daniel chigunwe
Munya Chimanye Features Writer
Off the news of Mark Zuckerburg’s rebranding of Facebook to “Meta’’, in the last week of October, the world at large has caught a glimpse of the larger universe that exists inside our computer systems: the metaverse.
Introduced as the next iteration of the internet, the metaverse can be described as an online physical space, accessible through virtual or augmented reality, that will allow for seamless interactions, mimicking those of everyday life, or those experiences which go beyond everyday life.
According to Facebook’s user data, from September 2021, there were 1,64 million Facebook users in Zimbabwe, which was about 43 percent of active social media users in the country.
This does not even account for many Zimbabweans who rely on Whatsapp for communication and information dissemination; a figure that has been estimated to be between five and six million, just under half the population, according to research done within Zimbabwe’s major cell phone service providers.
Zuckerburg has an increasingly large presence, not only in Zimbabwe, but all over the world, but now, that presence is changing.
How so?
In his Connect 2021 virtual event, Zuckerburg said, “The next platform and medium will be even more immersive, an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.”
Attune to the status quo of a large portion of technological advances, the concept and tenets upon which new technologies are based are premièred in fictional media.
For the first half of the 20th century, we are reminded of the writing of Jules Verne in the late 19th century as he envisioned and wrote about a vehicle that travelled under water or one that soared in the sky making it possible for humans to make it from one end of the world to the other in a matter of hours, through his 1870 and 1872 novels “20000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Around the World in 80 Days”, respectively.
The metaverse is no different.
The term, derivative of Latin “meta” meaning “beyond” and verse taking its meaning from universe, was first coined in a 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson titled ‘Snow Crash’.
Since then the concept has seen itself being the beneficiary of attention and acknowledgement in titles like Steven Speilberg’s ‘Ready Player One’ and Joaquin Phoenix featured ‘Her’.
Although the former takes place in the virtual reality of a video game, that is a good representation of how far the metaverse along the metaverse is currently.
Games like Pokemon Go, which saw users using their phones cameras as a lens to see virtual Pokemon at real world locations in the hopes of capturing them to add to their collection, were popular in the late 2010s and show the extent to which people were able to interact with augmented reality.
Other examples like that of popular timeless games Minecraft and Roblox, show a different side of a metaverse: games in which the expansive physical landscape allow players to create their own reality and share it not only with their friends but with all users if they so choose.
Virtual reality has become increasingly more popular in the last five years with companies like Facebook owned Oculus, Google and Snapchat all boasting some form of augmented reality products that either helped users engage in video games in first person as a part of the game or interact with the world around them with added interest through virtual communion.
Zuckerburg’s vision for the metaverse would see the users become central to the experience of using the internet: rather than using the internet through a proxy like a screen on a laptop, desktop or cellphone, the user themselves would be the medium through which they would access the internet’s virtual space with the aid of a simple pair of glasses that would allow them to see the bigger virtual universe around them.
The applications for this sort of technology would be endless, from socialisation that would akin to an actual face-to-face conversation between friends, to business meetings and shopping, with all the odds and ends of visiting a real store like interactive shop attendance and the opportunity to sample clothing and equipment, all in the virtual physical space that Zuckerburg would see the metaverse become.
Considering that the growth of cryptocurrency means that a lot of people’s assets have become virtual, the leap from virtual assets to virtual living and business is not a big leap to imagine.
Although a lot of Zimbabweans in the diaspora have begun to make a lot of their equity digital, Zimbabweans locally are yet to subscribe to the emerging global fad.
The possibilities, however, are endless and Zuckerburg with this vision and a budget in the tens, if not hundreds of billions would see this vision come to fruition.
With these endless possibilities come lucrative opportunities for Facebook, come ‘Meta’, to make even more money.
Just under half the world’s population, a whopping 3.51 billion people use Facebook’s apps on a monthly basis, raking in US$28,6 billion in the second quarter of this year from advertising alone according to the New York Times.
It goes without saying that this advertising heavy strategy that Zuckerburg has taken towards business will carry over into his vision for the metaverse.
This advertising rich space would likely look like Time Square in New York City or the Piccadilly Lights in London, full of bright colours and name brands beckoning users to bite and buy their products.
Zuckerburg also envisions an environment where users will need to purchase virtual clothing and real estate to maintain their identity and individuality in the metaverse, just as they do in the real world.
Investors in Facebook did not look to the rebranding of the company as ‘Meta’ as hopefully as Zuckerburg has, as the company’s stock underperformed expectations, finishing below its apex which came on September 1.
Zuckerburg assured his investors and users of the applications that fall under the Facebook group that even though their vision with the rebrand would change the footprint of technology, their applications would continue to run as they have, independent of the company’s new outlook.
Zimbabwe’s access to Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and the like will remain unaffected for the time being, as will the rest of the world, with no real timeline of when Zuckerburg will begin to move his company’s under the umbrella of the metaverse.
These are not the only opinions that have been shared over the company’s rebranding and shift in focus.
Some detractors of the ‘Meta’ think that the timing of Zuckerburg’s rebrand is oddly coincidental, following very shortly after Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, exposed many of the companies documents regarding suspicious data-handling as the US government condemned Facebook’s monopoly on data capitalism.
Others, in the gaming community, condemned Zuckerburg, citing that the rebrand represented the social media tycoon’s attempts to claim ownership to a concept that many gamers have already become very familiar with.
It could appear to many that Meta is merely Zuckerburg’s pre-emptive attempt to monopolize a trend that is already gaining popularity.
All that in mind, it would appear that the actual metaverse is still a few years away.
The type of technology required to make such a digital space possible would need more widely available, faster internet, especially from the view of a third world economy, although rapidly growing as is Zimbabwe’s.
On top of that, clunky VR headsets, by companies like Sony, Oculus and HTC, and the only recent emergence of AR glasses, like Facebook’s Project Nazare, puts Zuckerburg’s idea of a seamless experience a few more steps away.
But as a commentator to Zuckerburg’s idea, I must acknowledge the most interesting opinion I came across while researching this article: the sentiment from a Twitter thread by American live-streaming service Twitch director Shaan Puri.
“Most people think ‘the metaverse’ is a virtual place. Like in the movie ‘Ready Player One’. But what if it’s not a place?” wrote Puri.
Puri argued that the metaverse is the moment in time in which one’s digital life becomes more valuable than their physical life; to reason this, he noted how the proportion of one’s life that they access virtually has increased dramatically in the 21st century.
Perhaps propagated by the Covid-19, people have gotten used to entertaining themselves by watching TV, connecting with their family by using their cellphones and completing their jobs through their laptops with Zoom calls and emails.
In that thought, maybe we are already living in some sort of metaverse, unaware of our own reliance on technology.
Neither a good, nor a bad thing, the world is becoming more technologically advanced by the day.
The difference between where we are, and where we might be in a few years is that within Zuckerburg’s metaverse, I think the lines between the virtual and reality will become exceedingly blurred.
Online Reporter