Facebook will now be a company owned by the newborn firm Meta Platforms. And “metaverse” is the new game in town.
Over the next few years, Facebook (let me stick with this name rather than Meta) is going to bet billions of dollars on the metaverse. It seems to be a huge bet, but is it really so?
If we cut through the jargon and hoopla, the metaverse is fundamentally a richer and more immersive version of the internet as we know it today, with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies allowing us to interact with one another in a three-dimensional space. It is a Zoom call which is much more sensory and experiential. Not faces in a grid of boxes on your screen, but the illusion that those people are in a room with you. It all boils down to a much greater sense of “presence” in an interaction.
In time, the metaverse, as envisioned, will make everything in the digital world—from messaging to buying stuff to travel to entertainment—seem much more real and consequently, easier.
In sheer technology terms, it will demand data processing power and bandwidth at a scale that is difficult to imagine. Today, the film you are watching on Netflix can sometimes stutter because of clogged bandwidth. The metaverse, however, is about you being inside the film—experiencing the horrors of the Squid Game fully. That’s a lot of data.
But even assuming that these infrastructural issues are resolved, there are several reasons why we should be sceptical about the metaverse.
One, it is not even a new idea. Internet video games have been moving towards this for decades. It’s just a word that is being hyped up now—borrowed from the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Second Life, the first real-time social space on the net, was launched in 2003 and its usage has been sinking for years.
Two, we have been hearing of enormous transformational leaps in tech for quite some time now—Industrial Revolution 4.0, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence making most human jobs redundant. Have these happened? When last heard of, self-driving cars still could not make out a harmless puddle on the road from a pothole.
Facebook bought the VR headset firm Oculus seven years ago for $2.3 billion. Ask any friend in the US who has bought its Quest glasses—they are seen as a toy which can give you a splitting headache if you use it for more than two hours at a stretch.
There could be something very basic about the human experience that machines are unable to replicate.
Also read: Meta acquires Within, makers of VR workout app Supernatural
Three, the metaverse is nothing more—or less—than a vast real-estate play in virtual space. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement has got a lot of media attention, but all Big Tech companies have been at it for some time now. Microsoft, for instance, has been talking about “the convergence of the physical and digital worlds” under the company’s “metaverse technology stack”. Which is hyperbole for aggregating and integrating its various platforms and products—operating system (Windows), cloud (Azure), videoconferencing (Teams), hardware (HoloLens), entertainment hub (Xbox), social network (LinkedIn) and so on.
For the world to have a metaverse that delivers on all its promises, companies need to work on a common platform that is open to every bright software developer. But there is very little chance that a Facebook or a Microsoft or a Google will let go of its proprietary software and platforms for the benefit of general mankind. If the metaverse comes, it will come as competing and closed worlds owned by Facebook, Amazon and of course the sealed-off Apple universe, which is referred to politely as a “walled garden”.
Four, there is no reason to believe that the future of the internet will not follow its historical arc. It began as a network which was also a place where people could hang out. It has since then become a thing, a tool.
In its early years, the net was decentralized and was seen as something that would give voice to millions of people around the world through connectivity, a free exchange of ideas and an egalitarian spirit. But it turned out rather differently. The net is today an oligarchy of half a dozen companies that have more power than most sovereign nations. And when these companies spot a firm that has a disruptive notion that could threaten the oligarchy, they just buy up the firm.
“(The metaverse is) certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers,” says Zuckerberg. Of course. But it is almost certain that Facebook (or Microsoft or Google) will initially allow free access to its platform to app developers, let a hundred flowers bloom and then charge a nice commission. And this is a perfectly valid business strategy, except that a Zuckerberg or a Tim Cook will never say it out aloud.
Yes, the metaverse can happen, and most likely, we won’t even notice it much as it develops. It may have a massive impact on our lives, just as mobile internet has. But it is unlikely to either make us more free or create a more fair world. It will be Big Tech getting even bigger and more powerful.
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