlds and more – all these will be possible in metaverse.
Just imagine: a virtual world where you can do the same as in real one after only putting virtual glasses. A new world were actions are faster and easier to commit.
All these things are pushing to think about how metaverse will influence our lives and the future of our development. Will a new word substitute the one we leave in? Will people be less connected with the reality? Won’t the new world look fake? And is it only a begging of new era of communicating, interaction and way of life?
I would only say that all this thing about metaverse makes me feel unsure and doubtful. Why should we run from reality? Why should we substitute real feelings and communication? And why should we live like in this serial called «Black mirror»?
From my point of view, technologies should make our real life easier, but they should not replace the reality.
I don’t think we will experience transferring relations to meta in this life. Although 10k of experienced people work on the software for some time now, they are stuck on creating virtual assistant not as dumb as siri and language barriers. How much I would like to see real Matrix, with current technology I think the closest we can get right now is Gorilla Tag.