While there are many sckeptics when it comes to the concept of the Metaverse it is clear that there is a common idea that is tried to be represented by this term. Many large corporations like NVIDIA, HTC, Meta, Microsoft, Unity, Epic Games and others all have a set of ideas that they call the Metaverse. The reason the concept becomes important is not for how its wrongly use but rather was common between the definitions of all these large corporations who are leaders in technology. They want to create a new way to interact with data and people similar to the existing internet but that is fully 3D like the physical world is rather than limited to the 2D concepts of website and webpage navigation. The concept originates Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash (recently recreated in the movie Player One. Below are a few quotes from the book.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash Quotes. > "The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack. So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse." > " Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the darkness, disappearing over the curve of the globe, he is actually staring at the graphic representations -- the user interfaces -- of a myriad different pieces of software that have been engineered by major corporations. " > "The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse." See [Source](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7642099-the-top-surface-of-the-computer-is-smooth-except-for)

This description of the Metaverse aligns more with a VR World/Application that some of what the larger corporations are using it for. However this is the foundational concept, the original vision. Just like with many other terms this idea is refined when it needs to become a real product. The valuable take aways from this idea are the concepts of a series of 3D world developers by corporations and users that provide content to its visitors. Visitors are represented as avatars, a 3D representation of their choice and a very important points is the ability to travel in between multiple of these created 3D world giving an illusion of one connected universe. Very similar to the concept of the internet where you travel from webpage to webpage feeling like you are visiting different places within the internet. In reality these are totally different applications developed by different corporations and hosted in totally different physical locations. Only through a series of guidelines, technologies, devices and a network infrastructure individual data can be presented to the average user of the internet in a way that feels like is all part of one platform. The Metaverse that large corporations and the original concept builds up to is a combintation of the concepts of the internet with a new way to experience it in the form of 3D worlds.

The Metaverse defined by these corpoartions also builds on the concept of Web3. It is the same thing and more. Web3 from the web3 foundation is aimed at decentralization, blockchain, and user control of personal data, identity, and destiny. These are the same principles behind the Metaverse idea except without 3D, avatars, ect. This is essentially the same old internet decentralized, their concept of identity, governance, and data while clearly different to developers has 0 user experience changes for the users of the internet. Web3 is supposed to be the next internet, how can you call the next internet something that non-developer users experience exactly the same way as the current web? In other words, if there is no new type of content to be consumed then there is no incentive to switch to a rebuild of what already exists for the average user. The 3DWeb is that incentive that’s the whole reason a lot of early metaverse style apps like Decentraland got so famous, they built an application around the concepts of Web3 but with a 3D world providing a social media that differ from what people recognize as the current web.

The Metaverse of Things concept. The problem with this concept is that a Metaverse is series of interconnected 3d worlds. Bringing IoT items and other sort of physical devices in their digital version of them to the Metaverse is still part of it. I wouldn’t make it more complicated by adding a whole new concept. Is a Metaverse. For example Nvidia Metaverse concept integrates the physical world through extensions and apps on their omniverse platform. They still call this the Metaverse. Same with Meta, the world built on top or aided by physical items are still worlds within a Metaverse. The Internet of Things refers to one or many devices connected to web applications. This concept is important for the current internet because the internet is not physical it does not interact with physical objects in any way other than through the IoT architecture concept. However, in the Metaverse type of web everything is represented in 3D and the physical environment is augmented but is still part of the interaction. Your real world is part of the virtual.

AI, there is a lot to say about AI and XR. A big contributor to XR success in the future is AI. Examples of technologies that are essential for XR that are AI solutions are DLSS or FSR (Graphics Supersampling in Realtime creating Higher resolution that the original rendered frame). User-generated content. AI tools like Midjourney, Audio2Face, Magic3D and ChatGPT give the power to the average person to build dialogue and ART. These are key in the future of content creation. These tools will be capable enough in the future to allow average users to create experiences to entertain, guide, teach, inspire in way that they cannot with traditional content creation tools that are accessible to the masses like video, photos or text. Apps that simplified the use of filters, text, voice over, audio and image effects on mobile phones led to social network interactions that are taking over content creation and making average voice be heard at the level of industry superstars. Take a look at top tikTok accounts, Instagram influencers, twitch streamers as a good example.