The Metaverse and Omniverse: Quantum Solace or Apocalypse?

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explosion of quantum magnificent colors in the metaverse

Global Landscape

The potential combined economic impact of three novel business technology ecosystems: Quantum Computing, The Metaverse, and The Omniverse seems staggering. The Metaverse global market size is currently valued at $47.69 B and is estimated to reach $828.95B by 2028 growing at an impressive CAGR of 43.3%. So what can we learn from the Metaverse and Omniverse?

The Omniverse market is in its infancy, however, according to preliminary valuations it is expected to reach $280 B by 2025 and VR growth is forecasted to outperform all other media by 2025. The global Quantum market size is currently valued at $487.4M and is projected to reach $5B by 2028 and grow at a CAGR of 14.1%.

Latest Research Advances

The key challenges identified by experts fall within a few major domains: material science, engineering, and quality control. The scientific community is actively working on addressing each of these and advances are being steadily reported. Scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals over the past 2 years showcase the significant progress made in universities globally.

The advances in material sciences, as well as the exponential increases the potential for quantum to approach mainstream adoption faster than many of us believed was possible. Quantum computing has triggered a revolution in computational power and is heralded to be a key driver for a new software engineering golden age. A recent review published in the Bulletin of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies outlines the current state of quantum computing and labeled it the second quantum revolution.

Latest Trends 

As highlighted by a recent Harvard article we are witnessing a quantum adoption trend that is likely to accelerate adoption and possibly bridge the divide from research to business ecosystems. Goldman Sachs, to Honeywell, Accenture, Rigetti , Google, Toshiba, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Fujitsu, Siemens and others are key players racing to attain market share or gain supremacy.

The commercial applications keep increasing and therefore its business value, such as chemical and biological engineering, space defense and travel, fintech, life sciences, industrial manufacturing or global supply chain are a few examples where quantum computing proves superior to all other methods and has filed increased investments. 

Another significant technology trend has been the converging of quantum and blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud-, and edge computing to yield novel powerful platforms that aim to solve major pain points in various industries. 

Investors have also reacted to the latest developments and have shown a tremendous appetite for this emerging technology and venture capital funding in 2021 has already reached a record $1.2B. 

Challenges- Pandora’s Box? 

In addition to legal, regulatory, and compliance challenges we must also consider the ethical challenges brought upon by the disruptive power of these 3 ecosystems as they are complex and many consider it a Pandora’s Box Additionally, global stakeholders will have to address the digital and financial divides that currently exist in many emerging markets and will only be exacerbated with large scale adoption of The Metaverse, The Omniverse, and Quantum Technologies

Opportunities- Quantum Solace? 

We also can find solace and leverage the tremendous opportunities we can foresee for quantum computing, such as the increased deployment of Digital Twins, and acceleration of smart cities deployments. With the advantages offered by quantum technologies. The Metaverse and Omniverse can reach a level of technological sophistication that only a few years ago was featured only in science fiction arenas.

Furthermore, with creativity and purpose, global stakeholders can also ensure that Quantum Computing can exponentially enhance ESG metrics tracking and that we will have a domain with The Metaverse and Omniverse dedicated solely to the attainment of UN SDGs.

Future Directions 

As a recent Forbes article highlights, we have several pathways emerging for Quantum Computing. The new layers of complexity provided by combing quantum with The Metaverse and Omniverse are certainly expanding our possibilities in the digital era. However, from an ethical perspective, we must ask ourselves how these three powerful new ecosystems will impact our society from a social, cultural, and educational perspective.

There are numerous concerns regarding the difficulties in safeguarding privacy and trust with large-scale adoption of these novel immersive, multi-sensory, and converging technology experiences, which would only be exacerbated by adding quantum computational power.

From a digital ethicist’s perspective, one can expect significant concerns about how these will impact moral values and the ability to uphold ethical principles.

Experts were already warning about the profound and transformative socio-cultural impact of quantum. Now their concerns will be heightened, and key stakeholders are faced with an even more complex Metaverse and Omniverse-fueled digital ethics conundrum. Key concerns for experts that need to design proactive digital ethics and cybersecurity programs in this new Meta, Omni, and Quantum Era will be safeguarding the privacy, digital identity, appropriate data stewardship and integrity, transparency, explain-ability, as well as abiding by the core principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and maleficence.

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