I think the rampant cynicism over billionaires in space is mostly just plain silly and absurdly hyperbolic, but I'm much more conflicted about Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his vision to transform Facebook from a social media network into a “metaverse company” in the next five years. A metaverse is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets. The Facebook CEO described it as “an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content - you are in it”. He told The Verge people shouldn't live through “small, glowing rectangles”.
Or rather, he means they shouldn't live through small, glowing rectangles held in their hands, but in small, glowing rectangles strapped to their faces !
One application of the metaverse he gave was being able to jump virtually into a 3D concert after initially watching on a mobile phone screen. “You feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness,” he said.
Facebook is also working on an “infinite office” that lets users create their ideal workplace through VR. “In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you’ll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I’ll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it’ll actually feel like we’re in the same place, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart,” he said. “I think that is really powerful.”
Thing is... VR is frickin' awesome. I've lost 8kg through exercise programs I actually enjoy. Gaming is tremendous fun. For me personally it's not yet up to the standards where it could be a socially productive tool (e.g. communication and discussion of complex, data-driven topics), but it's incremental rather than order of magnitude updates away from being so. Needs to be lighter, more comfortable, higher resolution, more accurate hand tracking... all stuff it currently does well, just not quite well enough. A fully functional VR/AR office has enormous potential though, not just for the sensation of presence, but the ability to bring up and arrange data on the fly.
But while you'll pry my Oculus Quest from my cold dead hands, I still feel like I've soiled myself by association with Facebook. They're a shitty company (though I've had very good experiences with Oculus customer support) and I wish someone else was leading the charge to mainstream VR. Trouble is, I'm locked into the Oculus ecosystem now. Oh well.
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