One Day in the Metaverse in the year 2035

What is the Metaverse? We present the latest trend from Silicon Valley. Using an exemplary day of a young woman in 2035, we explain what this vision could look like and what this could mean for retail in concrete terms.

Unsere Protagonistin ist Mia, 25 Jahre alt. Wie sieht ihr Tag genau aus?

8 a.m.: Mia gets up, she is woken up by her bedroom, she puts on her smart data glasses which connect reality with the Metaverse. She is in the health application of her home environment. She is asked if she wants to look at the evaluation of her sleep tonight. Mia does not want to, because her family is already expecting her for a short exchange. The upcoming family party is being planned. So she leaves the health application and goes to the family room. She is in the garden of her parents’ house, where her siblings, her parents and their new partners have already gathered. In the digital garden it is summer, although it is actually January. Mia’s brother likes winter time, so he sees the garden covered in snow.

What Mia can see from the beginning: there is no real person behind Dr Masala, she is artificial intelligence.

8.30 a.m: Mia has a doctor’s appointment, she leaves the garden and goes back to the health centre. She has often had stomach pains in the evening in the last few days and wants to get advice. Dr Masala is now sitting opposite her. The doctor asks her a few questions and, after Mia’s consent, also looks at her health records. What Mia can see from the start is that there is no real person behind Dr Masala, she is an artificial intelligence.

Since Mia’s stomach ache is not a medical emergency, but probably has to do with her stress over the family party, no real doctor is assigned to the matter. However, she could have the appointment with a real person in the digital space if she so wishes. Dr Masala recommends her a medicine that should make it better. Mia orders it during the conversation by talking to her shopping area. There she has set in the settings that local pharmacies and shops are to be preferred if they carry the preparation. If no shop within a radius of 10 kilometres has the medicine, it is ordered from a large online mail-order company.

9 am: work begins. Mia goes to her work environment, but she doesn’t leave the house to do it. How does she earn her money? Mia plays various digital goods in Fortnite, which she then sells at a later date for a profit. She can pay with various cryptocurrencies, the most common being Bitcoin, as it was 20 years ago. This kind of paid work already existed in 2020.

Today she is lucky: she was able to get hold of a popular luxury sneaker – enough to call it a day, she decides. The shoe is not only available digitally, but also in reality. Anyone who owns it also gets the real version sent to them. But it takes a few days, because the previous owner lives in India.

Shopping application with an avatar
It is now 10 o’clock and Mia has the day off. She needs a new outfit for the family party and asks her shopping application. This application knows her taste, her size and her current stock of clothes – after all, it should be combined appropriately. Mia then sees various videos of influencers that she follows. She likes a dress, clicks on “try it on me” and sees her digital twin, her avatar in this dress. Does she like it? Yes – she clicks on buy. Now she is given various suggestions as to what she could buy to go with it “others have also bought…”. She remembers that she has the great new luxury sneaker.

She tells the shopping application to project the new sneaker. This takes a while – the interfaces between the applications sometimes still don’t work properly in 2035. While the sneaker loads, she looks at her friends’ comments – most of them are excited about her new catch. “Can I borrow it?” asks the avatar of an acquaintance. But Mia doesn’t actually want to wear the sneaker, because it has never been worn and brings the most profit in this condition. She sees it as an investment – but it would go so well with the new dress! She wants to make this decision when both have arrived in reality.

12 o’clock: She has arranged to meet a friend for lunch in real reality. She takes off her data glasses and goes to the agreed restaurant. Sometimes you just don’t want to be interrupted and today she doesn’t really want to have the origin and supply chain of her lunch explained to her.

After lunch, she goes to the park and enjoys the sunny day. When she passes a street music band, she wants to know more about the ensemble. She puts on her glasses again and learns that two of her friends have already been to an online concert. A good reason to get in touch with her friend Ella again. They talk briefly and make an appointment for the band’s next date. She takes off her glasses again and continues walking through the park.

Virtual concerts – Welcome to the future
8 pm: Mia loves music and concerts. Tonight, too, she has an appointment for a digital concert – with friends from all over the world. Many of them she has never seen in reality. In the concert room, everyone speaks Mia’s language, although they all have different mother tongues. An artificial intelligence translates everything in real time – but you don’t notice anything about it. The translation runs in the background of the application. The concert is not a recording – it is actually taking place and over 2000 people from all over the world are taking part. People often come into the room, linger a while and then leave again. Some people don’t like the band as much as Mia, but she stays until the end and enjoys the music.

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