On Jan. 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition Activision Blizzard, one of the leading video game development studios. The deal reinforced the idea that technology companies are stepping up their efforts on digital social experiences — a shift that was also mirrored when Facebook renamed itself to Meta on Oct. 28, 2021. In addition to putting all of Facebook’s other companies under one name, the news cements Meta’s commitment to the future of the metaverse, a three dimensional virtual world which users can join to interact with others. 

As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in his 2021 Founder’s Letter, the next chapter of Meta will be focusing on the development of the metaverse, a more immersive internet, rather than on websites. Zuckerberg believes that a key component of the metaverse is feeling like “you’re in the experience, not just looking at it” and envisions the next chapter of the internet, where “you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop [and] create.” 

Zuckerberg acknowledges that the internet has evolved over time and has become more immersive, specifically from being more text based to more visual through images and videos. 

Senior Arnav Dalal agrees with Zuckerberg that the internet has evolved to become more interactive. Although Dalal sees the potential advantages of the metaverse, he believes that the internet right now provides enough interactivity and is sufficient for his needs.

“[Websites are] becoming less text and more like pictures,” Dalal said. “That’s given users a chance to be more involved in what they’re looking at. So I don’t think the metaverse is necessary in that aspect, but I do think it brings something new in terms of what possibilities could come.”

Specifically, Dalal believes that the metaverse can allow us to search for things in a new way. On the other hand, junior Ved Pradhan agrees with Zuckerberg in saying that currently, the internet does have limitations regarding the ability to express oneself. 

“When we’re talking in text, it’s hard to get tone or and body language across, which is an important part of communication,” Pradhan said. “So if you add that immersive experience and actually get to hear people’s voices, then you’ll be able to see their body language and tone. For example, sarcasm — you [would] feel like they are being sarcastic rather than second guessing that.”

From his experiences with remote learning last year, math teacher Joe Kim believes that a more immersive experience than Zoom video calls would help students and teachers. For example, Kim struggled with seeing everyone’s faces on Zoom since they couldn’t fit on his screen.

“This whole Zoom thing is fatiguing,“ Kim said. “So ideally [in the metaverse] you could literally have a virtual reality classroom where people are sitting and they’re writing things down, then they look like they’re writing things down. And so if they’re not paying attention, then it looks like they’re not paying attention, and that [would] be good.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Kim has missed going to the movie theater because he believes part of the experience is seeing other people’s reactions. He believes that being able to experience things with other people is essential for the metaverse to be realistic and is a major factor in the adoption of the metaverse, instead of computer generated avatars. 

“You can’t program randomness. [Let’s] say you are walking and a kid drops his ice cream. You can manipulate that,” Kim said. “But in reality, the best way is when some actual kid is there and drops his ice cream and you go help them. That’s like random stuff that happens. That’s one of the important things about having a real experience. So that means having other individuals in the metaverse is important. Not just me. Simulations.”

One of the limitations of the metaverse right now is the heavy computational power and headset needed to run a realistic 3D simulation in real time. Raja Koduri, the senior vice president of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group at Intel, wrote in an article that “truly persistent and immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time [for the metaverse], will require even more: a 1,000-times increase in computational efficiency from today’s state of the art.” Even today, expensive hardware and a headset is required to run a virtual reality. Although there are plans to allow people to join the metaverse without a headset, Pradhan believes that it will be hard to adopt the metaverse if affordability is a barrier because “[headsets] are expensive and [between] a mediocre computer and just a headset, [the] computer itself will be a better use of your money.”

Kim believes that he will partake in the metaverse as more people get on board and the technology improves and becomes more affordable.

“They’ve been talking about VR for a long time, but I think the technology, as well as the internet, was so slow back then and it was hard for it to make it possible,” Kim said. “But if you look at CGI right now versus 20 years ago, it’s pretty amazing how far they’ve come, like movies and things like that. But I mean, that costs so much money to make. [If] they can actually make that more affordable, then people will jump on board.”

Although Pradhan has acknowledged the new features the metaverse will bring, he believes that technology companies should focus on more important issues in society, since information will not change.

“I feel like technology companies could be investing their efforts, focusing on really important issues in society, like more important frontiers in technology rather than [the metaverse], because it’s not going to really impact how we approach things, especially when it comes to information. [You] still get the same information.”