By: Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, June 27, 2022
The metaverse is much more than cryptocurrencies and will be the dominant trend in society in the coming years, notes an expert.
[post_relacionado]The movement to popularize the metaverse continues to grow steadily, attracting the attention of companies and investors alike. It is a new layer of reality, integrating the real and digital worlds into an immersive environment that can be used with several new technologies.
While Decentraland, The Sandbox and other platforms are the ‘face’ of the metaverse for crypto-investors, the new digital environment goes far beyond crypto-platforms which, like other platforms, are still in their early stages and provide a very restrictive immersive experience of what one imagines the metaverse will look like in the coming years.
In this universe, people can interact with each other, work, study and have a social life through their avatars. The main objective is that they are not mere observers, but that they participate in this virtual world.
A World Economic Forum survey revealed that 65% of today’s elementary school children will work in jobs that do not yet exist. According to Alexandre Slivnik, vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Training and Development (ABTD), which has been conducting courses and lectures for twenty years, with the metaverse conception these numbers tend to grow.
“This study was conducted before the pandemic and the creation of the metaverse. With the digital acceleration we have experienced in recent years, companies have entered this universe and understood the real possibility of doing business. I imagine that the number predicted by the survey should go up to 75% or 85%,” he reveals.
For the speaker, this new digital reality will have the power to bring interactions even closer together.
“Many people will not need to leave their homes to connect with a customer, for example. Using the metaverse, you can have a closer relationship and connection compared to what the Internet provides today using computers and cell phones,” he says.
Slivnik says it is necessary to be prepared for the changes to come.
“The labor market will gain even more possibilities within the metaverse. But only for those who are prepared. This readiness comes not only with studying, but with being open to new learning opportunities. The more people are open to learning, the greater the chances of adaptation and opportunities in this new world,” he reports.
Inclusion is a crucial part of giving the metaverse a chance for the most diverse people.
“One of the main challenges is to get all people immersed in this universe. After all, older people, who have some kind of difficulty with technology, may feel outdated by being excluded. Companies that want to stand out within the metaverse will have to think inclusively in every way, as all people need to be inserted into that context. The first company that manages to overcome this challenge will definitely come out ahead,” says the speaker.
“In the medium and long term, we will see many companies using the metaverse for immersive training and development actions that go beyond the simple virtual meetings that became fashionable during the pandemic. With this, it will be possible to interact even more. In my opinion, we will have great transformations in the next five years and the metaverse will be crucial in this sense”, he concludes.