Microsoft acquired gaming company Activision Blizzard for $70bn, with the New York Times claiming the following in a now-edited paragraph: There are two or three things that confuse me about this paragraph: Excuse me, what does this have to do with Meta?
Mostly in agreement here too. Though I have the opposite take of "the metaverse is already here, it's just unevenly distributed". It's an old term. And the financial spinners today are talking about it now like Al Gore talked about "The Information Superhighway" when there was already a living, breathing Internet that had previously existed for decades.
I'm also old enough to remember being told in the late 1990s how VRML was going to give us 3-D worlds online where we could shop -- because all we would naturally ever want to do is shop, of course. Just like today in how all we would only ever want to do is play games. We've been promised our immersive VRML lives for over 25 years now... getting to be almost as long as we've been promised flying cars.
And spot on with the zombified gaming metaphor now being forcefully jammed down our throats at every opportunity. As if all forms of work -- from slaving away delivering food to tip-stiffing recluses to TikTok creators to estate lawyers putting together wills -- will now all benefit by doing their jobs in 3-D virtual spaces as video games. Everybody really, really better start learning to love video games, because otherwise your life will absolutely suck if you don't.
I'm generally on board with your thesis here, especially the idea that none of this is new. However, I am a bit more open-minded about what VR could mean as an augmentation to zoom/slack. I've not yet been in a VR meeting, but people I respect talk about it as a net positive. Part of work is meeting and talking with people, and if there is something that creates a higher fidelity experience, maybe that is worth looking at?
I think there is a big conflation of the idea of interconnected online worlds and VR. The metaverse as a "place" to be already exists. It's called being online. Microsoft in particular is looking for the next level of being online, beyond text chat, audio chat and video chat. But it's just another level of richness in the experience, it's not a new world.
I'm not at all sure the elevated rich experience will be worth putting big blinders on your face, but maybe we'll get to a Neal Stephenson type tech (as in "Fall" and "Termination Shock").
Mostly in agreement here too. Though I have the opposite take of "the metaverse is already here, it's just unevenly distributed". It's an old term. And the financial spinners today are talking about it now like Al Gore talked about "The Information Superhighway" when there was already a living, breathing Internet that had previously existed for decades.
I'm also old enough to remember being told in the late 1990s how VRML was going to give us 3-D worlds online where we could shop -- because all we would naturally ever want to do is shop, of course. Just like today in how all we would only ever want to do is play games. We've been promised our immersive VRML lives for over 25 years now... getting to be almost as long as we've been promised flying cars.
And spot on with the zombified gaming metaphor now being forcefully jammed down our throats at every opportunity. As if all forms of work -- from slaving away delivering food to tip-stiffing recluses to TikTok creators to estate lawyers putting together wills -- will now all benefit by doing their jobs in 3-D virtual spaces as video games. Everybody really, really better start learning to love video games, because otherwise your life will absolutely suck if you don't.
I'm generally on board with your thesis here, especially the idea that none of this is new. However, I am a bit more open-minded about what VR could mean as an augmentation to zoom/slack. I've not yet been in a VR meeting, but people I respect talk about it as a net positive. Part of work is meeting and talking with people, and if there is something that creates a higher fidelity experience, maybe that is worth looking at?
I think there is a big conflation of the idea of interconnected online worlds and VR. The metaverse as a "place" to be already exists. It's called being online. Microsoft in particular is looking for the next level of being online, beyond text chat, audio chat and video chat. But it's just another level of richness in the experience, it's not a new world.
I'm not at all sure the elevated rich experience will be worth putting big blinders on your face, but maybe we'll get to a Neal Stephenson type tech (as in "Fall" and "Termination Shock").
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