Metaverse and the Real World – Economic and Social Impacts

As the Metaverse becomes a normal part of everyday life it will have some very unique and life changing affects on all of society.

This convergence will redefine daily individual lives in that everything will be done in digital space and it will also redefine industries, currencies, and society at large, thus bringing in a host of new challenges and opportunities.

Economic Impact

• New Economic Ecosystems: Our New World will bring with it New Economic Ecosystems already enabled by The Metaverse. Virtual Economies, where not only those who are already part of this ecosystem today but also global communities with no previous digital exposure can all come together, realign and balance the power structures that we are witnessing today. The Digital Assets that you’ve seen create exponential new wealth for individuals & funds by giving them access to otherwise untouchable investment opportunities can be created almost instantly. The second is the ability for you, your fund or his cousin uncle to access unimaginable amounts of capital or liquidity in no time using DeFi (Decentralised Finance; removing the banks from the equation).
• Monetization of Virtual Assets: Monetization of Virtual Assets: Moreover, people can benefit from their innovations within the Metaverse including but not limited to jewelry, real estate, pictures, videos, etc. Thanks to the combination of blockchain and underlying technology used to support cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin which is the technology used in digital currency transactions (ether), people can safely sell and buy these virtual objects, and from here, can easily find a new income source.

Digital Transformation of Industries

• Revolutionizing Entertainment and Media: Revolutionizing Entertainment and Media: The entertainment and media industries undergo a digital transformation within the Metaverse. Virtual concerts, interactive storytelling, and immersive experiences redefine how content is created, consumed, and monetized, leading to a shift in traditional business models.
• Innovations in Education and Training: The Education and Training Metaverse impact the educational and training section in a revolutionary way. Education and training are improved by the Metaverse because it provides new and interesting ways to learn and train. For example, the Metaverse supplies virtual classrooms and training centers that are more personal than a classroom with a professor or a business. The Metaverse can take education and training to the next level.

Remote Work and Collaboratio

• Decentralized Remote Work: Decentralized Remote Work: Remote work is revolutionized with the Metaverse giving birth to completely new remote working experiences. Virtual offices and shared work spaces giving an opportunity for globally distributed teams to seamlessly interact and work without the physical boundaries.
• Enhanced Collaboration Tools: A final testament to the power of empathy having on one another surviving and succedding trough trials and tribulations can be seen in the relationship between Sam and Meryl Streep that have both lost loved ones. “Silver Linings Playbook,” (2012) is a real love story in every sense of the word because both characters get to know the real Sam and Meryl Streep instead of getting hung up on the labels they have been given by bold characters, and they both have stories of their own that they seek empowerment through the relationship the silver lining of loosing loved ones has brought them.

Social Impact

• Global Connectivity and Social Inclusion: Global Connectivity and Social Inclusion: The Metaverse can contribute to promoting a global and interconnected world where physical distance and physical barriers become less relevant. Through The Metaverse, people of different ages, backgrounds, nationalities, interests and abilities can connect, work together, and play together as they engage in experiences in a shared environment. They can share their own experiences, collaborate to design new experiences, and build communities.
• Virtual Communities and Social Dynamics: The Metaverse’s virtual communities thrive as centers of social cooperation, shared ideas, and cultural swap, over time, building new social dynamics that conflict with what we call community and what group membership means, and that rise into completely unprecedented behavioral instances, and where new and different identities can be trialed and played with.

Challenges and Opportunities

• Digital Divide and Accessibility: There are many challenges that goes into the digital divide and when you try to make things accessible to everyone. If a person tries to bridge the divide in technology that everyone share, there will still be goal challenges in the metaverse.
• Opportunities for Innovation and Entrepreneurship: The fusion of the Metaverse with the real world creates vast possibilities for innovation and entrepreneurship. Startups, developers, and businesses can devise new and exciting platforms, apps, and services that respond to the wants and needs of a society that is continuously linked to the Metaverse.

Cultural Shifts and Ethical Considerations

• Cultural Adaptation and Norms: The Metaverse changes the way traditional cultures are practiced and impacts the norms in each culture.culture Traditional culture is adapting and incorporating different cultures expressions, expectation, language, communication interacting.
• Ethical Considerations and Digital Citizenship: Ethical Considerations and Digital Citizenship: With the integration of the Metaverse and Etherium into our daily lives, we should begin to analyze the ethical aspects of Metaverse. The issues of privacy, data security, and digital citizenship spark a few questions—some of which have simple answers, some of which may be complex. How should we deal with these issues? How will we best adopt responsible practices and establish ethical guidelines for the Metaverse? Developing the ethical guidelines to manage these ethical standards is critical for the future advancement of Metaverse technologies.

Future Trends

• Integration of AI and Virtual Assistants:
  
• The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Assistants (VA) within the Metaverse will enrich a user’s experience. AI-driven personalization, voice commands, and intelligent interaction within the Metaverse will contribute to a more intuitive and user-friendly environment.
• Cross-Platform Interoperability: One expanding concept is the idea of cross-platform interoperability. In the future, user interfaces need to be able to work across multiple platforms and be able to go from the physical to virtual world in a smooth and seamless manor. This would allow for a much more harmonized and fluid interaction across interfaces and devices.

Conclusion Economic and Social Impacts

Due to the results of examining the Metaversion, when considered as a real-life phenomenon similar to the internet, we are only beginning to see the possible impacts it could have on the economy. As stated earlier, the internet allowed for the creation and growth of new sectors within the economy that are yet to be seen as established. Another example would be social media platforms like Instagram, where people make a living being a social media influencer.

An article titled, “The Metaverse is Coming!”, discusses how the Metaverse will impact the economy in the future. It states that the Metaverse is “nothing less than a transformative technology, like the creation of the Internet, just as the Internet supercharged globalisation in relation to knowledge sharing and interactions across the planet.” This quote explains how the Metaverse has the potential to transform the economy in terms of how consumers and firms interact or share goods and services. It is still so early on that it has the potential to spin off into multiple sectors or industries based on how the market evolves.

As for economic impacts, the article envisions a catering industry emerging as people would no longer need to travel for business meetings. This would allow for an increase in aggregate demand, economy of scale, and a shift in aggregate supply. To anyone wondering how that would be possible, think about it this way. Let’s say we have a company named Caviar that delivers food from any of your favorite restaurants throughout SF, LA, Chicago, Boston, Dallas or Manhattan. Instead of ordering from a restaurant that is somewhat close to your work, you could order from a restaurant in Italy and have it delivered to any of those cities previously stated.

The same concept would go for other industries as people would no longer need to fly in order to have business meetings or go to conferences. As such, you could use VR to feel as if you are in the building. I think that it is harder to predict the intrapersonal impacts the metaverse will have on the real world. I do think that, as more and more people use VR headset, people will move less. This can be thought of by looking at people today and comparing how often people had to travel in the 80’s to how often people need to travel in 2021. I think that, due to more people working in a virtual reality, the metaverse will create a higher demand in video discussing software’s such as slack.