Wagner James Au / New World Notes

There’s a new long essay on Meta’s vision for the Metaverse from Nick Clegg, formerly a UK politician and now President of Global Affairs at Meta. (He was the company’s point person when Facebook and Instagram’s many failings were brought under harsh public scrutiny.) Given his position at the social media giant, Clegg’s essay has deep insights into Meta’s vision and strategy for the Metaverse. Give it a read, we’ll be here when you come back.

There’s actually much about it that I agree with, but with Meta putting the most money into Metaverse development of any company by far, it’s more important to point out key flaws which suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how metaverse platforms work (and don’t work).

For starters:

Assuming that immersive 3D interaction is a “logical” evolution of text, voice, and video:

Clegg writes:

We don’t communicate through written words alone, so text-based internet services would never suffice. Static images are an important part of how we communicate, as are sounds and moving images. But we interact in three dimensions. We use multiple senses, body language, spatial awareness. We signify our intention to trust one another by looking each other in the eye, smiling, or warmly shaking hands. We express our feelings towards loved ones not only by saying what we feel but by expressing it physically. We show joy, sadness or anger through nonverbal cues that are embodied and experienced rather than written down.

Advances in speed and availability of connectivity have now reached a point that begins to make many of these three-dimensional interactions possible virtually. It is therefore logical that the next step in the evolution of the internet is one that reflects this.

Note the jazz hands employed to cover that last non sequitur. While it’s true that immersive 3D interaction is now much more feasible and affordable, it does not follow that it’s by and large more desirable than video or even text. Facetime was launched for the iPhone in 2013, but 75% of Gen Z and Millennials still prefer to text. And despite its affordable price point, the slow sales of Meta’s own Quest 2 headset should undermine any confidence that immersive communication is the next inevitable step. (As opposed to a successful niche.)

More questionable assumptions:

Confusing enterprise VR applications with metaverse applications 

The search for real world use cases of metaverse platforms beyond entertainment and socialization continues, so it’s understandable when we confuse a VR-based application for a metaverse one. For instance (as Clegg writes):

Another area where metaverse technologies have the potential to be transformative is healthcare. There are endless possibilities for training healthcare professionals — from practicing surgeries without risk to patients or training first responders without putting them in dangerous situations, to making med school more accessible by removing geographical and other barriers. Recent studies have also looked at the ways virtual reality can be used for pediatric pain management, children with autism, and depression.

Augmented reality also has the potential to be transformative. This article suggests nine ways that AR could be utilized: saving lives by showing people where nearby defibrillators are; assisting surgeons during operations; helping new mothers with breastfeeding; helping patients better describe symptoms; helping nurses find veins more easily; showing people how drugs work in 3D; helping medical students visualize anatomy; teaching kids about the human body; and even motivating runners by having them chased by virtual zombies.

The educational applications have potential, for sure. But I have pitched metaverse technology to major organizations. And the first serious question they ask is: “Can we put this behind our firewall?” And if you are talking with a medical organization, which has incredibly strict standards around patient privacy, that question will keep coming up.

And a metaverse platform that’s behind a firewall is not a metaverse platform at all.

Final immediate eyesore:

Assuming that interoperability is key

I can’t quite blame Clegg for saying this, as it’s a common misconception even among longtime metaverse advocates:

The common theme across [the metaverse stack] is interoperability — the interconnectedness of standards, systems and applications that enable people to travel seamlessly between one part of the metaverse and another. It isn’t an absolute — not every element of metaverse experiences needs to be, or will be, compatible with others. But without a significant degree of interoperability baked into each floor, the metaverse will become fragmented and broken into silos, each impenetrable from the other.

As has been the case throughout the internet’s development, interoperable standards and protocols will be developed by different people and companies over time, and will often be settled by institutions like the US-based National Institute of Standards and Technology or international multi-stakeholder organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force or the World Wide Web Consortium.

While many advocates will strenuously disagree with me here, metaverse interoperability as a prime goal continues to seem like a solution in search of a genuine problem. ROBLOX is not interoperable with Fortnite Creative, yet each of them have tens of millions of active users — the very number envisioned by Neal Stephenson, when he conceived of the Metaverse.

More key, talk of interoperability, in my opinion, misses a crucial point: A metaverse platform is first and foremost a virtual community, not architecture. Which takes me to my personal perspective on this:

Only Community Must Be Interoperable. 

As long as denizens of one metaverse platform users are able to export contacts to their friends and colleagues there, all other interoperability questions become quite secondary. Social media has largely accomplished this already, with or little or no oversight by metaverse companies — virtual world friends tend to quickly connect with each other on Discord, TikTok, and other platforms, and often spend as much or more time with each other there, than in the actual virtual world.

I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. (Indeed, I’m planning to talk directly with Meta for an upcoming project.) Until then, my fear is that billions of dollars are being spent on a vision that doesn’t fulfill the promises made by the original Metaverse — or for that matter, what I’ve seen in its first incarnation, Second Life — while Meta’s vision only sets us all up to fail.