Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Update, 11/29: Added the summary video above!

7 years ago, Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson told me this:

"Metaverse" has turned into a sort of golem, capable of wandering the earth on its own, out of the purview of its creator. So I am always surprised to see where it turns up and what it's doing. Ten years ago that wasn't the case. Anyone who wanted to use it in front of a normal audience would have had to say "Metaverse, an idea from the novel Snow Crash." Twenty years ago, they'd have had to add, "a novel by Neal Stephenson." Now apparently "Metaverse" can stand up on its own three feet and lumber about, at least in the setting of tech blogs.

Now, however, it's front page news on every major media outlet, because this was just posted by Zuckerberg on Facebook's company site:

From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for.

Emphasis mine and put a pin in that, because if he's serious, that suggests a time when Oculus may not require Facebook Connect. In fact he just suggested that much in an interview with the Verge:

There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.

Speaking of which, while you may not need a Facebook account to enter Meta's Metaverse, plan to have your personal data tracked. Because as Zuckerberg says, Meta's Metaverse will be ad-driven:

Our ads model is designed to provide businesses the lowest prices. Our commerce tools are available at cost or with modest fees. As a result, billions of people love our services and hundreds of millions of businesses rely on our tools.

That’s the approach we want to bring to helping to build the metaverse.

But that's fine, right? It's not like Meta would leverage our personal data from our bodies and actual eyes in the Metaverse? 

Oh wait:

In The Matrix, fictional AIs would occasionally alter the virtual world to further their oppressive goals. But even the Agents didn’t use the more sophisticated techniques we’re discussing here. In real life, people won’t be used as batteries. We’ll more likely be plugged in as abstract computational nodes, our attention and product-buying decisions channeling the flow of trillions of dollars of commerce; our free will up for grabs to the most ‘persuasive’ bidders.

At least Oculus will no longer be called Oculus, says Meta's AR/VR head:

But anyone worried what happens if Meta makes the Metaverse with a capital M should take some comfort that this story is far from over. In fact, for all Facebook's billions, a few tiny (by which I mean massive) challenges lie in its way:

• ROBLOX has a 200 million active user headstart.
• Epic's Fortnite and the Epic-backed Core have some 80-85 million active users of their own.  
• Quest 2 headsets (Meta's leading HMD) has a relatively miniscule install base of 5 million.

Will Internet giants like Facebook/Meta be the ones that build the Metaverse? Watch Matthew Ball and The Washington Post's Gene discuss that very topic (above, 33:35). 

Photo via The Verge.