Anybody who doubted that Meta’s metaverse was a flash in the pan need only scan the headlines about Mark Zuckerberg’s company, which has quietly changed tack and is now laying people off en masse while insisting that its future is now about efficiency and AI. In short, another familiar chapter in the history of an industry prone to bet the farm on the next big thing.
As is now increasingly evident, other than video games addicts, few of us are seduced by the idea of strapping a clumsy device in front of our eyes, losing all contact with the reality around us and moving around in a parallel virtual universe. Things might change when the technology has improved and there are lighter, more comfortable VR headsets; that said, there will always be other ways to enjoy immersive experiences.
The important lesson here is that the idea of one company monopolizing the metaverse and turning it into a platform where it sets the rules is dead in the water: the metaverse, whenever it comes, will be decentralized: a set of protocols based on open source and cryptography, regardless of what happens to Meta, and much more than just a buzzword. Immersive three-dimensional environments offer enormous possibilities for innovation, far beyond the limited vision of a company that was only ever interested in marketing, branding and above all, advertising.
The metaverse still has a future. Meta’s plans were a distraction, a desperate bid by a company that saw the chance to reinvent its crummy business model, but whose platform was uncannily reminiscent of Second Life or Sims, albeit backed by seemingly unlimited resources. Following the failure of its strategy, it will now try to convince the world that it is still an important technology company and will drastically cut costs, while struggling with an advertising model restricted by the rules imposed by other companies, and will try to put machine learning to work to continue managing advertising in a way that most of its users hate, but which is still a hard drug the vast majority of marketing directors are hooked on and that justifies their existence.
So, out with the old, in with the new. We’re hearing less and less talk about the metaverse and more and more about machine learning algorithms, another trend that will be good precisely because it is talked about, and bad because some believe that everything in machine learning, a virtually unlimited field with immense possibilities, is reduced to Large Language Models and the development of chatbots that sometimes hallucinate. Now, we are about to see myriad models from many, many companies trying to sell us their excellence. Soon, we will move from there to the “build it yourself” phase, and we will begin to understand that we are not talking about “thinking machines” or “intelligence”, and instead sophisticated statistical procedures based on many variables that can be used for many more things than simply conversing with us.
But that’s how technology is and that’s how innovation works — even if it sometimes seems we never learn.
—
This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: iStock
