Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it
- Reference: 1636615688
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/11/11/the_metaverse_wars/
- Source link:
Facebook was already not only a radioactive brand but also teetering on the edge. The former because regulators are closing in, the latter because Apple had [1]found one neat trick to undermine the social network's business model of advertising-via-continuous-surveillance. Plus, Facebook admitted that young people heading into their high-spending and advertiser-attracting years don't much care for its products.
With profits down and the future looking like a slow, painful decline into 'has-been' status, the CEO and controlling shareholder (who already drove the decisions that had transformed his trillion-dollar enterprise into a social media Chernobyl) announced he and his thousands of employees and billions of users would [2]sidestep all that karma by disappearing into another universe.
[3]
Err, metaverse.
[4]
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It's a nice trick, if you can manage it. But as soon as you cross that threshold, you confront a truth that metaverse pioneers discovered decades ago: the only things in the metaverse are what we bring with us. Our passions and predilections, all of our crazy baggage and misperceptions. Wherever you go in the metaverse, there you are.
Stumbling in and acting like you own the joint will produce an immune response that sees the foreign body ejected.
If, for example, a megalomaniacal control freak found their way into the metaverse, their first instinct might be to try to make the metaverse their metaverse – pointedly ignoring the many years of work by others or, where that proves too difficult, by 'embracing and extending' those works. All of this has happened before, and all of it is happening again.
But, because the metaverse has been around far longer than … *checks notes* … Meta, it has a life of its own. It has plans. And it has powers. It looks as though the metaverse isn't going to take colonisation by Facebook, or anyone, lying down. Within a few days, the first of the metaverse wars had begun.
Microsoft has been working on the metaverse for a number of years – its Hololens is among the oldest and most mature 'mixed' reality products. But more than anything else, Microsoft provides the software that operates the modern enterprise. When the Meta-CEO talked up the potentials of the metaverse as the future of business meetings, conferencing and collaboration, [6]Microsoft responded within days by announcing Mesh for Teams – a blending of its Slack-strangling collaboration tool and its years of work in mixed reality. Meta's move to [7]own the enterprise space in the metaverse was – in the space of a modest Microsoft product announcement – cut down to a tickbox feature.
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Microsoft is not about to let another monopolist anywhere near its monopoly. Nor will Cisco go quietly - a couple of weeks ago it announced a holographic interface for WebEx.
[9]Trust Facebook to find a way to make video conferencing more miserable and tedious
[10]South Korea’s top telco launches 'metaverse'
[11]Facebook granted patent for 'artificial reality' baseball cap. Repeat, an 'artificial reality' baseball cap
[12]South Korea creates ‘metaverse alliance’ to build an open national VR platform
And what of everything else we might need in the metaverse? Would Meta try to control all of the commerce portals – undermining Amazon, eBay and Shopify, and every other company with a storefront? And would it expect that to go uncontested? The world has that Facebook is a terrible host - ask any app provider or publisher whose business was damaged by whimsical changes to the News Feed if they'd bet on Facebook again.
What about the payments providers? Would Meta try to step in front of PayPal, or VISA, or American Express?
For over two years, the artist formerly known as Facebook has been pushing its own digital currency – formerly Libra, now Diem – as a global currency for payments both here in the real world and, it's safe to assume, in its metaverse. The world's central bankers have done [13]everything in their power to slow-walk that attempt to route around their own powers as economic gatekeepers, while they prepare their own digital currencies.
But would fiat currency even be usable in the metaverse, or would it need to be exchanged for company scrip as you crossed the threshold – spendable only in the company store, at a price the company sets?
[14]
Hiring [15]tens of thousands of metaverse engineers does not address any of these issues. These questions centre on who has enough power to get to say what is real in the metaverse. Stumbling in and acting like you own the joint will only produce an immune response that sees the foreign body surrounded, isolated and ejected.
I imagine we're in for a lot of that sort of thing over the next few years, as a wide range of businesses come to realise they're already metaverse businesses, and move to defend their turf from the invaders.
After redpilling him, Morpheus asks Neo, "What is the Matrix?" He then answers his own question: "Control." Here's hoping we can keep this warning front of mind, while reminding ourselves that things rarely go well for the colonised. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/27/facebook_ios_ads/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/29/zuckerberg_meta_facebook/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YYz35e2EG3DmMsEDohf0fgAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYz35e2EG3DmMsEDohf0fgAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YYz35e2EG3DmMsEDohf0fgAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/02/microsoft_ignite/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/23/horizon_workrooms_promises_a_virtual/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YYz35e2EG3DmMsEDohf0fgAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/facebooks_oculus_horizon/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/14/sk_telecom_ifland_metaverse/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/23/facebook_ar_hat/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/18/south_korea_metaverse_alliance/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/16/facebook_libra_relaunch/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YYz35e2EG3DmMsEDohf0fgAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/18/facebook_metaverse/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"Holographic is like in Star Wars"
If so, here's hoping someone can retrofit a restraining bolt onto Zuckertwat.
"If so, here's hoping someone can retrofit a restraining bolt onto Zuckertwat."
Carbonite is the only way forward.
Big Z's Walled Universe?
What if Zarniwoop had built an entire alternate Universe in his office, but nobody came?
Re: Big Z's Walled Universe?
I'm afraid you can't do that, Dave, office is already trademarked. And so is the Universe...
I think Zuck should be allowed to have his own prrsonal metaverse where he can create trillions of friends, governments to be rude to and robots to play cards with.
Then quietly leave him to it and close the door on the way out, so that he can get on with his toxic existence without obstacles or the need to obey laws.
*'anchorite?
Please can he be locked-up in there with only Boris Johnson to keep him company.
Oculus was a nice company. Then Facebook bought it, spent loads to make it more sleek, and improve the hardware (to some degree) and sell units relatively cheaply. Then they forced you to link usage to a Facebook account. Then they started to abandon their hardware (even the current model has many unresolved bugs), because, unlike Oculus, they don't really have to care about their grassroots. The end game is to make everyone live with a stupid VR headset on them all day long. I only wanted it for gaming, like most sane people. But Zucker isn't sane.
Yup, I remember when the purchase was announced, myself and many others thought, well that's the end of Oculus as we know it!
I owned the DK2 at the time, and was planning on getting one of the 'proper' released versions, but once the FB purchase was announced I decided not to bother, eventually getting a Steam/HTC Vive instead, more costly but arguable a more capable device (e.g. full 360, although lenses could have been a little better).
I also remember Oculus and FB announcing at purchase time they'd run Oculus independently, not interfere, and never integrate it with FB. Many including myself, didn't believe this at all, and we all know where that ended up!
I remember a while back someone doing a tear down of one of the newer Oculus models that came out after the FB purchase, and working out they were likely being sold at a loss. The assumption at the time seemed to be that they wanted to outsell the arguably better technically, but much more expensive (as in twice the price) Valve devices, especially the Index when that came out, and that FB would make up for the loss later my monetising the Oculus users more directly.
Such as shame, as the original Oculus company, seemed to be so forward thinking, and interesting.
Truly we live in the worst timeline when we can have an article unironically titled "The Metaverse Wars" be about something that's actually happening, and it's about *this*
O Come All Ye Faithful
cause my metaverse is better than their metaverse!
As someone said on Twitter:
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
Tech Company: Finally we have created the Torment Nexus, as imagined in the sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.
Fun fact
Johnny Mnemonic is set in 2021.
Its where people almost live in a virtual internet, controlled by mega corps who are after info in the main characters brain.
Welcome to the Meta verse.
The multiverse
Where it is closed due to virtue signalling failure.
Goody, goody
One step closer to Sarah Connors nightmare coming true, and skynet ... I mean metaverse taking over
CEASE AND DESIST!
CEASE AND DESIST ORDER
We are writing to notify you that your unlawful use of 'metaverse' (herein after 'The WORK') infringes upon our client's exclusive copyright...
"a holographic interface for WebEx"
Dear me, the sheer number of man-hours that are being tallied for useless dredge like this must be mind-boggling.
And it's not holographic. You're looking at a screen. We've been pretending 3D for decades now, that's all it is.
Holographic is like in Star Wars : you're at your seat and the holograph of some other person appears in another seat, but you are not wearing a headset, you're looking at it with your own eyes.
That kind of conference room ain't for tomorrow.