imagine a world where you wake up head to the office in the morning to a party with friends in the evening and then a live concert at midnight all while sitting in the warmth of your home or from the comfort of your bed that might just be part of humanity's future a world where time and space mean nothing where we will all partially exist and function in a virtual world where we can all live work and play in the metaverse the metaverse has been discussed everywhere lately and it is difficult to understand or explain because it isn't a place or specific technology nor does it exist in any static way the metaverse instead is an attempt to describe the way the world will interact with technology in the future in an ever evolving manner right now we tap screens we type on keyboards we use physical input devices to interact with technology however these input devices have limited functionalities they're stuck in one place for the most part and you need to have them within physical reach at all times in the metaverse interacting with tech could feel real we'll be able to squeeze pinch punch we won't need to learn a different set of input methods because we would interact with tech just like we would anything in the real world the metaverse describes an interoperable digital universe right now on the internet you need to create accounts on whatever platform you want to use your avatars or your digital existence on youtube twitter facebook and instagram are completely different from one another in the metaverse however the dream is to be able to create one virtual avatar one address one identity to be used across all platforms from social networking apps to work meetings to school it could all be done in one package just like in the real world you'll also be able to buy virtual items like clothes or art and take them with you across multiple different platforms the metaverse could potentially change the entire world economy as we know it it could change the way we perceive value physical versus digital you might think that the reality of this kind of technology is far away but you'd be wrong the main technologies required to create the metaverse already exist albeit in their infancy cryptocurrencies virtual reality augmented reality virtual world building nfts these are the main tools that will be used in the metaverse for now and they're all around us today with nfts in particular you can now create sell and buy digital items that can be completely unique and whose ownership can be traced back to you if you leave your sweater at a random party anyone can pick it up take it home and claim it as their own but nfts essentially tie that unique sweater to you anyone can publicly look up and see who owns that sweater and the best part is it cannot be taken from you you own it and everyone can see that you own it and there's no central authority who can at their own will decide they want to take it from you the use case for nfts are rather high and can actually provide a lot of value to people giving a whole new meaning to what it means to truly own something despite it being a pretty debated topic recently contrary to what you may have heard buying nfts do not in fact burn down entire forests in fact depending on how much you value decentralization there are options to purchase nfts on certain platforms that have nearly zero energy costs but honestly nft's crypto and the arguments for and against them are deserving of an entire video themselves so back to the metaverse even little things like apple using ai to make sure your face is always in frame when on facetime that might seem like nothing are actually telling them where tech is headed face tracking will be one of the most important pillars of the metaverse as humans we communicate a lot using facial expressions when we're sad or happy flustered or concerned it shows in our faces before we even open our mouths to speak so with good facial tracking digital communication will be a lot more seamless than it currently is you won't have to guess a person's tone through a text or their mood through a phone call you'll be able to see and tell exactly what they're feeling now right now it's facetime and zoom calls but eventually imagine being in a room where you visibly feel like you're in the same room as your classmates or colleagues when physically they could be across the planet the world has been slowly moving towards a fully digital future mark zuckerberg first bought the domain name meta.com back in 2017 and only just a few months ago has officially changed the company name from facebook to simply meta the brand still has the same goal as they always have but in the public eye the metaverse is now everywhere but with that being said the pandemic has fast-tracked the coming of this technology as the need to stay indoors to prevent the spread of the virus grew so did the need for technology to figure out ways to do things virtually that we previously had to do in person so everything from work meetings school therapy and even musical concerts moving to the digital world in 2019 the first concert on fortnite yes fortnite was held marshmallow took the world by storm as he performed a 10-minute set for around 10 million fortnite players which is genuinely insane when you think about the scale of it in 2020 fortnite again took this one step further with their travis scott concert leading up to the event players could see the stage being built out in the fortnite universe as the days passed the stage became more and more complete this gave players the feeling of a real-life concert coming to life days before the event when the event did happen 27.7 million people from all over the world attended this concert making it technically the largest concert to have ever been attended by a factor of nearly 10. this is far more than any physical concert the world has ever seen people who would otherwise not have had access to listen to and experience their favorite artists live got the opportunity to do so from the safety and comfort of their own home during a global pandemic funny enough fortnite is currently the closest thing we have to the metaverse apart from concerts from some of the biggest artists in the world you can also buy skins to design your avatar and even learn about historical figures like martin luther king in a virtual environment however saying fortnite is the metaverse would be like saying google is the internet right now this is how most people access the metaverse but it doesn't even remotely come close to what the scope of the metaverse can be vr chat is another largely popular instance of what the metaverse could look like in the future in vrchat you can pretty much do whatever you want choose your own avatar talk with your friends meet new people it's honestly kind of mind-blowing 100 years ago we could hardly speak with someone across the planet nowadays you get to see a virtual representation of people in really any form of their choosing from all around the world and genuinely learn about them think about other virtual experiences like going back in time to live with the dinosaurs as you've learned about them or going up in space in a completely virtual environment to learn about our solar system think about practicing a surgery before the real work is done or meeting up with your colleagues to work on a tangible product you've been building elon musk the ceo of neurolink and a lot of other things recently said that the company aims to start implanting computer chips in humans this year 2022 with this microchip in a sense we'll be able to control computers with just our minds again you might think this is just a child's dream or depending on your views a dystopian nightmare but in 2021 paige nerolink's test monkey successfully played a game of pong with just its mind if this is what a monkey has been able to achieve think of what a human can do we may be able to control prosthetic limbs like they're a part of our body and because the machine can also send signals back to the brain we'll also be able to feel stimuli from these limbs we'll talk to computers with just our minds we'll interact in the metaverse without a physical input device just think about what you want to do and it's done these are two things humanity has been trying to fight from the beginning space and time however we've only been semi-successful with one of those things space and the metaverse might just be our biggest success yet from camels and donkeys to horses carts cars trains ships airplanes and now spaceships we've always looked for ways to essentially bend space to make the world feel much smaller than it actually is to be able to get from point a to point b as quickly and as efficiently as possible from writing letters to phone calls video calls and now virtual interaction we've always created ways to be there even when we can't be physically man is a social animal and living in a group is essential for survival so of course most of our inventions will simply be looking for new ways to communicate with each other regardless of how far apart we are it's no wonder that a lot of science fiction talks about the idea of teleportation but the truth is physical teleportation might never be a real thing the physics of breaking us down to our individual atoms and then reorganizing us somewhere else is uh a stretch because we aren't exactly sure what makes us human however with the metaverse we'll never have to physically teleport why do something that dangerous when you can go anywhere on earth or beyond using the internet in an instant you'll be able to hear see and experience everything without ever having to physically be required to be there want to visualize the bottom of the ocean done want to explore mars and view the earth from the red planet done want to attend a concert without fearing for your life and safety done we'll be able to travel through the entire universe in an instant except it'll be a universe made by us it's as if the simulation is recurring on itself humanity's battle with time on the other hand has not been as successful we still can't travel through time and we can never get back lost time however the metaverse might change that in a way yes we won't be able to physically travel through time but we'll be able to experience events live through times and observe the world as it was we'll be able to stimulate the ice age to say catch a glimpse of the woolly mammoth or perhaps go back to the victorian era to understand life as an 18th century young adult with a simulated population that mimics the language of the time the metaverse also has the power to make us immortal or at least some of us think about it celebrities like tupac and michael jackson still have functioning social media accounts these accounts post regularly about their music relevant days in their life and all of that seven of tupac's platinum albums were released after he died this means that there's a tremendous amount of unreleased content that these artists leave behind when they pass imagine if we could exist in the metaverse where avatars can be created in the likeness of these celebrities with the amount of information we have about them from how they look to how they speak perform and act together with all their unreleased art we'll be able to recreate lifelike expressions of them in the metaverse indistinguishable from who they were when they were alive physically dead artists will host concerts singing to millions of fans as if they were right there everything from interviews to shows to communicating one-on-one with fans could feel so real that it could be like they never died through existing information on their creative process and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence they might even be able to create new music recently we've seen videos of children showing their parents pictures of dead relatives with moving facial parts thanks to the power of ai and we've seen how emotional these parents get to experience their loved ones again now imagine how much more touching it'll be not to just see a moving picture but to fully experience a digital expression of a dead relative what's dead may never truly remain dead anymore if you're like me then all of this sounds very exciting but also extremely terrifying because just like all of humanity's inventions the metaverse will simply be a tool and as with most tools it can be used for good and can be used for evil and to say i'm scared for the evil the metaverse might bring is an understatement think about all the dumb problems with social media today and increase them exponentially those are the potential dangers of the metaverse and that's just the beginning one of the biggest problems with social media today is misinformation people use fake screenshots photoshop edits websites and deep fakes to pedal lies and misinformation if you don't know what to look for or how to identify those things the spread of misinformation will just continue to grow facebook or meta the largest company that is now in a sense leading the march into the metaverse has been accused several times of aiding misinformation on its platform now imagine how much more believable these lies would be in the metaverse where it'll be difficult to differentiate what's real from what's not when it's not misinformation you have the problem of confirmation bias if the metaverse will be serving us content through the algorithms that currently exist on platforms like youtube and tick tock at an advanced scale then we are in danger or are we the problem with these algorithms is that they keep feeding you the same kind of content once they realize you're interested in it they're actually genius in their design soon the only things you see or hear are the things you already believe no challenging ideologies no opposing views nothing and for you this is perfect but if you're existing in a world that you know isn't real but feels real are there any repercussions to your actions or your beliefs if anywhere this is where you would feel the most safe where you could truly express yourself to the largest extent it's a double-edged sword the irony of humanity's desire to use technology to improve our connections to amplify the human experience is that the same technology is what keeps us apart mark zuckerberg during his metaverse speech said this new technology will help improve human connection while on paper it should make it easier to talk to people from around the world if history is anything to go by it'll only worsen the human connection today you can see a group of friends hanging out in real life but none of them seem to be interested in what the other has to say a lot of the time many of us know people that oddly enough seem to just hate their friends but remain connected for social gain and on social media apps how many of us are actually looking for genuine connections or isn't it just a numbers game now how many followers friends or subscribers can you rack up are we interested in sharing our lives with others or just trying to prove we've got the best one how will the metaverse make us think and feel about ourselves if you walk around with your prince charming avatar throughout the day how would you feel when you take off the headset and look at yourself in the mirror with all of your imperfections that you know best right now people can't post a picture on instagram without taking 100 versions just to find the perfect shot then adding layers of filters to make that look even better and that's fine if it makes you feel better but little by little we're becoming less impressed with our natural selves because of how much better technology can make us look with the metaverse these standards for ourselves are only going to continue to evolve once potentially worse than what currently exists slowly but surely we might actually start to hate the human experience yet with all of these things the scariest thing of them all is a rather simple question will the creators of the metaverse make money is the metaverse financially motivated or socially motivated say they do make money and they do so by selling our data just like many companies of today do most of us know this and just kind of deal with it that data that'll be collected in the metaverse won't just be what you like to watch on youtube or your spending habits on amazon it'll be your most private thoughts desires and ambitions your literal brain waves it is simply way too much information to let a centralized company do with as they please but at that point will you even care will money have value to you if you're allowed to live through every desire you've ever dreamed of will that dopamine attachment to the green paper still matter the reality of the matter is that the metaverse whatever that even means is still a fair bit away a lot of people get dizzy from even wearing a vr headset and the prices for these devices are still far too expensive to make them ubiquitous just yet for all we know this could just be the first step however we can never know for sure because we were all moving on with our lives like normal when steve jobs dropped the iphone in 2007.
look around now and imagine what the next iphone level of technology will be in another 15 years as exciting as this all sounds though we can only hope we don't exchange our humanity for a place in the metaverse humanity has never achieved anything without a bit of risk involved but in the end the reward could be limitless the metaverse is a work in progress no one really knows exactly what it is or where it'll be even in a year it's being built by all of us for all of us the issues that we laid out in this video are just the tip of the iceberg and potentially it could go much much deeper it's interesting to watch this potentially perpetual project play out but we have to be smart about it we have to engineer it in the right way so as to not put our social and financial lives at risk we need smart people to help tackle some of these problems and help make the metaverse a place that we can all enjoy and luckily brilliant is here to help us out brilliant is an online interactive stem learning platform that helps you gain a deeper understanding of concepts in math science and computer science by taking you through the subjects piece by piece in a visually stimulating hands-on way brilliance interactivity is the best part of their platform with blockchain technology and coding in general logic is immensely important with brilliance interactive logic course you can learn about multi-level thinking something that is extremely important when building trustless systems and see how logic-based your brain is we all learn differently but i think we can all agree that the best way to truly learn and retain something is by doing it if you're interested in working on the metaverse and want to become a smarter person overall visit brilliant.org aperture to start learning for free you'll also get 20 off a premium subscription which unlocks every single course brilliant has to offer as always you'll be supporting yourself and aperture at the same time [Music] foreign
2022-02-21