Can the metaverse deliver on the dream of a new way of living life online?

By Jeremy Peel

Augmented reality is being touted as a way to layer digital elements atop the physical realm – treating the metaverse like a parallel world, or a benevolent Upside Down

The avatar is at the centre of Meta’s pitch for the metaverse – with one outfit for work, another for play, and maybe a fantasy one for gaming.

“IF IT ISN’T PROVIDING EXPERIENCES THAT ARE MORE FULFILLING THAN JUST PLAYING A VIDEOGAME THEN IT IS ENTIRELY POINTLESS”

Moments before Facebook finally showed its hand to the world – specifically, a hand gripping a VR controller and sending gestural signals to a neural wristband – the company warned investors that its metaverse presentation would include “forward-looking statements”. It’s a fairly standard piece of US legal language, but one that happens to encapsulate a change the metaverse has wrought on the way big tech thinks and talks. Mark Zuckerberg’s Connect presentation in October was conspicuously light on products you might feasibly buy for a loved one next Christmas; instead, it took a form more akin to Tomorrow’s World, the BBC’s notoriously fanciful science and technology showcase.

The predictions were broad, brave, and sometimes daft, while Zuckerberg demonstrated a newfound appreciation for “probably”, a word he employed with enthusiasm throughout.

In a decade’s time, many of Facebook’s forecasts will no doubt have been rendered quaint, if not laughable. The hyperlinks replaced by teleportation between photoreal 3D worlds. Screens scrapped in favour of a “$1 hologram from some high-school kid halfway across the world”. Digital goods projected into the real world through augmented reality, and physical ones turned into inventory items. New forms of governance.

But seeing the fifth-most-valuable company in the world change its name to reflect its commitment to the metaverse – even if partly to escape past sins – has a sobering effect. When Zuckerberg has effectively tattooed ‘metaverse’ on his forehead, you believe he’ll do everything in his not-insignificant power to see it happen – and drag everyone along with him.

It’s perhaps a relief, then, for those who’ll have to adapt, to realise that change is coming slowly. By the time Facebook Connect was finished – and the company officially redubbed Meta – the great gulf between its ambitions and current progress was laid bare. On the one hand, it pitched an interconnected, immersive Internet that retooled the 3D worlds of games for the social and workplace benefit of everyone. On the other, it admitted that all users could hope to try in the near future was Horizon Home, a modest expansion to the Quest 2 boot-up hub that allows you to gather with friends in a VR living room and watch videos together.

Horizon Workrooms may already exist, making the virtual office possible – but it’s no comfortable space to spend an afternoon typing, given the weight of currentgeneration headsets, along with heat issues.

Zuckerberg hopes the metaverse will reach a billion people within the next decade. The question is what’s going to convince an eighth of the planet to get on board. It’s clear why corporations cannot get enough of the concept: the metaverse has a catch-all quality that allows disparate projects – VR, AR, cloud services, gaming – to belong to the same vision. It provides a sense that big tech companies are building to something not yet realised, rather than merely maintaining or replacing existing products –a tantalising prospect that has proved catnip to investors.