Step into the Metaverse

Chapter 1The Future Is Immersive

From Web 1.0 to Web 3.0

To understand how the metaverse will change us, we need to know where we are coming from and know what will drive the immersive internet. This requires us to go back in time, to the 1950s, when the second generation of transistor-based computers arrived on the market.¹³ These big, mainframe computers replaced the vacuum-tube machines and started the development of the Information Age as we know it today. These machines were possible because a few years earlier, three scientists at Bell Labs—William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Houser Brattain—had invented the transistor, for which they received the Nobel Prize in 1956.

Within a few years, the various components required to develop the personal computer, such as the computer chip and microprocessors, were small enough to catapult us into a new age. Over the years, developments in the hardware have continued to deliver ever-smaller solutions to such an extent that we now have machines that can create transistors of 1 nanometer in length.¹⁴ One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, or 40 percent the width of a strand of human DNA.¹⁵ In other words, it's very, very small. These developments in hardware are required if we want to be able to access the metaverse using small, comfortable, and cheap devices such as virtual reality (VR) headsets, augmented reality (AR) glasses, or even smart contact lenses in the far future, which means that the mainstream adoption ...