Predicting the primary effects of a new technology is difficult but feasible. Anticipating all the secondary effects is nearly impossible. *

Multiverse, Universe and Metaverse

The universe is the set of everything that exists that includes matter, space-time, energy, gravity and the laws that govern it. It is the total reality, its causes and consequences. The observable and permanent with its singularities and irregularities. About it there are only hypotheses — and many! -, few certainties and many questions.

The multiverse, fashionable today thanks to Marvel and Spider-Man (No Way Home) refers to the multiple universes or alternative realities that coexist in parallel and simultaneously with the known universe and are connected. It has similarities to the known universe in space and time, matter, energy, and motion. Here, too, certainties are scarce, and hypotheses have cosmic inflation.

The metaverse defines three-dimensional, immersive and multisensory virtual realities, which can be accessed by humans as avatars in a shared and global manner. Its origin is the internet and the multiple applications of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, among others. Its characteristics are interactivity, its playful properties, first-person immersion, copies reality and is continuously online and accessible. Here, unlike the universe and multiverses, there are many more answers.

Causes and consequences

When was the universe born? Did it happen with a Big Bang? What is its extension? What is it made of? Is it expanding or contracting? Is it static or dynamic? Where is it going (if it is going anywhere)? Does the universe exist or has it already disappeared? Is the multiverse concept part of the realm of science or science fiction? What are the different layers of realities for? Is there a true reality? What is the metaverse? When was it born? 1992 and 2021 How did it happen? In the mind of a science fiction writer and entrepreneur. What is its extension? We don’t know. What is it made of? Is it expanding or contracting?

Futurology and reality

What will be the side effects of the metaverse? How will education change, the way we feed ourselves and interact with other people? What will virtual traffic jams look like? Can reality be distinguished from fiction, truth from lie, and insanity from sanity? What will be the laws that regulate it? Will an online Precrime agency work like in Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report? Will the multiverses have prisons and laws, accessible houses and suburbs, subsidies and hospices? Will people be able to see Real Reality from within the metaverse and modify it? What will be the ethics and morals that will govern? What democratic system will prevail and how will it alter history? What will the intersections of realities be called, the crossings of the inside and the outside? What will be the consequences in the daily life of such complexity? How many replicas or avatars can coexist in a single individual?

• *Isaac Asimov from Quote Investigator