Facebook Creates New Unit To Build a 'Metaverse' (axios.com) 42
Facebook has announced it is forming a new Metaverse product group to advance its efforts to build a 3D social space using virtual and augmented reality tech. From a report: In an interview with journalist Casey Newton, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he sees the metaverse -- a term widely used in both tech and science fiction to describe broadly shared, open virtual environments -- as "the successor to the mobile internet." Zuckerberg also said it was "not something that any one company is going to build." Facebook's new Metaverse product group will report to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of virtual and augmented reality, who announced the new organization in a Facebook post. Facebook's Oculus and Portal products have been first steps toward the new vision, Bosworth wrote, "but to achieve our full vision of the Metaverse, we also need to build the connective tissue between these spaces -- so you can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room in your home to the next."
Meta-bomb. (Score:5, Insightful)
Metaverse? Like Second Life, or WoW?
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You can selectively mute or hide people in VRChat. And you have to, because you are correct: Every time I've been on, it suffers from a cultural problem of attention-seekers. There's always someone around who has piped music into their microphone channel, or set up an avatar animation effect that takes up the entire room, or an avatar the size of a billboard. All in a desperate attempt to make people pay attention. There are good people there, and conversations to be had - but you have to wade through the s
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I want to know if they will pay royalties to Neal Stephenson
The term was coined in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional space that uses the metaphor of the real world. Stephenson used the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the Internet. Concepts similar to the Metaverse have appeared under a variety of names in the cyberpunk genre of fiction as far back as 1981 in the novella
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Imagine if Farmville required a 700$ head-mounted display to play, and it had to be this one stupid model there was no other games for.
Product group eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
forming a new Metaverse product group
More like product exploitation group: you're Farebook's product, not the other way around.
This is simply more oh-shiny to attract suckers to rape the privacy of and extract data from.
I just entered a 3D social space! (Score:3, Funny)
It's okay to not be alone (Score:3)
Facebook is capitalizing on a broad social trend documented very thoroughly in the 2000 book "Bowling Alone". Ever since the 1970s, functionally every traditional not-for-profit social institution (religious institutions, unions, professional organizations, and bowling leagues) have seen dramatic decline in participation. This trend has continued through the 2000s and the 2010s.
Facebook is capitalizing on loneliness.
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The best way to beat facebook -and improve your own psychological health- is to join and become involved in a non-profit social institution.
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The best way to beat facebook -and improve your own psychological health- is to join and become involved in a non-profit social institution.
Ugh. Can I just go bowling and call it a day?
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Yeah. You can. Most people do. And they do it alone. Basically all by themselves, or at best with the very few friends they have. And not interacting with or meeting any new people.
That sounds awful. That was kind of my point.
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I wasn't clear, I meant not alone. But a bowling league sounds awful (formality, obligation, etc.) and you seem to undervalue existing friends and overvalue these "new people."
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No. You got it backwards. Existing friends have their own lives. They get married and move away. Almost all existing friends eventually become "old friends". If you aren't valuing meeting "new people" and making new friends, sooner or later you will find you have no friends to bowl with.
Or, more typically, your only friends are people you work with, where work is your only avenue to meeting new people. This became really apparent to me during the shutdowns. I was surprised how many people really, really nee
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... said by someone that has clearly never been involved in any not-for-profit social organization.
What are you talking about?
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I wonder how much of that decline is a consequence of Facebook itsself.
simple (Score:2)
dumbest shit ever.
Nightmare fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook-inspired metaverse? (Score:3)
I see Zuckerburg is going down the dystopian route.
Flying cars, biodomes, vr, cyberspace, jetpacks (Score:3)
jetpacks, lunar colonies, martian colonies, space cities, ocean cities.
I think most people forget that all of these huge disruptive technologies require society to abandon oh so much that works oh so well.
and that's why they don't happen.
jetpack sounds great. but I can't carry groceries. I can't bring the family. it's dangerous. and I need training.
lunar colony sounds great, what a spectacular view of earth. kinda sucks that I'd miss out on literally every spectacular view on earth.
video conferencing never happened because it required an entire society to refuse to get together in-person. It finally happened last year when our entire society refused to get together in-person. It'll 90% vanish over the next five years as our entire society chooses to get together in-person once again.
same with restaurant delivery.
same with first-run movies at home.
video games are great for people with no friends, or no money, or no transportation, or nothing else to do. my gaming has dropped to near-nil as my money and hobbies increase and my time decreases.
welcome to your metaverse -- be alone, together. it'll work when people are already alone together -- trapped on a lunar colony.
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Don't be quite so sure. Video conferencing just finally got good enough. These things usually get presented as some wizz bang next big thing long before they ready for prime time. Video conferencing is a great example. Its been around arguable for 60 years - since Bell labs demoed video phones.
Facetime made personal calls easy and high quality enough for the masses. Zoom finally made meetings the same.
Lots scifi predicted mobiles - took until 2000s before the product was so compelling everyone wanted one.
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I'm 41. If it won't exist in the next 20 years, it's meaningless to me. Just like the bell labs guy that you mentioned from 60 years ago, s/he never got to enjoy it. Or the smartphone inventor in 1970 who didn't get to see it until 2005.
In ~20 years, I'll have everything I'll need to enjoy the remaining ~40. So unless it's straight-up medical care, I'll have no use for anything ubiquitous thereafter.
Think about how many 70-year olds fly drones today. Or how many 70-year olds will suddenly start to use
Giving credit (Score:3)
VR cycle of collapse continues (Score:3)
I guess Zuck is too young to realize VR tech pops up and collapsed again on a regular cycle of about 5-7yrs. Humans cannot sit with a giant thing on their face for hours and hours. It always sounds like a great idea and then everyone starts testing it and gets motion sickness, painful marks and rashes on their face, damaged eyesight, etc.
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VR is a $300million industry in software alone [digitalbodies.net], and it's growing. The game selection now is actually really great.
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I guess Zuck is too young to realize VR tech pops up and collapsed again on a regular cycle of about 5-7yrs. Humans cannot sit with a giant thing on their face for hours and hours. It always sounds like a great idea and then everyone starts testing it and gets motion sickness, painful marks and rashes on their face, damaged eyesight, etc.
I wonder if you're too young? I remember in the early 90s using VR headsets, and maybe I've just got a long enough perspective that what you call "cycles" I call just the natural slow gradual development of the technology.
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The giant things have been getting smaller though. Technology improves. One day they will get small and comfortable enough to wear for hours.
FB and Valve have successfully killed VR (Score:2)
Does anyone care about VR anymore? Covid was the perfect time for it to explode and nothing happened. I think the fact that FB bought Occulus and then followed up by buying anyone who was developing applications has destroyed whatever momentum it had going for it in the market.
A virtual cesspool, quickly (Score:3)
It took about two years for Second Life to become a haven for mankind's worst impulses.
These days, I give a Facebook effort about six months. Plus, it will be full of sponsored
content and corporate logos, with the added touch of trumpishness. Delightful.
What should happen is a standard interoperable protocol that allows anyone
to host virtual territory. Perhaps some coordinating org that handles overall mapping
and interconnect points. But if FB wants to own the whole thing, they should just save
their money.
Nvidia might be on to something with their Omniverse though.
My dream comes true (Score:2)
All the FB members disappearing into a virtual elsewhere.
What's not to like?
The traffic will be easing up, you'll be able to get into 3rd gear at 5pm.
Yeah... (Score:1)
Virtual Penises (Score:3)
It's not possible to create a metaverse without flying genitalia. Anonymity breeds contempt for social norms, so everyone lets their freak flag fly. This is pretty much antithetical to Facebook's 'wholesome' corporate image, so I don't think that they will have any luck making it happen.
Even Nintendo couldn't keep penises out [youtu.be] of its 'child-safe' online environments.
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There's an easy solution for that, and one that Facebook already has to a large extent: Just end anonymity. You can't advertise to people properly if you can't identify them anyway.
So... Second Life (Score:3)
Faceoasis (Score:3)
They've just worked out that they can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures.
This sounds like an expansion of Active Worlds (Score:1)
The Facebook Metaverse (Score:2)