ZUCKERBERG GETS TO THE HEART OF THE META
Mark Zuckerberg clearly feels the world hasn’t grasped what his big bet on the future of the internet means. To hammer home just how strongly he feels about the Metaverse being the inevitable destination for civilization, as you will no doubt have noticed, he has decided to change the name of his company to Meta.
Amid the buzz of headlines, though, what was actually happening was somewhat lost.
Facebook, of course, is not going away. Until now, Facebook has been two things – a social network, and the company called Facebook that owned it, along with siblings Oculus, Instagram and WhatsApp.
It’s the company and not the social network that has changed its name – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are sub-brands of a new company called Meta.
Zuckerberg announced the new name and explained more of his thinking about the Metaverse at the company’s online Connect 21 developers’ conference last week.
Almost everything he showed does not exist, and the elements of this new world that do exist are nowhere near as sophisticated as they need to be to build the rest.
In his presentation, Zuck imagined a Home Space – a virtual reality place that you’ll be able to design yourself, and where you’ll keep all your digital stuff. You’ll be able to spend time here alone or with friends socialising.
But there will be other spaces – created by friends and other creators – to which you’ll be able to ‘teleport’ virtually. Zuck imagined some of the spaces might be gaming areas, or educational spaces – imagine spending virtual time exploring ancient Rome, for example.
The way we will interact with this new world will vary. Sometimes virtual reality, other times augmented reality or even on phones or computer screens.
The bits of this new world Meta has already created exist in virtual reality – the Horizon Worlds, Home and Workspace projects can be explored using the Oculus VR sets.
But to get anywhere near what Zuck is imagining today, the tech will need to evolve quickly… even if his rather loose “five or 10 year” timeframe is to be hit.
Cynics might wonder if the whole thing was an elaborate way to deflect attention from Facebook’s… sorry, Meta’s ongoing issues with its social platforms.
It will be interesting to see how Meta develops these ideas, though… even if we are many years away from most of us being able to actually experience any of it.