rewrite this title Why It Matters for Our Digital Future, Can We Move Our Lives to a Digital Universe?

Can we move our lives into a digital universe? Questioning the course of the metaverse—which will shape our future—and the dangers it may pose is of great importance!

The metaverse (lit. “beyond‑universe”) is a network of continuously open virtual environments where many people can interact with one another and with digital objects through their own virtual representations, i.e., avatars. You can think of the metaverse as a combination of immersive virtual reality, a massively multiplayer online role‑playing game, and the web. It has three core aspects: presence, interoperability, and standardization.

Presence is the feeling of embodiment—being in the same virtual space with other individuals. This sense of presence is known to improve the quality of online interactions and is achieved through VR technologies such as head‑mounted displays.

Interoperability is the seamless travel between virtual spaces that share the same virtual assets, such as avatars and digital items.

Standardization is what makes the platforms and services within the metaverse interoperable. As with every mass‑communication technology from the printing press to messaging apps, widespread adoption of the metaverse requires common technical standards. International bodies like the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group define these standards.

The Historical Road to the Metaverse

For the past 30 years we have witnessed an extraordinary technological revolution: the construction of a man‑made, digital universe. It began in the 20th century with transistors, computers, and the internet. Commerce, communication, and social relations—all human activities—started moving from the real to the digital. For example, we no longer go to the bazaar; with a few clicks we buy what we want. We no longer wait months to contact distant friends; we talk instantly. Our music, movies, and games are now in our pockets, not in the physical world.

While we’ve been severing our ties with the physical realm, the tech revolution has pressed on: enormous strides have been made in CPUs, GPUs, data processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cryptography. By the 2010s these advances opened the door to even higher‑level ideas. Blockchain technology, for instance, made it possible to process data securely without central authority. Its most popular application is cryptocurrencies, but the same tech can be applied anywhere we don’t want power centralized and where privacy matters—digital identities, government, healthcare, insurance, law, and more.

Notice the common thread: digitizing physical‑world processes and interactions. These developments were all progressing, yet how seemingly independent technologies would connect was unclear—until the concept of the metaverse emerged.

The Science‑Fiction History of the Metaverse

The metaverse is not a new concept. It was first expressed in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 dystopian sci‑fi novel Snow Crash, though the idea was popularized earlier as “cyberspace” in William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer.

In Snow Crash the term metaverse means exactly what it does today: a virtual reality where individuals can interact with each other and their surroundings in three‑dimensional physical space via various virtual technologies. Decades ago Stephenson foresaw the metaverse as the successor to the internet and described it as follows:

“[Hiro Protagonist] is not meeting real people, of course. They are all part of the moving picture his computer draws according to the specs coming down the fiber‑optic cable. People are pieces of software called avatars. [Avatars] are the audio‑visual bodies people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. Hiro’s avatar is now on the street, and couples getting off the monorail can see him just as he can see them. Those people—probably four teenagers on a couch in a Chicago suburb—could strike up a conversation with Hiro in Los Angeles. But they probably wouldn’t say much more to each other than they could in real life.”

Since then the metaverse has appeared in films, books, and series from Avatar to Ready Player One, Otherland, Altered Carbon, and even The Matrix. The 2018 sci‑fi film Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel, portrays the metaverse as the heir to the internet: a young orphaned hero escapes his bleak reality by entering a wondrous virtual universe called the “OASIS” through a headset and physically interacting in three dimensions.

The Etymology of the Term “Metaverse”

Stephenson likely chose the prefix meta‑ because it has both an established meaning and a newer one taking root in computer‑science culture. In ancient Greek meta means “after” or “beyond.” Metaphysics is that which is “beyond physics.” Your metatarsal bones are beyond (after) the tarsals of the mid‑foot. Metamorphosis means taking a form beyond the current one.

The word gained a technical connotation with the emergence of Lisp programming in 1958—partly thanks to its support for metaprogramming (programs that modify themselves at runtime). Keyboards for Lisp programmers even had a Meta key.

Ten years later John Lilly applied metaprogramming to people in Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer—a book Timothy Leary once called “one of the three most important ideas of the 20th century.” The book argued that our environment continually “programs” us, and LSD experiments could allow us to change our own programs.

In 1979 Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid entrenched meta’s self‑referential meaning in geek culture—meta‑game (a game about the game), meta‑learning (learning about learning), meta‑cognition (thinking about thinking), metadata (data about data), HTML meta tags (information about a web page’s content), and so on.

Thus metaverse can also be thought of as a “(digital) universe about the universe.”

Stephenson likely envisioned the metaverse as a combination of “a universe beyond our own” and meta’s self‑referential sense in geek culture. Since he first used the term in the early ’90s, the word has evolved to embrace both meanings: self‑reference and another plane of reality.

The Technological History of the Metaverse

The metaverse has begun to step out of science fiction and into tangible tech. In a July 2021 interview with The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

“Within the next five years I think people will see us not as a social‑media company, but as a metaverse company.”

Just three months later, at the end of October 2021, the nearly one‑trillion‑dollar firm renamed itself Meta—an attempt to escape mounting legal troubles and PR crises, but also the culmination of a strategic pivot brewing since at least 2015.

Many experts believe that in the not‑too‑distant future virtual reality will become a major part of our lives. We may spend much of our time in a vast digital universe filled with diverse virtual spaces that feel real. That universe is what we call the metaverse.

What Is the Core Logic of the Metaverse?

Put simply, the goal is to turn everything housed on today’s 2‑D internet—or anything in our lives that can be digitized—into 3‑D and move it into a shared digital universe.

During Facebook Connect 2021, Zuckerberg painted such a future.[5] Imagine watching a YouTube video today: you passively view it on a flat screen. In a “YouTube metaverse,” however, Evrim Ağacı (or any creator) would stand on a custom digital stage; you, wearing VR goggles, would be there beside us. You could interact both with us and with other viewers in real time—asking questions directly rather than typing comments. If we wished, the Q&A could even take place in a virtual café modeled after Mars.

Metaverses don’t have to replicate Earth; they can be entirely imagined worlds—other planets, Jurassic Park, the Matrix, anything. Think of the virtual backgrounds people use in Zoom calls: in a metaverse that background becomes an explorable place. Avatars can walk around, physically interact, read facial expressions, and perceive gestures.

In essence, the metaverse moves the internet off flat screens and into immersive 3‑D space. The next step—via brain‑computer interfaces like Neuralink—could enrich sensory experience (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile) by sending signals straight to the brain.

Beyond Today’s VR: A Massive Shared Space

Compared with today’s limited VR experiences, the metaverse will unite VR and augmented reality (AR), allow avatars to move seamlessly between virtual locales, and host hundreds of millions of people simultaneously in a single, physically interactive 3‑D realm.

People could work, study, own businesses, shop, exercise, play, watch, read, attend events, socialize, build their own worlds, or join fictional universes like Star Wars. Example: friends living on different continents could gather in a shared virtual environment to collaborate or just have fun. Unlike the internet, the metaverse offers three‑dimensional physical interaction, letting distant users feel as if they are truly together.

So the metaverse is a spatial internet that can be experienced any time, anywhere, through new connections, devices, and technologies—no screens or keyboards required. Picture stepping inside Minecraft, Roblox, PUBG, or Fortnite and feeling that world as if it were real. Simply put, it is an advanced internet you inhabit rather than merely look at.

Giving Meaning to Modern Technologies

The metaverse will weave together rising tech trends and give them purpose. Cryptocurrencies could underlie its economy. As people decorate their avatars like they embellish themselves in real life, NFTs become perfect for owning digital fashion, vehicles, or accessories. As simulation power grows and the line blurs between digital and physical, what you own in the metaverse will matter as much as what you own offline—NFTs will prove that these items truly belong to you.

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will be the primary technologies enabling the metaverse. With AR glasses, for instance, a tourist could walk through a city while real‑time overlays display traffic, pollution levels, or historical facts. If you can’t fully picture AR, think of apps that layer navigation arrows or Pokémon on top of the real world—the metaverse integrates that with VR and much more.

Metaverse platforms may resemble today’s online games: millions worldwide interacting in shared spaces like Fortnite or Roblox. Yet philosophically the metaverse could be even more profound. If arguments in Simulation Theory are correct, creating a digital version of our universe might be humanity’s destiny—an inevitable step for any species that reaches a certain stage of technological maturity.

The Metaverse Problem: How Realistic Is This Idea?

As you may have begun to notice, the metaverse faces both technical and philosophical hurdles.

How Far Away Are We Technologically?

Many define the metaverse as online, interactive, and delivering a near‑real sense of presence. Tech companies want to build it, yet we still lack several key capabilities.

Achieving the full potential of the metaverse will require 15–20 years—or more—of additional computing power and infrastructure.

Today’s VR industry is tiny compared with the smartphone or PC markets; catching up in experience and market size will take time.

VR and AR hardware must become stylish, inexpensive, highly sophisticated, and friction‑free. Current headsets are bulky, heavy, and run hot—uncomfortable for long sessions.

A photorealistic world that supports a few hundred simultaneous users already taxes today’s systems; hosting hundreds of millions in a hyper‑realistic environment and moderating that space is an entirely different scale, demanding decades of network upgrades.

It remains unknown whether the general public—beyond gamers—will embrace wearing such devices just to meet colleagues or friends.

These obstacles are solvable, but only if companies smell enough profit to keep pouring money into the problem. Thus the main issue is not technology per se.

How Far Away Are We Philosophically?

The deeper challenge lies in how the metaverse is being built. Our familiar reality emerged bottom‑up: simple building blocks evolved into complexity under fixed natural laws. Humanity’s push to create its first grand simulation is proceeding top‑down, led by firms such as Facebook (now Meta) that have repeatedly violated human‑rights and legal boundaries.

Early marketing speaks of “collaboration,” with artists, designers, and partners all helping shape the space. But once the puzzle pieces click, we know what happens: a small group of corporations, armed with sheer capital, will dominate the new reality. The rest of us—users and smaller creators—will be sidelined, reduced to statistics.

Metamonopoly: Who Will Own the Metaverse?

Think about the internet’s evolution. How many search engines do you actually use? How many social networks for active communication? How many major video sites? The metaverse is unlikely to escape a similar consolidation.

Companies like Meta survive on our data. We pay not with money but with time, attention, content, and personal information. They build detailed profiles and sell targeted access to advertisers. The metaverse will be no different—only far more invasive, because instead of interacting from the outside, we will live inside it.

Zuckerberg’s own demos mention that the system can track your facial expressions and gestures. Picture a pizza ad today: a five‑second clip on a webpage. Now imagine a lifelike avatar—designed to resemble someone you admire—sitting across from you in a virtual café, savoring that pizza. Political persuasion, consumer manipulation, and algorithmic steering all become exponentially more powerful.

If the coming “metaverse revolution” is left unchecked, it will likely enrich the same handful of giants. They will fund the colossal, trillion‑dollar build‑out only because it opens new markets, new patents, new consumer electronics, and, in short, new profit streams.

Who Stands to Gain from the Metaverse Revolution?

For different people the term metaverse evokes widely different visions, which makes it hard to explain to an outsider. Ultimately the metaverse will be defined by those who build and use it. Its recent surge in popularity has renewed speculation about what it might mean in practice.

Like every transformative technology, the metaverse will bring sweeping political, cultural, and social change—an effect known as technological determinism. Many experts in the tech industry say it will eventually replace today’s internet. If that happens, who builds it and how will shape the future of the economy and society at large. Meta and other giants are pouring billions into VR precisely because it opens new markets, new types of social networks, new consumer hardware, new patents—in short, new revenue.

Metaverse‑style ideas could help society organize more productively. Shared standards that unite many virtual worlds and AR layers in a single open metaverse might boost collaboration and reduce duplicated effort. Yet similar promises were made in the early days of the internet. Over time those hopes were steam‑rolled by surveillance capitalism and the dominance of firms such as Facebook.

The internet has excelled at connecting people and acting as a vast library of knowledge. But it has also privatized public spaces, filled every corner of life with ads, tethered us to a handful of mega‑corporations stronger than many nations, and enabled platforms to exploit the physical world through environmental harm.[9] The culprit is not the technology itself but the capitalist system that dictates how it is used.

Your 3‑D Digital Identity: Who Will Own It?

Deeper problems concern the worldview the metaverse will embody. One view treats us as passengers in a single, pre‑made reality; this is essentially how Facebook works—a platform that exists independently of any one user. An alternative, found in many Indigenous cultures, says we create reality through our actions and rituals, connecting people, land, life, and spirit into a living whole.

The danger is that a corporate‑run metaverse could impose a single‑reality monopoly, leaving no room for multiple ways of being. On social media we already see this: algorithms funnel us into a narrow band of predefined “reactions,” shaping experience by manipulation. Games like PUBG offer boundless creativity—yet only within rules set by the developer. A universal metaverse would shift far more of our lives into a virtual arena controlled by one or a few companies, with even heavier doses of advertising, data extraction, and behavioral limits.

Questioning the Metaverse’s Trajectory Is Not Tech Paranoia

We are not anti‑technology. Evrim Ağacı has long embraced innovations such as blockchain. But when corporate interests clash with the well‑being of our audience, it is our duty to warn. The current system is expert at exploiting human biological and psychological vulnerabilities; a metaverse left unregulated could damage social bonds even worse than social media, widen generational gaps, deepen polarization, and super‑charge consumer manipulation.

Identity‑driven consumption already rules the physical world. Nobody buys a Ferrari because they must travel faster from A to B; they buy it as a status symbol. Apple, Tesla, Gucci, Starbucks—all sell identity as much as product. Social‑Identity Theory shows how easily humans split into groups. Companies hook this need to boost sales; you think you’re buying an item, but you’re really buying membership.

Handing control of that identity market to a metaverse monopoly would be perilous. This isn’t just the old internet you observe; it’s a space you inhabit with a full digital body. We must shape it from the start around reason, science, and human values, not seductive hype.

Tim Berners‑Lee feels “heartbroken” over what the web became; Robert Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita—“Now I am become Death”—upon seeing the A‑bomb. If we fail to plan wisely today, we may stare at our new creation with similar dread.

Practical concerns loom as well:

We already struggle to block harassment online—how will we handle abuse when avatars can touch us?

Can firms that leak survey data protect full‑body motion files?

In a metaverse Moon colony, which nation’s laws apply to assault?

Will Africa and the Global South enjoy equal access, or be locked out?

Are our brains, biologies, and societies remotely ready for such immersion?

Conclusion

There are many questions, and if you don’t ask them—or engage in the process—someone else will ask and answer for you. Remember: companies racing to build the metaverse have already influenced elections, enabled genocidal coordination in Myanmar, ignored human‑trafficking on their platforms, worsened teenage mental health, and spread deadly misinformation about vaccines. Those who claim “no one will own the metaverse” have literally renamed themselves Meta.

A richly sensory connection between people and universe is a wonderful idea. The metaverse itself is a wonderful idea. But if we erect our beyond‑universe atop a neoliberal capitalist system, we risk birthing a monster that deepens inequality in unprecedented ways.

The future is not yet written; it depends on the standards, governance, and ethical constraints we insist on now.

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