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Dive deeper into the week’s biggest stories from the Middle East and around the world with The National’s foreign desk. Nuances are often missed in day-to-day headlines. We go Beyond the Headlines by bringing together the voices of experts and those living the news to provide a clearer picture of the region’s shifting political and social landscape.
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Friday Feb 04, 2022
Friday Feb 04, 2022
The idea of a virtual world existing in parallel to the real one was once the stuff of science fiction. But today, millions of people are already spending hours a day in virtual spaces and spending billions of dollars on things that simply don’t exist in a physical environment.
When Facebook changed its name to Meta last year and rebranded itself as a “metaverse company”, what was once a controversial idea among tech enthusiasts came crashing into the mainstream.
Now, the company and others like it are betting big that we will all be spending more and more time in the metaverse - doing everything from socialising and playing games with friends, to exercising and working remotely.
On this week's Beyond The Headlines, host Arthur Scott-Geddes asks: what is the metaverse and is it really about to replace the real world?