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My god, if you get it, you get it. They are going all in on metaverse / have decided that the future of oculus is the primary long term bet, not facebook itsel
by nyt-maps 5y ago
My god, if you get it, you get it.
They are going all in on metaverse / have decided that the future of oculus is the primary long term bet, not facebook itself.
And they have the money to make it so.
This is incredibly scary, and probably a good investment.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIs this bet on VR making the goggles a hardware requirement? So this new world will only be available to those who can afford gaming hardware and a high speed internet connection?
- bigdict 5y agoOr maybe they have nothing else in the portfolio to bet on?
- 0x4d464d48 5y agoSounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me. Anyone know if people there are heavily influenced by his work?
- Kinrany 5y ago> Sounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me. How so? Searching for "metaverse" on LW yields 9 results, most of them are irrelevant.
- 0x4d464d48 5y agoI'm thinking more about how this seems like a template for people to integrate their personal lives into an actual simulation and give a justification for a 'friendly AI' to determine what's best for us. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3823vuarnmL5Pqin/quantum-non-realism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3823vuarnmL5Pqin/quantum-no... https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition
- Kinrany 5y agoI don't quite see the connection. Metaverse is a virtual world, not a simulated world: the people are made of real atoms, not bits.
- 0x4d464d48 5y agoIf Meta stays true to its history of designing its products to maximize user engagement I find little reason to believe they wouldn't try to design their product to become more and more tightly coupled with the lives of their users. Maybe to the point where they're not able to function in some important way without it. The main point being that it has the potential to grow to a point where the life of a user becomes inseparable from a 'Metaverse'. Whether you call this 'virtual' or a 'simulation' seems moot.
- rhcom2 5y agoMy kneejerk reaction is this will probably waste a lot of their money without much traction. But I'm also happy about Facebook wasting a bunch of their money...
- aerovistae 5y agoFor real. This is the least "incredibly scary" thing I can think of.
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoAll depends if they can deliver on AR before anyone else. Gotta remember outside of Oculus, their entire product portfolio exists on top of the platforms of their competitors. This is their play to own the entire thing from the foundation up and the resources they'll be willing to use to accomplish that will be huge and really their only competition is Apple because Google gave up.
- Ancapistani 5y ago> All depends if they can deliver on AR before anyone else. Nope. It matters only if the gain wide adoption before anyone else. If they do, they become the de facto owner of that space. They definitely have the resources to do that.
- iaml 5y agoMy kneejerk reaction is that some projects with "meta" in the name might get into legal troubles out of the blue.
- cblconfederate 5y agoWhat about facebook getting into legal trouble here? There is tons of prior art and companies with the trademark. Either facebook buys them all, or find another name
- quickthrower2 5y agoLegal trouble having nothing to do with the law itself but legal budgets.
- ra7 5y agoDon’t like Facebook one bit, but Zuck is almost always spot on with his bets. So yes, incredibly scary as it has a high likelihood of succeeding.
- jimkleiber 5y agoYea, watching some of the demo made me think of how deeply involved people got with The Sims. A platform where people could actually be their own Sim? Maybe Second Life and those didn't take off as much because the technology wasn't yet there. That being said, I still don't want Zuckerberg to be the king of it, but there are plenty of possibilities with high-definition VR/AR tech.
- adpirz 5y agoThis discounts a lot of failures and products without real success: - Facebook Apps - Facebook Home - Facebook Workplace - Facebook Portal - Facebook Essentials What he's done well: found promising competition and subsumed them. I think AR is going to be a huge part of the future. I don't think Facebook is going to lead that effort, not because I don't want them to (though I don't), but because they don't have a track record of building anything worthwhile outside of their core offering (ie, the Facebook product).
- matt123456789 5y agoSo what you’re saying is, now would be a good time to be a promising social AR/VR startup?
- mohanmcgeek 5y agoAlso "Facebook platform" which Chamath ran to the ground.
- mig39 5y agoAnyone remember the Facebook Phone?
- spookthesunset 5y agoDon't forget their weird crypto thing....
- AlexandrB 5y agoHonestly, I think this is less scary than having Facebook acting as a "public square". A meta-verse has a higher bar of entry than a website - including specialized hardware - and it's less likely that governments and businesses will distribute information exclusively in some meta-verse vs. it just being another channel for content distribution.
- nyt-maps 5y agoWebsites once required "specialized hardware". And if you've got today's top end VR rigs, it's sorta obvious that the world is going to go this way - it's too good, and productivity is enhanced on the level of "bicycle for the mind". Plus it'll get way cheaper in the future. Note that I'm not talking about entertainment usecases, which are also good - I'm saying metaverse is clearly the future of work, with massive ramifications if Meta is able to invest enough to make it appealing to regular people. And I think Facebook has way more than enough resources to make this a reality. Right now, work in the metaverse still looks like 8+ emulated screens floating in a sphere around you. And this is probably not the long term best way to work. The real question is what are the new primitives, is there a new underlying platform, can everyone get equal access to that platform, and who owns that platform. Just like Apple is making intel chips obsolete with the M1 on Mac, Meta probably is aiming to make laptops obsolete/niche in the long run.
- AlexandrB 5y agoI don't know if I agree. Most of my job is typing text into various boxes - web-apps, text-editors, terminals. Fundamentally, long-term productivity in this task is about ergonomics. Wearing something on my head for 8+ hours is like anti-ergonomics, and the benefits are dubious. I could have a bunch of virtual displays in a meta-space, or I could just area bunch of real monitors. And the latter solution is generally simpler. But even if using a VR rig to simulate a bunch of displays would be more efficient, that's not a "metaverse". It's just a VR display. To me a metaverse implies virtual interaction with other people - otherwise what's the point? I find I'm more effective when I have uninterrupted quiet time to work so why would I want to work in a meta-verse where I can be interrupted at any time in a more invasive way than Slack or email can manage? It's like an open-office from hell. Saying it's the future of work is extremely premature. Edit: On the topic of this: > it's too good, and productivity is enhanced on the level of "bicycle for the mind" If that's true, Facebook will never crack it. Facebook's products are the opposite of "a bicycle for the mind" - they push experiences and content on you instead of putting you in control. I have serious doubts they could develop something that requires giving the user power over their own experience - the condescending attitude of "we know what's best for you" is too ingrained.
- Closi 5y agoI think their internal definition of metaverse is probably less literal than people in the media seem to picture - I think they are actually betting on the future of however people communicate, whatever that ends up looking like, be that WhatsApp, social media, VR or something else entirely.
- meheleventyone 5y agoEven their presentation showed that with a solid mix of different ways of communicating and I'm pretty sure that wasn't just accidental. On one level its nice to see a much more expansive definition of metaverse (which IMO already exists) but on another terrifying that FB wants to be part of basically every human interaction.
- deelowe 5y agoI hope they have serious plans for changing how VR works today. VR quickly loses it's appeal after a few hours. The isolation it brings with it is a huge issue. AR holds more promise in terms of mass appeal but I'm not sure we have that one quite figured out yet technically and from a UX perspective.
- jimkleiber 5y agoI know very little about VR so maybe this will be very off. My guess is they want to address that isolation aspect by making it feel better to interact with others, bringing more people together in the VR space. But this is me interpreting your "the isolation it brings with it" as people just exploring VR by themselves. Did you mean something else?
- deelowe 5y agoI mean the isolation of basically wearing a helmet for hours. It's exhausting to have your vision and hearing constrained to the digital world in this way for long periods of time. To me, VR is like a roller coaster. It's super fun but only in small doses.
- jimkleiber 5y agoAh, thank you for clarifying that. While I haven't used VR much, that actually is one of the things I worry about the most: being so disconnected from my physical environment. But I'm also a person who doesn't like walking down the street with earbuds in, preferring to hear what's going on. I wonder how much people will vary in their willingness to dive into VR (and disconnect from their physical surroundings).
- drcode 5y agoYeah, I'm a VR nerd but I now find that wearing a VR helment for too long creates a kind of existential loneliness that will be hard to solve with better technology.
- 5y ago
- silisili 5y agoNot a chance. I've been wrong about a lot of things tech, probably even most things, but this isn't something I think most people want. Metaverses have always been niche. Most people don't like things attached to their head. Remember 3D TVs? But, perhaps you and they are right. For the first time in my life, I honestly feel like 'if this is the future, I want no part in it.' Please don't take this as like, suicidal or anything, more maybe going off grid or moving to another country.
- quickthrower2 5y agoI think you soon won’t need much attached to your head. What about when the tech is a light as a pair of glasses - then contact lenses. Far fetched? In 1995, when mobile phones were for the rich, and internet for the geeks, tell people you will be required to own a mobile phone and an online account in order to be allowed in a shop. That’s what it is in Australia right now.
- silisili 5y agoNah. As a teen I needed vision correction, and contacts were worse than glasses in the end. Dry eyes, solutions, cases, falling out. Glasses were nice enough, but I touched them so much it was constant cleaning. PRK solved all that. If this VR utopia ever will take hold, it will be with neural implants or something like it. Not with glasses, and not with contacts.
- gitfan86 5y agoYou are right. Pride comes before a fall, and Zuck thinks he is better than Cook, Musk, Bezos, by building the multiverse he will restore his place as the greatest technologist of our time
- camdat 5y agoDo you not get sick of this being repeated constantly? Every year someone repeats that Facebooks doom is imminent, and every year their revenue and user base gets larger and larger When does this opinion just become pasé?
- KennyBlanken 5y agoWe can call them whatever we want to. Fuck them for trying to take over both "meta" and "metaverse." This is them trying to become _the_ VR world just by having _the right name_. I don't know anyone that calls "xfinity" anything but "comcast." I'm pretty sure "xfinity" was them trying to get away from their nickname "comcrap." Imagine if the world collectively said "no" and kept right on calling them Facebook? They're going to run around slapping anyone who uses "meta" or "metaverse" with C&D letters figuring nobody will have the money to fight them in court. I'd chip in to the legal fund for whoever says "see you in court" to Facebook. I bet a lot of people would. Maybe someone like the EFF should set up a "meta defense" warchest.
- I-M-S 5y agoThat kinda happened to Alphabet - everybody still calls them Google
- darthvoldemort 5y agoMaybe I'm too old, but I don't know a single person with Oculus, not even among my younger coworkers. I don't discount that it could be the next big thing, because wtf do I know, but it feels very niche to me, and certainly not something that can get the engagement like a phone can. And in terms of money, Facebook itself is a printing press, I wonder what the business model is for this? Selling games or experiences? Billboards in an AR world?
- cronix 5y ago> I wonder what the business model is for this Addicting people to living in a fake world where anything is seemingly possible, and then exploiting it. Basically the same M.O. as their other products, but on a "next level."
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago> Addicting people to living in a fake world where anything is seemingly possible, and then exploiting it. The sentence I was looking for.
- y4mi 5y agoI got one. My honest opinion is that it's potential is immense, but I wouldn't suggest anyone to get one atm. Professional headsets will likely become more widespread over the coming years and I fully expect that most desk jobs will replace their displays with a headset... But that's still at least 10 yrs off, likely longer. A prerequisite would be that it's not as stuffy/heavy to wear, but that's already happening at a surprising rate. It also makes remote contacts (i.e. remote work, family calls etc) very different, as oculus just added face tracking to their newest headsets... So your avatars face mirrors your real face. The presence you feel in these contexts is hard to explain and has to be experienced imo.
- sytelus 5y agoDo you have headaches wearing it? How long can you go on wearing it?
- ssully 5y agoI don't think this downplays Oculus, but they also announced today that they are going to start scaling back Facebook integration with Oculus and start allowing other login methods besides Facebook. Unfortunately outside of Tweets, this is the best story I found on it at the moment: https://www.ign.com/articles/oculus-facebook-requirement-ending https://www.ign.com/articles/oculus-facebook-requirement-end...
- RC_ITR 5y agoKeep in mind he used very specific working "personal facebook account" and just announced a new company name 'Meta.' To me that points to a 'log in with Meta' option.
- distrill 5y agowhich is probably an improvement if they're kept totally separate from facebook
- txsoftwaredev 5y agoI'd imagine it's not that hard to tie a "Meta" user back to a "Facebook" user. Seems like it's all just for PR.
- jobigoud 5y agoYeah, color me skeptical until I can create a meta account without a cell phone and without an fb account.
- tinktank 5y agoMeh. Many better companies have tried and failed. Good luck to them but all I have for them is a shrug