All Mode
At its annual Facebook Connect event in late October, the social media giant and Oculus owner broke some big news: Meta is now. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other properties owned by the corporation will now be collected under the parent entity Meta.
The metaverse already exists: it’s Minecraft, it’s Pokemon Go, it’s NFTs, it’s cryptocurrency, it’s virtual sex. Apple’s LiDAR equipped phones can provide laser-guided measurements of physical space. TikTok is loaded with animated intelligent face filters that can change your appearance in myriad ways. The person we are online is rarely the same as the person we are offline. All these are aspects of metaversal living. What, then, is Facebook offering?
Entering the Metaverse
A homeless person uses an Oculus Quest 2. The “metaverse” is a controversial concept tied to dystopian futurescapes. [Image: @tolstoybb]
Meta does sound exciting. After all, it’s one level above whatever used to exist; it is transcendence by definition. What seems to have been largely ignored by the Facebook fandom (such that it still exists) is that many of those who introduced us to and taught us about a potential metaverse didn’t necessarily see it as a positive development, just an inevitable one.
A Meta Problem
Facebook’s long hyped social VR platform Horizon may be the key component of the shift into being “a metaverse company.” Bringing millions of existing Facebook users into a VR social platform – and requiring them to use Meta hardware, no doubt – would provide another degree of immersion and accessibility (both conscious and unconscious) to Meta’s users. Unless Meta (née Facebook) really does make a radical shift in agenda, beliefs, and priorities, though, that accessibility to users will be primarily used to advertise and extract data.
Meta hopes to reimagine collaborative work with Horizon Meetings. [Image: Meta.]
Cambria is Coming
Leaked textures turned into a render of what Project Cambria might look like. [Image: Basti564]
Full-color passthrough will be coming to Project Cambria. [Image: Meta]
The impending arrival of Cambria is perhaps the most exciting Facebook Connect revelation for VRPorn.com users. A killer VR/AR headset, designed with short-term future-proofing in mind, is a great get for virtual porn fans, especially as adult entertainment pushes further into VR and closer to physically interactive AR. How Meta handles adult content on its platforms remains to be seen.
We are closer to Ready player One, and it’s going to be a reality changer for everyone.
This is going to be BIG!