So is the metaverse the next big advance that will revolutionize the way we all connect with each other? Is it just a repackaging of existing technologies into a new catch-all concept? Or is it just the latest buzzword marketing term?
The answer to that depends on what you mean by “metaverse”.
If there’s ever been a buzzword that truly gets under my skin, it’s this one. It’s clearly manufactured and groomed by corporations, Facebook especially, to distract form that company’s massive problems, lousy reputation, and damaging effects on society, and yet, tech media gobble it all up. The metaverse is nothing. There’s nothing that exists today called “the metaverse” that’s any different from things that existed four years ago, or even eight years ago.
Thom Holwerda,
Yeah, that pretty much sums up cloud…err I mean metaverse. Haha.
Cloud, formerly known as “server rental”. You could rent time shares on mainframes back in the days, rented virtual or physical servers have been a thing for many years.
Give something old a new name and the media hype it up as if it’s something new and innovative. Who would like to invest in my new revolutionary personal transport device known as the ManureMobile? It does not need any fossil fuels, and is fuelled entirely by hay, plus you get free manure to fertilise your garden.
You just do not see what kind of benefit can bring a knockoff of Msn Messenger mixed with Second Life can bring to the world. Watch Ready Player One and wear your VR helmet for the big dive, caveman.
Kochise,
I watched a bit of the FB presentation and it was strikingly similar to second life.
The market can’t seem to decide on whether it wants VR or not. It’s been the next big thing for decades yet it’s always a luke-warm reception. It’s neat and the quality sure has gotten better, but it still seems like a fad. I don’t know about people wearing boxes on their heads for years of their lives. If anything can expand the market for that, it’ll probably be porn.
It’ll be porn, of course. It always starts with porn to introduce new technologies.
Anyway, all that “metaverse” stuff is a just another first world problem. It won’t solve hunger in the world and poverty (just enrich already rich people).
IMO, VR stands with 3D TV as “next big things” that fail and make comebacks to fail again.
All is very nice on paper, but the inconveniences are so big that they are not practical.
If I want a holodeck experience I just, like, you know… Step outside?
Alan Watts has some interesting things to say on the self and reality. He was one of a number of thinkers who played with the “holodeck” idea before Star Trek.
Zuckerberg claims to be a Bhuddist. Yeah, right…
Meeting up with friends to drink a beer together and/or go to a football game, in VR is kinda “meeeh”.
It’s hard to imagine we are wearing boxes on our heads. And when you get off that thing from your head, it is not fun felling-wise. It will be good for a few minutes to maybe an hour, but for hours digging yourself into the VR world, which Meta redefined as metaverse, it is not going to be healthy for your perception of reality and the psychological effects of it and on your children.
It will be good only for CAD presentation and production where collaboration makes sense, but for just fun? Thanks Zuckerberg, I am not on board.
bert64,
Exactly. Computers used to be comprised of dumb terminals connected to remote resources managed by someone else via networks. Obviously the specs have improved dramatically and we use HTML instead of telnet, but it’s the same general idea.
Supposedly “Cloud” adds 2 things:
An API to prevision those services when you need it.
Payment is per minute
No it actually does those two things, and it makes a lot of sense. I too used to focus on “it’s just someone else’s computer”. Then I started really doing it and see all the benefits; having code to create all that stuff that used to be documents and procedure and hours and hours of following a checklist script. And the joy of “this server/service/tool isn’t working right and was before, I’ll just nuke it and let the automation rebuild it correctly”. It’s liberating.
MattPie,
Of course. Many “cloud” usecases including those you mention are very useful, but the dependency on proprietary cloud providers remains superficial. The requirement to migrate data onto someone else’s property (aka cloud) to get the benefits is not a technical requirement, but rather a business one.
If they had invested in technology that works at the edges of the network and communicate via P2P instead of proprietary data silos, it would arguably be as compelling a solution for the same usecases but without the cons of loosing control to cloud providers. There’s a lot of innovation to be had around personal clouds that talk to each other without a middleman taking your data. For better or worse though that’s the business model that one, not for technical reasons but for profit ones.
@Alfman
Yes all that technical stuff facilitating hub or P2P services is being witheld by platform vendors or where an open standard exists it’s trampled over by investors with a walled garden business model.
There’s nothing to stop, for example, a local business federation or a community group or at an informal level friends providing things like “cloud backup” for each other. It’s just that all the one click plug and play just sign here on the dotted line services aren’t rigged that way. Behind all this it’s monopolists like Intel and Microsoft and social media companies and business propping it up. They’re all pretty much Americans propping up America and bleeding invention and investment and attention away from everywhere else. Ideally this would be covered by international agreements but America has been leveraging their muscle for years even over this. TTIP is just one example. That’s not to say that other countries don’t get up to tricks but it’s an area where I believe more candor would be helpful.
HollyB,
I have been a proponent of such a model for such a long time. In the 90s-00s the potential for P2P seemed limitless. It was already making huge waves for consumer file sharing, and we were on the cusp of P2P revolutionizing everything including ecommerce and business applications. But I think the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits were very unfortunate in that they discouraged developers and businesses from investing further in P2P technologies, strongly pushing the industry towards centralized data silos instead that could be subjugated to oversight.
I also share some frustration with american companies at the top, but IMHO nationality isn’t the problem so much as the monopolistic corporate power dynamics in general. I think we need more federated networks to improve competition and choice from around the world. Yet these very consumer benefits are the very reason our leading companies prefer to invest in walled gardens to limit outside innovation and viability. 🙁
1997 called, it wants its VRML back.
Also, Snow Crash from 1992 called, it wants its branding back.
https://twitter.com/nealstephenson/status/1454217801757958153
Aside from the glaring issues mentioned in the topic this whole “Meta” thing feels like one big suspend your thinking cultish handwave to me. Throw in some technobabble and hazy aspirations and the techno-nerdism and projection and journalists filling column inches to a deadline kick in.
If “Meta” did have anything real on their hands there is no way this is healthy given a corporation with their track record not to mention the monopoly issues. No. Just no.
So the called Facebook Meta so they could confuse old politicians when they need to ask about privacy and what metadata Meta is going to store ?
I can’t shake the feeling this is Zuckerbergs ploy to simultaneously distract from Metabook’s problems and to possibly get some return on investment on the dud Occulus. Metabook is addictive to a certain contingent of the populace and it’s the model Zuckerberg has been cultivating to get as many eyeballs on the useless adds that the platform carries. What if you can infantilise and gamify that model into a highly addictive game world? As a bonus, your now less useless Occulus branch gets to sell “Meta login glasses”.
Let the dolts wander aimlessly around the shiny, fake facades. Let them buy “accessories” to add some bling to their fake meta life. Of course with real, cold hard cash. Shove even more in-world ads in their faces. Add the option of “meeting” people at random in those hallowed, non-existent halls, but with the option of not really meeting each other socially in there. “Gotta go, gotta visit another meta room, gotta log off, love the new swag for your avatar, byeeeee!”
Metabook might get more than they are bargaining for if this is something that will actually fly. Real addicts will take as much as they can get their hands on. This could be the new opium. People going hikikomori in the Metaverse. Then the real societal problems will begin.
My guess is things will go the opposite direction to the metaverse. Sims will come into the real world behaving like humans more so than humans going into the meta world and behaving like Sims. This is probably a very bad outcome for Facebook and Google. Less screen time. I think Amazon knows this and are getting ahead with Alexa reminding me verbally when I need to reorder tea. And they released a bot. Early days.