There will be a digital life after the Internet. Not in the sense that our digital infrastructure might collapse. Rather, there will come a social invention that outdoes the Internet, believe it or not. That invention, it appears, will be the Metaverse – a culmination of the Internet and the boundless possibilities in augmented and virtual reality technologies.

The internet has done a lot of the grunt work in bringing information, services, and experiences online. But there are more efficient ways to deliver, discover, and interact with everything that exists on the Internet.

To understand how the Internet will evolve into the metaverse, I’ll give you an analogy.

Before the Internet, when it came to finding travel information for a future vacation or a city you were visiting, you had to either visit the library, call up a travel agent, or browse through pamphlets at a rest stop. It was not efficient and you’d be hard pressed to find everything a city had to offer.

Then, the Internet brought us a beautiful website called TripAdvisor, which crowd-sourced reviews and prices on everything about a city – ranging from restaurants to accommodations. It amplified the amount of information we could get about travel, while also removing any singular authority on the subject.

In the metaverse, you’ll put on your Magic Leap goggles or Oculus headset and be transported to the city you want to visit. You’ll be able to take virtual city tours, browse the attractions, see what’s cooking at the best restaurants – simultaneously adding the things you like to an actionable itinerary for when you visit one day. It’s a culmination of the travel agent, Internet information, and personal judgment.

This is just one way that the metaverse will evolve the Internet.

We’ve digitized so many experiences, services, and information. However, they all exist in their own isolated buckets across the web – loosely connected by links, Google Search, and the occasional social media post.

The metaverse, on the other hand, is a virtual, shared space where all these luxuries the Internet has brought us can be better connected and exist simultaneously. The metaverse will rely heavily on virtual reality and augmented reality to provide the digital infrastructure for all these connected experiences to coexist – however, as I described, a large portion of the metaverse is already in existence on the Internet. It’s just in a 2D format right now.