The Digital Big Bang in the Metaverse Era

Since the Internet's widespread adoption in the 1990s, cyberspace has evolved by leveraging diversified mediums like text, images, 3D worlds, virtual reality, and mobile AR. Several computer-mediated virtual environments have demonstrated successful examples in cyberspace evolution, such as Twitter, Zoom, Meta Horizon, Pokémon Go, and Axie Infinity. As mentioned earlier, the non-permanent and disconnected virtual worlds have afforded us varying degrees of digital change [1]. In contrast, the term “metaverse” was invented to continuously allow the digital transformation of all aspects of our physical life. As such, the metaverse is the concept of an immersive Internet that is vast, unified, permanent, and shared. Emerging technologies [2] such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Human-centric Artificial Intelligence may make the metaverse seem futuristic, yet cyberspace's digital “big bang” is not far off. This talk discusses the metaverse concept and building blocks of the metaverse. Furthermore, we illustrate various metaverse applications and the critical challenges of building metaverse cities [3].