The Metaverse is a virtual replica of our real world. It is commonly referred to as a virtual world. Most people in this world have experienced virtual reality or augmented reality, keeping in mind that you probably have used, or at least are familiar with, Snapchat. The puppy sitting on your table in the Snapchat filter is augmented reality. This could be thought of as a teaser of the Metaverse.
We will soon be able to see the full picture of the potential of Metaverse. Many environments and situations in the current world will be shifted to completely virtual ones. This shift can possibly take some time, but it is inevitable. Even right now, offices and schools are remote. People meet with each other virtually. Employees & students won't hesitate to move to an AR/VR office and school. Who doesn't love to have fun at work or while studying? On the other hand, world-famous artists like Travis Scott are already doing concerts in a multiplayer game. The only thing that is left right now is the adoption of the hardware.
Hardware is expensive, although it is way cheaper than it used to be. You can buy 2 Oculus VR headsets at the price of an iPhone 12 Pro Max and still have money to buy AirPods. It will soon get adoption in gaming markets. But when we think of the meta-verse in the long term horizon, relying on real-world resources is not feasible because of entropy.
Entropy is disorder. It is the reason why we are here and will not be in the future. In layman’s terms, entropy is the reason why living being turns into fertilizer in the soil after death. Matter cannot escape entropy. But in the future, you can, and that time is not so far.
In the near future, everything will be a part of the metaverse. Your majority of time is going to be spent in the virtual world.. All this must be familiar to you if you have seen the movie Ready Player One. Here comes the interesting part: Metaverse won't have the concept of entropy.
Resources used to run Metaverse will be present in the real world. And they will surely get affected by entropy. But it would take a very long time for that to have consequences on the virtual world. Hence, there will be no physical disorder in the virtual world. In the simplest terms, right now you charge your PlayStation with electricity, which is created by destroying resources in the real world. But there is no disorder as such in your character in FIFA. Similarly, when you are in the Metaverse there will no effect of entropy on your surrounding or yourself in there. Therefore, no existence of physical rules.
There could be exceptions like a Big Brother in the virtual world who will be drafting out rules for you to live in that world. They could control that world according to their ideologies, but I suppose that this would rarely be the case. Coming back to Ready Player One, it shows that the virtual world creates a dystopian scenario in the real world. It shows that people are now indulged in that world and have more or less abandoned the real world. No spoiler there, trust me. Personally, I am skeptical about everything. But for this shift to a virtual world, I am optimistic. I believe it will surely be an exhilarating movement to witness.
Maybe you are already in a simulation. Maybe. Who knows? You are just a player playing this game created by someone else (which I think is true anyways).
What if you die right now and someone takes a VR headset off your head and says “How was it?”.