Digital India Week 2022: Metaverse to be next big thing after internet, says Meta’s Head of Public Policy

 Metaverse will be the next big thing after the internet Rajiv Agarwal, Head of Public Policy, Meta said while speaking in a panel discussion on Metaverse & web 3.0 at the Digital India Week 2022.  

"We will actually be able to feel that we are in the same place. But at the same time, our avatars in the metaverse will also be able to keep our personal space," added Agarwal.

"While we are not there yet, we will see things evolving in the next 5-10 years," he opined

Srinivasa Reddy, Vice President, Mixed Reality at Microsoft India said that whatever is seen in the real world is going to be applied in the meta world. 
 
Citing an example Reddy said "With the help of metaverse, National university of health sciences in Singapore made mixed reality as an integral part of their healthcare system. One of the key applications we noticed was pre-surgery planning. Most often, In brain surgeries there would be side effects. Hence, The error rate in brain surgeries was 27 per cent. Now with pre-surgery use of augmented reality they have been able to bring it down to 2.7 per cent."
 
Meanwhile, other experts present in the panel discussion were of the view that the metaverse will give users the experiences that are not usually available to them, in reality.  
 
However, the panellists agreed that there was huge scope for improvement even as the utility of Metaverse is on the rise.  

On challenges for the metaverse domain, Professor Manindra Agarwal, IIT Kanpur said, "The challenge is that we have high demand for able and well trained manpower but at the same time, we have a lack of institutions which could live up to these challenges."

While lamenting the hit, education sector took as a result of the pandemic, Agarwal hoped that with meta it will be possible to have a virtual classroom and get better cues from students for better teaching.