Imagine that one day you live in a highly immersive (身临其境) virtual world. You can go to a virtual concert, take a trip online, view or create artworks and try on or buy digital clothing. Amid a pandemic like COVID-19, instead of seeing teachers and classmates on a video call screen, you could join them in a virtual classroom. This may help you understand the concept, metaverse.

The term metaverse refers to a shared virtual 3D world in which people can access via the Internet. Currently, most virtual spaces look more like the inside of a video game than real life. However, metaverse’s made the digital spaces more realistic by the use of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR, 增强现实).

Metaverse was first used in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash in 1992. The novel is about Hiro, a pizza delivery man by day and a VR superhero by night who lives in an online universe called The Metaverse. “He is in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his glasses and pulling into his earphones,” the novel says of the city that everyone pops into in VR. The idea rings in many other works, for example, in Ready Player One directed by Steven Spielberg.

In recent years, metaverse has become the latest popular word to capture the tech industry’s imagination so much that one of the best-known Internet platforms is renamed to embrace the futuristic idea-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that he changed his company’s name to Meta.

Tech companies are also dedicated to exploring metaverse-related products. Facebook has launched meeting software for companies, called Horizon Workrooms, to use with VR headsets. The headsets cost $300 or more, putting the metaverse’s most cutting-edge (尖端的) experiences out of reach for many. For users who can afford it, they can enter the virtual worlds created by different companies. Fans of metaverse see it as the next stage in the development of the Internet.

So, do you expect the coming of metaverse?

Global Positioning Systems are now a part of everyday driving in many countries. These satellitebased systems provide turnbyturn directions to help people get to where they want to go. But, they can also cause a lot of problems, send you to the wrong place or leave you completely lost. Many times, the driver is to blame. Sometimes a GPS error is responsible. “Most often”, says Barry Brown, an expert in humancomputer interaction, “it is a combination of the two”.

We spoke to Mr Brown by Skype (网络电话软件). He told us about an incident involving a friend who had flown to an airport in the eastern United States. There he borrowed a GPSequipped car to use during his stay. Barry Brown, “And they just plugged in an address and then set off to their destination. And, then it wasn’t until they were driving for thirty minutes that they realized they actually put in a destination back on the West Coast where they lived. They actually put their home address in. So again, the GPS is kind of ‘garbage in garbage out’”.

Mr Brown says this is a common human error. But, he says, what makes the problem worse has to do with some of the shortcomings, or failures, of GPS equipment. Barry Brown, “One problem with a lot of the GPS units is they have a very small screen and they just tell you the next turn. Because they just give you the next turn, sometimes that means that it is not really giving you the overview that you would need to know that it’s going to the wrong place.”

Barry Brown once worked on a project with Eric Laurier from the University of Edinburgh. The two men studied the effects of GPS devices on driving by placing cameras in people’s cars. They wrote a paper based on their research. It is called “The Normal, Natural Troubles of Driving with GPS”. It lists several areas where GPS systems can cause confusion for drivers. These include maps that are outdated, incorrect or difficult to understand. They also include timing issues related to when GPS commands are given.

Barry Brown says to make GPS systems better we need a better understanding of how drivers, passengers and GPS systems work together.