Origins of the Metaverse

Introduction

As with our fathomable universe, we can exist, live, exchange, play and any other verb that you can think of and much like our physical universe, the Metaverse is a digital one. It uses a range of technologies including virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR) and cryptocurrency. Through these innovations, we can function within the metaverse as though it were our actual, physical reality.

Now, whilst the metaverse has played a huge role in the news as of late, its origin timeline begins at a similar time to the boom of the internet…

90s

As the internet burst into life with the creation of the World Wide Web in 1991, the following year experienced the creation of the term ‘metaverse’. Firstly coined by author Neal Stephenson in his famous sci-fi novel ‘Snow Crash’, Stephenson used ‘metaverse’ to describe a three-dimensional, virtual space where humans and avatars could interact with one another. It was this novel’s prescient vision of a virtual universe that merged with the physical one we know and hence created a roadmap for the future.

00s

As the dawn of a new era arose, the internet and its added extras started to evolve rapidly. One revolutionary finding was from IT research firm Gartner who coined the term “supranet” in referral to the convergence of virtual and physical worlds. 

As the terminology developed, gameplay certainly followed suit with Second Life and Roblox. Ironically enough, Second Life was developed first in 2003 by Philip Rosedale. As a concept it’s simple enough - one explores a virtual world. Despite its initial criticisms, today, Second Life has an active user base of a million people with each spending over four hours a day in this world.

The second featured game play is Roblox. Despite only seeming to be popular recently, it was actually introduced in 2006. The general premise of Roblox as a platform is that it allows users to interact and play games that they themselves have created. It's popularity rose during the pandemic and it became a significant source of interaction for younger audiences furthermore the actually became the third highest grossing great game of 2020. 

As with the rise of interactive game play, so came the development of economic advances such as cryptocurrency. In 2009, the Bitcoin network was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto by mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0) it yielded a reward of 50 bitcoins and this was the day Bitcoin was born.

As with bitcoin Nakamoto also invented blockchain to serve as the public transaction Ledger for Bitcoin. Despite its popularity, others did also come to claim the day two had invented the concept of blockchain previously; however many agree that blockchain and bitcoin were launched on the same day as this was when the usable form was born. 

10s

As we explored in the 2000s, the next decade that followed also had some pretty impressive progressions throughout the world of gameplay and cryptocurrency. However the most important milestone that should be noted from the 2010s is the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Simply put, This novel explored the concept of virtual reality with a Steven Spielberg adaptation later hitting the big screen.

In this decade, games truly took the virtual ball and ran with it, Pokémon Go and Fortnite are such examples. Pokémon Go was the first game to overlay a virtual world into the real world by using mobile devices to locate, capture, train, and battle Pokémons as if they are in the player’s real-world location. Whilst Fortnite is a multiplayer video game that introduced many people to the look and feel of the metaverse and cryptocurrency with a current fan base of 350 million players.

Other honourable mentions of this decade are NFTs (Non-Fungible Token) which, like bitcoin, use a similar tech but cannot be traded or exchanged for one another. Decentraland (2015) functions through sales of allocated “land” via a proof of work algorithm. Plus the 2021 boom in NFTs has led to some of the game’s real estate plots selling for more than $100,000…

20s - Now

So as you can see, the metaverse and all its associates have had a pretty good run at things. But it was the pandemic that meant people around the world found themselves being quarantined with few options to dedicate their time and energy to. It was this reason that enabled the metaverse to quickly become the go-to place for young people, gamers, money-hungry individuals and everyone in between. The metaverse has also taken the tone of rebelling against current trends and social norms especially since everything surrounding it comes at a risk. This ultimately pushes people towards the more underground economies and worlds of the metaverse, setting up a “perfect storm” for metaverse growth.

As more and more companies noticed the popularity of the metaverse, its possibilities only grew. From fashion shows to concerts, the evolution of various kinds of enabling technology and new features in the metaverse over the last few years have been incredible, proving the metaverse knows no bounds, and we doubt it ever will. 

Our steps to be a part of the Metaverse

We decided to jump on the bandwagon and bring our Leo tech to alternate reality as we plan to modernise the hiring process by creating communities for job postings as well as  conference centres and interview rooms for everything that businesses could need.

So whether you want to showcase your company over VR or perhaps conduct an interview from the comfort of your home, then stay tuned to our socials and blogs as we’ll post updates there. With our agile recruitment processes we’re excited to see where this futuristic endeavour will take us!

We are looking for investors to make this a (virtual) reality and help us in developing our feature that will become ‘MetaRecruit’ so if this is something you want to be a part of, get in touch with us today!