How much is Facebook spending on the metaverse?īillions of dollars a year already. The overwhelming concerns, particularly in the context of the Frances Haugen revelations and the widespread targeting of social media by state-backed hackers, are privacy and security.įor instance, an advertiser targeting you in a virtual world might not just be reacting to old-world data like your age and gender: what about your body language, your physiological responses, knowing who you are interacting with and how?įacebook has already announced a $50m (£36m) investment programme to ensure the metaverse is built responsibly”, with the money distributed among organisations and academic institutions such as Seoul National University and Women in Immersive Tech. Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Facebook’s Oculus business and a key figure in its VR efforts, said in a blogpost: “It all started with Snow Crash.” What are the legal concerns about the metaverse? Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse.” And if Facebook gets its way, so will you. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. He’s in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing into his goggle and pumping into his earphones. The novel’s protagonist, Hiro, is a hacker and a pizza delivery driver for the mafia and the first explanation of this virtual world in the novel states: “So Hiro’s not here at all. The spiel on the Amazon website says it was written “in the years 1988 through 1991 as the author listened to a great deal of loud, relentless, depressing music”. The term metaverse – a combination of the prefix meta (meaning “beyond”) and universe – was coined in Snow Crash, a novel by American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. This month Facebook said it was creating 10,000 new jobs in the European Union as part of growth plans that include building a metaverse. Speaking last month, Clegg said the metaverse would be a series of interlinked worlds, where a user moves seamlessly from Facebook’s world to Apple’s or Google’s, or a computer game publisher’s. Indeed, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, holds his Monday team meetings in the office metaverse, replete with virtual table and whiteboard. It will also include augmented reality, a sort of step back from VR where elements of the digital world are layered on top of reality – think Pokémon Go or Facebook’s recent smart glasses tie-up with Ray-Ban.įacebook already has a professional version of the metaverse under way: Horizon Workrooms, an app that lets Oculus-sporting workers enter virtual offices and hold meetings. It is a space where digital representations of people – avatars – interact at work and play, meeting in their office, going to concerts and even trying on clothes.Īt the centre of this universe will be virtual reality, a digital world that you can already enter via Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets. The metaverse is where the physical and digital worlds come together. Here’s what you need to know: What is the metaverse?
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