On "Making the Metaverse"
Last week Nick Clegg, Meta (Facebook) President - Global Affairs (formerly Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), in his blog post “Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters” said:
“There won’t be a Meta-run metaverse, just as there isn’t a ‘Microsoft internet’ or ‘Google internet’ today.
“The metaverse isn’t just about the detached worlds of VR, where we don headsets that take us out of our environment in the physical world and transport us somewhere new ... It stretches from using avatars or accessing metaverse spaces on your phone, through AR glasses that project computer-generated images onto the world around us, to mixed reality experiences that blend both physical and virtual environments.
“A wide range of technology companies — from big players like Microsoft and Google to smaller ones like Niantic and Emblematic — are already building experiences and products for the metaverse. Early versions of it already exist in the virtual worlds of games like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite. It incorporates technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) that, while still young, have been in use for some time.
“The metaverse is coming, one way or another. The future of the internet will be more human than the way we experience it today — more physical, interactive, and speech-based than flat screens filled with text and images.
“Imagine, for example, how useful it could be to wear glasses that give you virtual directions in your line of sight, or immediate translations of street signs in foreign languages. Or even make it possible for you to have a conversation with someone who is thousands of miles away as a three-dimensional hologram in your living room instead of a head and shoulders on a flat-screen. And, as I will go on to explain in more detail, the potential societal benefits — particularly in education and healthcare — are vast, from helping med students practice surgical techniques to bringing school lessons to life in new and exciting ways."
OUR TAKE
Successful metaverse efforts will leverage many technologies to deliver compelling 3D “experiences” that address or exceed end-market expectations.
As discussions continue about the metaverse’s benefits and potential risks, the opportunities are broad-based - extending across many industries.
Clegg’s 8,000-word blog post presents both the potential and the governance challenges of the metaverse (and today’s technology landscape) - but it is less clear how Facebook/Meta is addressing some of its own challenges.