Metaverse and Maya
Many people are confused about the ‘Metaverse’ term, and albeit it is an old term, it has been in discussion lately due to the heavy branding campaign by Facebook.
Metaverse is nothing but a virtual world/VR, which may be familiar to everyone or individuals like you can have a virtual city where we all stay and have an individual house or a zoo in this city!
Humm.. sounds funny, right? 😂
Especially if you are not much aware of VR (Virtual reality), it is complicated to comprehend why someone will buy land in such a virtual world that would go away when you switch off your power or put the devices and sensors aside?
So then why Facebook and other companies are so bullied on this? The answer is not in the technology, but it is more about our emotions 🤗 if you want to understand this in simple terms, ask yourself why you like to use a TV remote instead of going to TV and changing volume? The reason is ‘ease’ and somewhat our lazy nature; we need to get things done with minimum effort and maximum efficiency.
Today, the information and our interaction with the technology are 2D, so if you go to Amazon.com and try to buy something, you can see the picture, zoom it, but can you touch it? Can you feel it? Can you talk to someone who purchased this while you are reviewing this or even someone who is also checking the same product as we do in the shopping mall?
Here is another example: you are playing a game, and you do not know your friend is also playing the same game, and somehow, while playing a game, you find him at the same place in the same game? You can shake hands, and you can also talk to him? Maybe you can also kill some monsters together. You may also have your own art/NFT in this world, and someone will buy in a million dollars? Who knows! 🤨
Welcome to the 3D internet!
You can call it the metaverse, the mirror world, the AR Cloud, the Magicverse, the Spatial internet, or Live Maps. Still, one thing is for sure, it’s coming, and it’s a big deal because it will try to play with our emotions and relationship with the help of technology!
But then, how does this work? 🙋♀️ Simple, using technology!
Of course, all these promising features are not available today; it is futuristic and will evolve over a while. We will have sensors, which can make you feel touch, sound, and smell? They are even trying to make a tech where you can also feel pain while playing a game! They might connect your brain with the computer, and yes, it has been successfully done 💪, and scientists could transfer ‘file’ to your brain! Yep, Netflix will soon allow the ‘Metaverse’ app to download on your mind! 😍 So no need to watch the movie for three hours; just download the file in your mind, and you have all emotions ‘configured’ that you feel while watching a movie!
Isn’t It Scary? 💀
Ok, enough 😑 technical jargon and possibilities, but why the hell do I write ‘Maya’ in the title?
There is a reason and a definite similarity!
In Indian philosophy, Maya has lots of meaning; it is sometimes said to be something you can measure, and Shankrachyra considered it an ‘Ignorance’ which does not allow you to know the truth. रज्जु-सर्प-न्याय!
Maya works in two ways. First, it covers reality (avaran) and creates the illusion (Vikshep) so what we see is not a truth or reality but an illusion created by our senses! 😇
Ops, in simple terms, what we say our ‘reality’ is also a VR created by our senses and as it has been ‘conditioned’ in our mind and we assume it real, maybe because it is same for us and we agree naturally!
Of course, we ‘humans’ did not create the tech and sensors that we use to ‘project’ this reality but does that make any difference? When we modify our senses or even close them entirely, don’t we see a different reality? Do you know that electron behaves differently when there is an observer (Read Quantum reality)? What if you remove the observer? The experiments are showing that we cannot yet make any claim about reality even they are mathematically motivated or philosophically.
Ok, now, here is the scary ‘twist,’ at least for our generation.
Think of the case, maybe after 50 years? All our kids join the metaverse moment they wake up in the morning. Would not be they consider that as a reality? Of course, as our current mind is not ‘conditioned’ for this, we can say it is not real but would that kid agree? Do we decide today that our world is also not real?
So which reality is actual? All or none? I don’t know, and I don’t care! 😎