In October 2021, Facebook announced it would change its name to Meta
META,
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And seemingly overnight, the idea of a Web3 revolution based on virtual-reality technology, blockchain and nonfungible tokens — also known as the metaverse — became buzzworthy. Yet the metaverse goes back 30 years, when the author Neal Stephenson coined the term in his science-fiction novel “Snow Crash.” And indeed, the concept of a virtual world almost parallel to our physical dimension sounds like science fiction. But the metaverse is here to stay and will impact every aspect of our lives, including transportation and auto makers.
The metaverse is essentially a shared online space allowing users to create their own avatar and interact in a digital environment, built by virtue of technological innovations like blockchain, virtual and augmented reality as well as artificial intelligence. Its presently imagined purposes include virtual work meetings, virtual events like concerts and conferences, and virtual retailers — but it is much more than a virtual play world. We’ve only just begun investigating what the metaverse can offer, yet several car manufacturers have already jumped on the chance to contribute to this revolution. I believe their efforts will reap substantial benefits as consumers get more acquainted with the future-turned-present. In this virtual reality world built on blockchain technology, each vehicle – real and virtual — and every one of its components would exist as an NFT, verified by the automaker and stored on the public ledger for everyone to see. This will facilitate an automaker economy where secondary …