Attempting to walk away from driving the catastrophe driven by social media over the last 10 years, Facebook as decided to rename itself "Meta". Most recently, what has stuck to their corporate shoe has been making teenagers feel bad about themselves.
Facebook played a key role in giving us the Trump presidency and the January 5 insurrection. It has powered the "big lie". It made anti vax insanity into a business. In countries like Sri Lanka, it powered the ethnic violence that caused thousands of deaths. Facebook has the blood of thousands on its hands, but it's in trouble over making middle-class girls feel bad.
Ah well.
So that wasn't "Meta". That was those other guys - "Facebook".
And of course the way Zuck and friends navigate their way out of responsibility is a characteristic mix of high tech, business opportunity and denialism that would make the Tobacco executives blush.
But the tech "Meta" is playing with has a direction of its own. Like they say, Nuclear bombs don't drop themselves but they are still terrifying.
The same tech that lets my iPhone (pretend) to identify me powers the open air concentration camp of the Uyghurs.
But I digress. Technically, "Meta" is thrilling. I agree with the Zuck that VR is an important part of the future. Like the personal computer, it enters the world as a toy. Oculus Quest is the "pong" of VR.
Stepping away from the smoking ruin of "Social Media", I would like to put on my future goggles to tell you what (I think) the future holds for the Internet in general, not just "VR". Not just "Meta".
(Ignoring the first 50 years of computers ...)
"Artificial Intelligence" escaped the chess board and took up the duties as full-time prison guards and and an eager servant of Russians to pull apart American society. 1984 whisked by in "real life" while something infinitely more sinister was born to take up residence in a powerful connected computer/surveillance device innocently called a "smart phone".
I have decided to put the specifics of the Quest in a separate posting since the whole idea of it will likely be totally unintelligible for a lot of readers. Here, I want to talk about synergy with other existing and emerging technology.
So what kind of future does Quest, the pong of VR, point to?
The Quest is affordable and offers (first for the kids) escape from the boring 2D world of the personal computer. It is a deliberate business plan of "Meta" to wean the kids from the old style interface into VR, dragging their parents with them, so that eventually the computer "screen" will go the way of the teletype. Sorta like pong was the first wave of "tech" that replaced board games.
If all this seems nuts to you, I urge you spend 30 minutes with a Quest headset. It's something new. It feels "real". Trust me, you can live without your word processor. You can still get your email and viral videos. Even in this pong-world you can still meet with friends and plot the overthrow of democracy. It's perfectly safe.
One thing that's missing is a "Meta" currency that will allow money to change hands without supervision. The staggering opportunities of "Virtual World" and "Augmented Reality" coupled with commercial applications has certainly not escaped Zuck and friends.
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