Written by Paul Jerome Watson
Facebook announced on Oct. 28 it was rebranding itself as Meta, a social networking platform with a focus on connecting people in an augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) space called the Metaverse.
“Today we are seen as a social media company,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the Metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started.”
The rebranding has caused speculation about the future of VR and technology. Developer of VR game “Imperfect” and Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Professor Walter Woods sees this as a step forward, even if he remains cautious of what it can become.
“The Metaverse is simply a unifying brand for what has already been happening in VR for some time,” said Woods, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Social VR before the Metaverse could be compared to what web search was before Google. Search was decentralized and unreliable, and it took a company creating a powerful set of tools to win the technology race.”
Woods cites issues such as privacy, advertising, monetization and censorship as the root of his doubt in the platform given the company’s past practices but stresses these issues can be resolved before the Metaverse is embraced.
“It is important that we trust the platform we choose to engage in both as creators and consumers,” said Woods. “Given its creators, we so far have little reason to trust the platform currently. We as an industry would be happy to be proven wrong. There is a small window of choice here, where we have leverage to demand certain standards before we agree to adopt a centralized platform.”
These sentiments are shared with SCAD Interactive Design Professor Cyril Guichard, who works with a Meta-owned company Oculus on a VR project. Guichard believes the Metaverse is the “new frontier” of technology but warns Meta could dictate how future VR and AR technologies develop in the future.
“Meta is already an overwhelming force in the social network space,” said Guichard, “an overwhelming force in the VR space, and the company rightfully anticipates the merging of both, and wants to secure its dominance of what the resulting market will become. Whether it will be a force for good or not is a legitimate concern and the question we should try to tackle right now, not when it’s too late.”
Zuckerberg’s vision for the Metaverse is years still years away and will cost $10 billion to realize. How this rebranding and shift in focus will alter technology in the coming decade is unknown.
“The metaverse implies ubiquity between many technologies and assets,” said Guichard. “It can be achieved in two ways: Either by consensus on standardization and openness between several key players on the market… Or one company is so overwhelmingly present in the space that it can dictate where and how the technology is evolving. The role Meta will play in this, how inclusive they will truly be, is yet to be seen.”
