The Metaverse in 2040

The metaverse is slowly becoming mainstream and an inevitable part of our future. By launching
a slew of hardware products, the company aims to pool as many customers as possible. However,
according to researchers, the whole concept of “The Metaverse” will mature earliest by 2040.
The metaverse is currently made up of somewhat immersive XR spaces in which humans can
interact with automated entities. While some are regular everyday apps, others involve more
immersive domains like gaming/fantasy.
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy think tank that informs the public about the
issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. In a Pew Research study, all the 624 technology
innovators, developers, and business and policy leaders gave open-ended responses to the
questions regarding the trajectory and impact of metaverse by 2040.
While extended reality gaming and social spaces have been in existence for decades, early 2020s
technological advances and societal transformations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic
have pushed the development of the metaverse to the forefront, inspiring tens of billions of
dollars in new investments and prompting predictions that the metaverse is "the future of the
internet" or "The next internet battleground." Proponents of XR and the development of more
advanced and immersive 3D online worlds say its rapid evolution is likely to benefit all aspects
of society: education, health care, gaming and entertainment, the arts, social and civic life, and
other activities. 
First, a notable share of these experts argued that the embrace of extended reality in people's
daily lives by 2040 will be centered around augmented-reality and mixed-reality tools, not in the
more-fully immersive virtual reality worlds many people define today as being "The metaverse."
Second, they warned that these new worlds could dramatically magnify every human trait and
tendency—both the bad and the good.
Two meta insights about the future of the metaverse These themes anchored many experts'
predictions as they considered the metaverse in 2040. Augmented and mixed-reality applications
will dominate over virtual-reality advances. Some argue that the most popular technological
enhancements will be tied to augmented reality and mixed reality, enabled by artificial
intelligence systems.
The proponents of XR and the evolution of immersive 3D applications will benefit many aspects
of society like education, healthcare, gaming, and entertainment. Although with all the digital
tech, there is a rise in concern about health, safety, security, privacy, and economic implications.
According to the study, 54% of these experts said that they expect the metaverse will become a
more refined, well-functioning, daily life aspect for over half a billion people globally. However,
the remaining 46% believe the complete opposite stating that the metaverse won’t be refined
even 20 years from now.
After the experts were asked to elaborate on their different takes, two broad themes emerged.
Firstly a few experts argued that we’d only be using the augmented and mixed reality tools by
2040, and the whole “immersive metaverse” won’t come to life.
Secondly, they said that bringing new worlds could dramatically magnify every human trait and
tendency. They even worried over the future freedom of humans and the expansion of their
native capacities.
"Use cases of 360degree digital content in AR and VR for businesses or private usage reach far
beyond the thriving gaming scene and the fast-growing adoption of VR devices- Evolving AR
devices and the possibility to add valuable content to our environment will boost the magic of the
metaverse beyond VR. Over the last two decades, internet users came to prefer seeing text with
pictures over just text, and then they preferred seeing video over just seeing photos. I absolutely
can't imagine a future where people would skip the option to interact with internet content in the
most realistic 3D and, instead, just stay with 2D. To see the future, we need to differentiate short-
term hype from a sustainable trend.
 'My uncertainty about the metaverse is not whether we will have "something" by 2040, but what
character it will have.' David Clark, pioneer Internet Hall of Fame member and senior research
scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, commented, "The
origin of the term metaverse is the 1992 science fiction novel 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson."
'The metaverse could be a nice place to visit, but most of us wouldn't want to live there.' Micah
Altman, social and information scientist at MIT's Center for Research in Equitable and Open
Scholarship, responded, "It is highly uncertain whether a unified, fully immersive 'metaverse'
will become an important aspect of general daily life for a substantial fraction of the world's
global population by 2020."
" The Neal Stephenson idea of the metaverse was set in a dystopia people tried to escape.
Christian Huitema, a privacy consultant, 40year veteran of the software and internet industries,
and former director of the Internet Architecture Board, wrote, "I do not see a single metaverse
taking over the world within the next 20 years."
Expert essays on metaverse possibilities - The experts' answers to our questions about the future
of the metaverse that is reported in this section are somewhat longer than those in the previous
section, and they often have a more panoramic perspective.
"We saw manufacturing develop worldwide with the development of a global supply chain
infrastructure. People worldwide can today offer digital services thanks to the global internet. A
person does not need to own a factory or a farm to earn wealth in a digital world. This depends
on a shared digital infrastructure. If the inhabitants of the metaverse are merely tenants, then
most likely they will be excluded from any prosperity the metaverse may create. "
Decentralization is the great promise of the metaverse, especially some of the enabling
technologies such as blockchain networks and self-sovereign identity.
 "See you in 2040." A vision of what a great metaverse-or great metaverses-could be David
Weinberger, senior researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, wrote,
"Let's assume that the metaverse will be like the web in that it does not consist of a single,
wholly owned place, but rather is composed of many, many, many linked metaverses."
Metaverses with mods? "Yes, please! " This all might well change our ideas about the role of the
real. Full-on metaverses will succeed by putting us into a world with other people in which we
encounter, discuss, and create things that matter. We can say that none of that is "real," but as we
spend more and more time going through metaverses on the Internet, it will become ever clearer
that what matters to us transcends both the real and the media we're engaged in. Metaverses are
going to make it clearer than ever that what's most important to us is not what's real and thus
independent of us, but what matters to us together.
The past success of sex-based websites and Internet services would attract developers for
metaverse platforms that offer similar services.
"Our current metaverse situation reminds me of the early years, long ago, when bulletin boards,
Tymshare, The Well, Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online were individual, unique, and
competing visions of an online world ultimately subsumed by an improved set of standards,
architecture, and governance that is now called "the Internet." The safe bet is that individual,
economically-driven enterprises offering competing capabilities, experiences, and visions of the
future will continue to be the structure of the metaverse in 2040." The economic and
technological forces favor task-driven multiple metaverses, enabled by continuing improvements
in software, communications, computing, and viewing equipment.
"Fourth, As Erving Goffman describes in "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," we cobble
together a performance for the people we encounter and interact with daily. In the metaverse,
there will be new cues, new traps, and feints. "We might be less worried about whether our hair
is done right and more concerned with whether we bought the right metaverse outfit for the
conference or occasion." Akin to Tristan Harris' amplifiganda, the metaverse will amplify our
need to be immersed, to be an insider: in a situation, an environment, a conflict, a celebrity's
house, or a metaverse destination.
Two meta insights about the future of the metaverse Two overarching themes emerged in
respondents' answers as they contemplated the most likely fate of the metaverse and extended
reality by 2040.
The most famous was LambdaMOO, a blank canvas on which a charismatic founder could build
a rich and lively community with all of the action you see in the metaverse but just in text.
The metaverse will fully emerge as its advocates predict. Approximately half of these expert
respondents agreed that the metaverse will be a fully immersive aspect of many people's daily
lives by 2040.
Dirk Lueth, co-founder and co-CEO at Upland, one of the largest and most dynamic metaverse
platforms mapped to the real world, wrote, "The metaverse will become a part of our everyday
lives."
Mei Lin Fung, chair of People-Centered Internet, wrote, "The vast majority of people may not go
to the metaverse to work and play by 2040, but with Facebook putting its entire corporate
existence at stake in a huge bet on the topic, the metaverse goldrush has begun."
The director of technology innovation and architecture at one of the world's largest
telecommunications companies wrote, "There is a significant investment in the metaverse."
"The metaverse could operate with few negative effects." In the past, both the good and the bad
have been fairly equal, but now we must go forward more wisely if we don't want to destroy
humanity, nature, and the Earth. If everyone could be connected, then the life of humanity could
become a dream. " Digitalization in the metaverse should set people free from digital tasks,
leading to a lot of new creativity.
A longtime leader in the IETF and principal architect at one of the world's top five tech
companies said, "The current metaverse ecosystem has inherent limitations that will prevent it
from becoming a mass-market phenomenon." One is cost: The headgear requires the computing
power of a high-end smartphone or game console. Unlike games, which can be streamed from
the cloud, attempts to support the metaverse on smartphone platforms have not caught on. Unless
the cost problem can be addressed, widespread adoption within developing nations will be
precluded. " Another issue is intrusiveness: the current generation of goggles, unlike a
smartphone or smartwatch, or smart glasses, interferes with daily life.
Alex Gekker, a senior lecturer in communications at Tel Aviv University who first described the
association of top-tier video games which is leading to investment in the metaverse, commented,
"Most stakeholders building the metaverse seem to have very little experience in virtual worlds.
Technology is cumbersome and unappealing, and it all goes against the logic of the highly
interpretable, casual media use that has successfully been pioneered by smartphones and
embraced by the public."
Marjory S. Blumenthal, senior fellow and director of the Technology and International Affairs
Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, responded, "Although blockchain
is often discussed as a basis of Web3, which itself is a cousin of or alternate frame to metaverses,
its role is as enabling technology-and metaverses will have many."
Is the question about identity authentication? Or is it about the artificial scarcity of digital assets,
so maybe you value access to particular metaverse locations because they have the only copy of
the metaverse Mona Lisa or whatever? I certainly hope we don't go in that direction.
" The digital divide will be widened yet again." Zizi Papacharissi, professor of communication
and political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago and editor of Social Media Society,
wrote, "Can we build a metaverse that is nonWestern? Can we have an internet that does not
speak English as the primary language? What would our worlds look like if our metaverses and
collective internets were multilingual and deeply multicultural? I do not think the metaverse will
redefine our online experiences by 2040.
Building the metaverse by some for some will result in a very different offline world and a very
different metaverse or online world than if we build it by all for all.
What does an inclusive metaverse look like? What timeline does an inclusive metaverse require?
The investments we make today toward digital equity-from reliable and affordable broadband
service to digital literacy and device access-are actually investments in a more inclusive future
metaverse, whatever shape it takes.