During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of people have relied on media and technology to inform, entertain and educate themselves, do business, and socialize. But the shift in usage patterns does not automatically mean that everyone understands what the metaverse is. Fewer than one in five (16%) of Americans can define the term: some call it a new social networking platform, while others describe it as “a new internet experience which links together multiple sites and platforms”.

Even the leaders of businesses building the metaverse recognize a lack of common understanding about what the new medium will represent. Many of them are bullish on the prospects of the metaverse to create economic growth, improve collaboration and transform social experiences, but highlight emerging challenges of ethics, access, security and governance. Here is what seven of them said:

“An entirely new precedent for work and collaboration”

“We believe the real benefit of the metaverse is the ability to integrate and overlay digital content into our physical world through augmented reality. This will benefit creators, architects, engineers, even educators and students, as well as many applications that are hard to fathom right now as the technology works to catch up with the vision.

The metaverse will deliver the earliest benefits to enterprise, establishing an entirely new precedent for work and collaboration and allowing businesses to operate at greater speed and scale than we’ve ever seen. The metaverse has the opportunity to increase productivity and efficiency of manufacturing lines, enhance military training, and provide real-time visual data within an augmented operating room.

Today many extended reality (XR) experiences are single-user, single-platform. As the tools, libraries, and platforms mature, bringing shared experiences together in the metaverse across disparate devices will be not just desirable, but necessary to connect workers together and revolutionize ways of working across various sectors.”

Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/how-to-build-an-economically-viable-inclusive-and-safe-metaverse/