Corporations in the Metaverse are booming and blooming
Big corporations are entering digital reality and it’s no secret. Though does the entrance of market behemoths pose a threat to the rebirth of the online world?
As the metaverse manifests outside the pages of science fiction books, individuals, brands and companies rush for a place. Certainly, it’s no surprise that tech-related companies such as Meta or e-commerce giants like Amazon are at the forefront of this race.
Though, it’s not just companies who already have a foot into the tech industry swiping up metaverse land. Spotify, Walmart, Shopify, JP Morgan and Gucci are among other big-league businesses with an eye on the metaverse.
However does the entrance of commercial, financial, and tech giants mean a more robust online world, where anything is possible? Or does it mean replication of the same entities being at the top, with the most control and influence over our digital lives?
Humble beginnings
The decentralized, digital world is a place for expression. It is a place for more freedom and creativity on many levels, not just financial and technological. For example, one’s digital avatar in the metaverse can be the result of the imagination looking nothing like the physical self. One’s digital abode can come in colors, shapes, and sizes unorthodox in the real world.
Online interactions turn into fully immersive experiences in the metaverse. Now, the Sandbox’s music-themed world brings the concert Livestream to a new level.
Through a combination of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), new environments – both preexisting and imagined- become accessible. While actual development in the metaverse as we know it dramatically accelerated in recent years, the idea of the metaverse has been around much longer.
Similar to the inception of the internet, Web3 technologies exist to circumvent centralized problems. Moreover, the internet was a place for free speech and expression. Early versions of the internet had less censorship, data harvesting, and privacy concerns.
However as “Big Tech” started to live up to the name, the internet and our interaction on the internet changed forever.
Initially, the crypto and blockchain scene had almost an anarchist hint to it. Still, these technologies and the products thereof are often reinventions of systems in centralized, physical reality already monopolized by the big guys.
Once again, we see the entrance and the rather quick domination of the decentralized space. Though, not only through tech giants. Major corporations in the real world realize the opportunity at hand and are joining. In tandem, corporations in the metaverse could just be another form.
For more: Phygital World: The Metaverse is Merging our Real and Digital Lives
