The synergy between the real and virtual worlds is becoming more and more noticeable in different activities of daily life and gained strength with the digitization processes inherited by the pandemic, which allowed information and communication technologies to take greater control of our lives.
This concept, known as the Metaverse, is not new, but it has become popular, especially since the founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, announced it as part of his new business vision by changing the name of his emporium from applications for digital communications.
In our country, this hybrid model between the virtual and the tangible has been used by multiple industries, including construction. In recent days, a congress organized by the Costa Rican Chamber of Construction on technologies applied to this sector took place, where the Colombian graphic designer Johnny Aguirre, who served as one of the exhibitors, shared with this medium his vision about the influence of Metaverse in the development of new real estate projects.
“This union between the physical world and the virtual world will allow us to visualize the projects in the physical place before they are built and make better decisions by being able to have tours as if the building were already there, in addition to allowing us to better train collaborators to through construction simulators, where they will be able to practice in virtual scenarios without exposing themselves to accidents or equipment damage due to misuse,” Aguirre commented.
Likewise, the financial sector has analyzed how the Metaverse can serve as a hook to generate greater interest in the new generations through the development of innovations in products and trends.
Developing portfolios oriented to the needs of these audiences
“With the demographic growth of the ‘millennials’ and the members of ‘Generation Z’, financial companies face the challenge of developing portfolios oriented to the needs of these audiences, for which it will be necessary to incorporate digital payment solutions that correspond to the expectations of gamers, freelancers and other digital creators,”, said Javier Vásquez, Senior Vice President of Visa Consulting and Analytics for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Precisely, video game developers and gamers are two of the audiences that spend the most time interacting in this context. An example of this is the Costa Rican title ‘Sibo’, the first in Central America to be hosted on the French platform ‘The Sandbox’, as confirmed by its developer Gabriel Serrano.
“As awareness of the Metaverse and its capabilities becomes more common, we hope to see this sentiment spread to more people across industries,” said Nicolás Ávila, Chief Technology Officer at Globant North America.
X-Reality services
In this sense, 16% of the companies in this segment offer X-Reality services, which include virtual, augmented or mixed reality, and which are key to designing and feeding the Metaverse with digital content, according to the market study “Profile of the Costa Rican offer specialized in 4.0 technologies” by the Foreign Trade Promoter.
This modernist panorama has motivated the creation of technological tools for the protection of intellectual property known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs (for its acronym in English).
This means that, for example, a ‘GIF’ or a ‘Tweet’ can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrencies, which has certainly drawn the attention of cybercriminals, according to Jake Moore, Global Security Advisor of the cybersecurity firm ESET.
“Traditional works of art, such as paintings, are valuable precisely because they are unique, while digital files can be duplicated easily and endlessly. With NFTs, works of art can be “tokenized” to create a digital certificate of ownership that can then be bought and sold.
Metaverse In Art
Ale Rambar is a Costa Rican visual artist known for his three-dimensional artwork made from layers of paper. Today, together with other partners, it has developed the first national art gallery in the Metaverse under the name ‘Underscores’, in order to promote the growth of Costa Rican and regional artists within this concept.
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