Vinícius Luiz*
Much has been said about the metaverse, particularly since Facebook announced on October 28, 2021, the name change of its holding company to Meta. So gained more traction the stakes around this new virtual universe and piqued the curiosity of the whole community and not just those working on tech.
By analyzing the interest in the topic, you can notice how this new concept has gotten closer and closer to reality.
For some, this could be seen as a second chance for the format. In mid-2004, Second Life caused a similar buzz but didn’t prove to be as successful as it had promised. Its bark was much worse than its bite.
Others believe it’s something totally out of touch with reality (and it actually is!). Nobody is going to walk around wearing a large equipment around its head to live in a virtual world.
Although the term is used now mainly to refer to its usage in virtual reality like games, the metaverse is an opportunity for making the technology work for humanity and not as a withdrawal from reality.
If we look at the core principle of the metaverse as “… a shared collective, virtual space that’s the result of the sum of ‘virtual reality,’ ‘augmented reality,’ and ‘internet,’” we could see a new reality that could help further trade relations between countries.
The technological potential embedded in the concept has been used to facilitate business as in the Ellos Platform, launched back in late 2020 by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) to facilitate business and record negotiations in a decentralized way via blockchain.
Furthering its core concept, the metaverse could become a highly effective way to virtually get to know and try products and carry out negotiations and automatically process transactions in secure networks.
This means that dynamic virtual environments could bridge several gaps like distance, language, culture, etc., as well as integrating digital locations and brick-and-mortar production lines, for example.
Imagine a trade show where Brazilians speak Portuguese, Arabs speak Arabic, and the environment itself streamlines the conversation making everyone understand each other with no barriers?
Imagine conducting an inspection in a manufacturing plant, validating documents, trying out products, analyzing production batches among other stages of the commercial process of goods in a simplified manner via a virtual platform like Roblox or Decentraland?
Therefore, the metaverse holds a great potential not for disconnecting but for bringing people and businesses closer together in an unprecedented manner. It could be another channel that makes it possible to connect to the world’s highest technologies and deepen the relations between countries, regardless of the distance and the languages spoken in either side.
My suggestion is: Don’t assume the metaverse isn’t for your business. Study it and see what you can learn about the future of the digital world.
In the worst-case scenario, you’ll learn a lot! As Einstein used to say, “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”
Vinícius Luiz is Head of Innovation at Orbital, which brings innovation processes to companies
