(OPINION) By 2030, “a large proportion of people will be in the metaverse in some way,” predicts Melanie Subin, a director at The Future Today Institute in New York City. Some will simply use it “only to fulfill work or educational obligations,” she said.
Others “will live the majority of their waking hours ‘jacked in.’” Using a “blend of physical and behavioral biometrics, emotion recognition, sentiment analysis, and personal data,” the metaverse will be able to create a customized and enhanced reality for each person, she said.
In the future, “AR wearables may be as pervasive as smartphones are today,” said Patrick Cozzi, who runs the 3D tech company Cesium and is heavily involved in enhancing the metaverse. He and others see a future where headsets like the Oculus —
a popular holiday gift this season that invites you to “defy reality” — replace the cell phone altogether, used 24/7 as a go-to device for people to hang out with friends, shop or travel through the virtual stratosphere. But the current version of the metaverse, for now, is somewhat less grand.
Several companies, including Snap, Amazon, Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta (formerly Facebook), have their own competing versions of this new digital world. (Meta says it will dedicate $10 billion to the effort, and it plans to hire 10,000 workers just for their European operation.) But while the VR spaces they’ve developed — mostly for socializing and gaming — are colorful and cool, none has created an all-encompassing experience that blurs what is real and imaginary. READ MORE
