Feb
2022
Big Tech and Their Metaverse
Big Tech Needs to Stop Trying to Make Their Metaverse Happen
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/metaverse-big-tech-land-grab-hype
The Metaverse is a fuzzy concept: It entered dictionaries via Neal Stephenson’s 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel Snow Crash, where the Metaverse is the virtual refuge from an anarchy-laden world controlled by the Mafia, and was brought back by a series of blogposts by VC Matthew Ball.
The morality of the Metaverse project is the least of its problems. Unlike Google Glass, the gold standard of tech blunders, it is not an overhyped (and ill-conceived) product: It is pure hype, without a product—except for some hypothetical “building blocks.”
A letter by the CEO of Japanese game developer Square Enix, in which the executive expounded on his interest in NFTs and drew an odd distinction between people who “play for fun” and those who “play to contribute” was also badly received.
Emma
August 8, 2022 at 3:20 pm (2 years ago)Let me explain by way of an example. Imagine you have just moved into your new apartment. You go up and take a look around, and notice that there is no television in your apartment! No TV! You think this is great. You notice there isn’t any cable either; so you assume that there isn’t any video game consoles either (except for some old ones like Hp Ink Printer Atari and Nintendo…). So perhaps you decide to look at Netflix instead… which is quite nice when you remember how much easier streaming video is on Internet connections than cable or satellite service. When did Netflix become such an awful thing? When did Netflix become so addictive that anyone who wasn’t addicted couldn’t stand them anymore?
Jesse Sanders
March 21, 2024 at 8:35 am (1 month ago)In this novel, the Metaverse is shown as a virtual haven from a world riddled with disorder cluster rush and ruled by the Mafia. The topic was brought back to the forefront by a series of blogposts written by venture capitalist Matthew Ball.