Metaverse is a collection of fully connected interoperable physically augmented digital worlds with physical persistence that are converged with the virtually augmented physical world in which people and digital representations of people (digital people) can fully interact with one another and digital objects/environments (including digital twins) with full reality. Metaverse is the converged world of augmented physical world and virtual world that is hyper-decentralized, hyper-connected, hypervisualized, hyper-interacted, and hyper-reality enabled. Metaverse can create economic values without space/time/resource limitations.

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Why Metaverse Now?
Alex G. Lee1
Metaverse is a collection of fully connected interoperable physically augmented digital worlds with
physical persistence that are converged with the virtually augmented physical world in which people and
digital representations of people (digital people) can fully interact with one another and digital
objects/environments (including digital twins) with full reality. Metaverse is the converged world of
augmented physical world and virtual world that is hyper-decentralized, hyper-connected, hyper-
visualized, hyper-interacted, and hyper-reality enabled. Metaverse can create economic values without
space/time/resource limitations.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared recently that he wants Facebook to become a metaverse
company and expressed his vision for the metaverse such that metaverse devices will be in ubiquitous
use like smartphones today. 2
Microsoft also launched recently a metaverse solution integrating all of its
digital technologies, IT solutions, and cloud platform. 3
A metaverse alliance is launched recently in
1
Alex G. Lee, Ph.D Esq., is a principal consultant at TechIPm, LLC.
2
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-launches-horizon-workrooms-virtual-reality-app/
3
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/converging-the-physical-and-digital-with-digital-twins-mixed-reality-and-metaverse-apps/

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South Korea with over 200 companies including Samsung Electronics for a new metaverse market
creation. 4
The metaverse concept, however, is not a new one. Back in 1992, Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash
coined the term metaverse for the first time. My recent patent research about the metaverse technology
innovation also showed a long history of the metaverse technology innovation. 5
My patent research also
showed that there were active innovation activities around 2007-2010. Why, then, the metaverse revives
now?
HBS Professor Marco Iansiti6
, the author of “The Keystone Advantage,” suggested technological
assimilation as a new engine for technological innovations in his article “Creative Construction.” In the
technological assimilation frameworks, a core innovation that once provided stand-alone products or
services for a specific market can be the building blocks for mass market generating innovation through
4
https://m-kedglobal-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/m.kedglobal.com/newsAmp/ked202108030012
5
https://www.slideshare.net/alexglee/global-metaverse-patent-applications-landscape-3q-2021
6
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcoiansiti/

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assimilation to broader platforms and exploitation of innovation infrastructures that were not existed at
the time of innovation.
Therefore, if we consider the integration of broader platforms such as smartphones, 3D computing, XR
devices, digital twins, cloud computing and innovation infrastructures such as AI, blockchain, IoT and 5G
into the metaverse, we can give an answer about the “why metaverse now” based on the technological
assimilation. 7
References
Metaverse based Sustainable Smart City Development Webinar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNQ9VF3KDno&t=11131s
Digital Twin Metaverse for Enterprise Digital System Innovation Webinar:
https://www.linkedin.com/events/6848235538693033985/
7
Non-technical factors such as emergence of non-contact society due to COVID-19 pandemic and dominance of a new M-Z
generation in economic activities can be an additional answer.

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