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Building a real world “metaverse”
Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke has been working on technology that helps people navigate and enjoy places in the real world since he helped create Google Maps nearly 20 years ago. So it’s not surprising that he isn’t a fan of the current hyperbole surrounding the idea that technology is poised to hatch a “metaverse” — a three-dimensional simulation of the actual world populated by digital avatars of ourselves.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is such an ardent fan of the concept he hails as an “embodied internet” that he recently renamed his company “Meta.“
Hanke instead is hoping to build technology that meshes with the physical world — an approach known as “augmented reality,” or AR. That’s what Niantic
Labs has already done with “Pokemon
Go,” a popular mobile phone game that deploys AR to enable people to chase digital creatures while roaming through neighborhoods, parks and other places. He recently discussed his hopes for what he calls a “real world” metaverse with The Associated Press.
What bothers you the most about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to create a metaverse?
I feel like people just have it wrong, thinking the future is people logging into a 3-D world and walking around as avatars. I do not believe that is the future of technology and certainly not the future of humanity. I think it was a weird reaction to COVID in a way, with people sheltering at home, watching a lot of Netflix, getting a lot of delivery food, and kids living on Roblox a lot.
If you look at technology and where it was headed pre-pandemic, it was all about mobile app stuff that you could take with you wherever you are. It was that kind of tech helping you as a human do human stuff better.
So you think the metaverse should head more in that direction?
When we think about the real world metaverse, we think about reality channels. The real world metaverse is rooted in what we do today, but it’s an evolutionary step toward some of the same ideas that some people talk about the metaverse. Rather than staying at home and being jacked into your computer watching graphics, (it’s) being out in the real world having a device bring these things to you, and make that experience richer and more fun, more efficient.
Pokemon Go already uses augmented reality on smartphones. Where do you see AR heading?
When I say augmented reality, I mean literally augmenting reality. If my augmenta tion is I made a tree whisper when you sit near it, and it was just an audio form of augmented reality, that’s really a legitimate form of augmenting the world. If you were gazing at a painting of cherry blossoms in the museum, if I could waft the smell of those blossoms to you, that would be a great use of AR. Some of it can come through phones, some of it can come through other devices.