Will we be living in the “metaverse” soon or will this turn out to be a big hype?

Imagine: you wake up, you have lunch and you get dressed. Instead of going to the office or crawling behind your computer, you put on a headset. It takes you to another virtual world. Where not only do you work, but also where you meet friends, shop and go to the movies.

So would the metaverse ultimately look like. Chances are you haven’t heard this word before this week, but now you are seeing it popping up more and more. Facebook grabbed attention on Monday with the announcement of its intention to hire thousands of employees in Europe in the coming years to fully commit to it. The company is not the only one to have this ambition.

But what exactly is it, why is there so much interest and – not unimportantly – will it change our lives as much as the smartphone has? Or is it just some hype that disappears again?

What is it: now just a concept

To complicate matters right away: the metaverse, a virtual 3D environment does not yet exist. It should be seen as a concept that we think about a lot. This has been happening for decades, by the way, because the word comes from a book that appeared in 1992: Snowfall.

“It is considered the next version of the Internet,” explains researcher Zerrin Yumak (University of Utrecht). “In the metaverse, you use virtual and augmented reality glasses. The real and virtual world will intertwine.”