Interconnected Realities

Epilogue: Interconnected Realities

The Purpose of the Metaverse

The other day, one of my team members at work said, “Leslie, I know that you love the Metaverse, but honestly, I can't see myself ever spending any time there. I'm not interested in putting on a helmet or goggles or whatever, I don't need to build a copy of my house in some digital world, and I'm not a gamer. I can see the usefulness of digital twins in enterprise, and how it might be okay to put a heavy thing on my head if it will help me do something at work, but I don't wear glasses, and I just can't see putting something on my head all day every day just to – do what? Go shopping for Gucci?”¹

What Colleague X said contains Metaverse misconceptions that I hear from people all the time: the conflation of the VR and Web3 Metaverses, thinking that all Metaverses happen only in VR, not seeing a purpose for the Metaverse beyond gaming and shopping. I hope that after our review of the different problem‐solving aspects of the Metaverse that are out there already, you're starting to see that the actual Metaverse already is something quite different from this fragmented and purposeless impression. The Metaverse is actually about interconnecting realities, specifically “a partly‐ or fully digital experience that brings together people, places, and/or information in real time in a way that transcends what which is possible in the physical world alone, in order to solve a problem.”

Let's look at a summary of the different ...