Whether there will be limits to what people will be able to experience in ever more unusual virtual worlds is not yet foreseeable.

In any case, there is no shortage of very concrete ideas, for example from Ken Moore.

Anyone who visits a restaurant in the future may be able to order their personalized menu in advance, which contains exactly as many calories as a fitness tracker recommends, the air in the restaurant could smell of seawater and fish swim on screens around the table while the guest watches his Eating seafood, thought the Chief Innovation Officer of credit card company Mastercard.

The unanimous tenor at the DLD digital conference in Munich, where Moore discussed the term, was that it would not fail because of technical hurdles.

The publicity trigger for this was Mark Zuckerberg's decision last year to rename the Facebook group to Meta and to create future software and hardware for a digital environment that is more authentic and can be experienced on more levels than anything the internet currently has to offer Has.

Since then, not only large corporations such as Microsoft and Apple have repeatedly explained how and what they plan to do so, but also small companies in America, Europe and Asia.

Adapt computers to people

Although Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella always emphasize that the Metaverse is not dominated by one company, as is currently the case in some areas of the network, this same fear occasionally prevails in Germany - coupled with the fear of being too late again being and having to leave commercial success to others.

It is also still controversial what the Metaverse will be in the future.

Mark Rolston, co-founder of the American IT company Argodesign expects that as a result computers will primarily adapt and blend in with their natural environment.

"It's not about creating a new world in the computer, but about integrating the computer in the real world in a different way." That is exactly what a real paradigm shift is - so far people have always adapted to the technical functional conditions of the computer, for example to the immobile desktop computers or the comparatively small screens of smartphones.

In the future, he hopes, computers will "adapt" to the natural behavior and everyday life of people.

Europe must be fast

Those who advertise the relevant technologies base their confidence on simultaneous progress in several areas: in sensors, data processing, microprocessor technology - and last but not least in the experience gained as a result of the pandemic and the increased willingness to engage with Metaverse offers .

Because the ideas behind it are not really new.

So far, however, corresponding attempts have not been economically convincing.

Economist Andrew McAfee, for example, is not yet fully convinced that this will be different this time.

"Fusion has been predicted to break through for 60 years 20 years from now, the Metaverse about 20 years from now," he grinned.

He, on the other hand, considers it unlikely that concerns about privacy and data protection will slow him down.

Here he warned the Europeans in particular not to apply too strict rules here, because most users did not care about it in surveys, but in their behavior.

Mastercard manager Moore suggested thinking about whether data might not perhaps become a separate asset class - and whether someone might want to pay for a book with their browser history at some point.

Meanwhile, they all expect substantial progress when it comes to the Metaverse - if only because companies are currently investing large amounts in their respective areas.

And because other key technologies, artificial intelligence and blockchain, have also made sufficient progress to support offers in virtual worlds.

As early as Friday, Telefónica Germany boss Markus Haas warned that substantial "own" corresponding offers should be made, i.e. services of European companies.

"We shouldn't wait for someone else to build the Metaverse for us," said the telecoms manager, adding, "We have the content here." coming years, which are also predicted by the EU Commission as the "digital decade", in which it will be decided who will achieve which profit shares in the next phase of the Internet.