In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson introduced the concept of a “metaverse” — a fantastical virtual world that felt as real and present as reality itself.
Almost three decades later, Mark Zuckerberg is dragging Stephenson’s vision into reality.
Last Thursday, the Facebook CEO and co-founder unveiled his company’s metaverse project during a virtual conference. Reminiscent of Stephenson’s book and other sci-fi staples like Tron or Enter Player One, Zuckerberg’s metaverse was pitched as an “embodied internet” where one could play games, socialize, work and more.
“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet,” said Zuckerberg. “We’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.”
During the same conference, Zuckerberg revealed Facebook’s holding company is changing its name to “Meta” to “reflect our commitment to this future,” according to Meta’s website. Notably, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other properties owned by Meta will keep their names.
So what’s the metaverse?
In practice, the metaverse would resemble a mishmash of existing technologies and ones still in development, all working together to create a tangible, digital layer on top of reality. It would be facilitated by virtual and augmented reality, accessed via goggles, glasses and other tech still in the works.
For example, instead of peering into the internet through a screen, users would slip on virtual reality goggles and feel physically present inside Meta’s virtual world. Eventually, haptic technology might allow users to feel physical sensations, while biometric scanners pick up micro-movements allowing for facial expression, Zuckerberg said.
“You will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up,” wrote Zuckerberg in a founder’s letter last Thursday.
Alternatively, people could bring digital aspects, like 3D art, into the physical world through augmented reality — think games like Pokemon Go. Zuckerberg said these will be accessible through high-tech glasses still in production.
Other metaverse aspects would be accessed via more normalized technologies, like computers and smartphones.
When will it get here?
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the full metaverse is still years away. A news release from Sept. 27 estimates many of its products “will only be fully realized in the next 10-15 years,” and will require collaboration from policymakers, industry partners and experts.
Still, during his conference, Zuckerberg said: “Within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”
The rise of virtual reality will be “inevitable,” said Beth Coleman, author of Hello Avatar and associate professor of data and cities for the University of Toronto. Just as society had woven the internet into its cultural and socioeconomic fabric, Coleman expects virtual reality to eventually be just as integral to daily life and the economy.
“In some ways we’re already doing all of that stuff online already,” said Coleman. “How much time have you spent on zoom in the past 18 months? How many things do we buy online as opposed to going to a physical store?”
“…The metaverse is just the next step in this development of robust, real time, visualized communications,” she said.
That Facebook (or Meta) is leading the charge, however, concerns her.
“If the newly branded Meta has a monopoly on the metaverse… that is a very daunting prospect,” said Coleman. “Essentially, Mark Zuckerberg will rule the whole virtual world.”
Privacy concerns
Anatoliy Gruzd, professor and director of research at Ryerson University’s social media lab, said the metaverse may be more susceptible to data breaches.
“(The metaverse) will expose more user data across more platforms… by creating all these different places where people can interact and link in other devices, it creates more opportunities for privacy concerns,” he said.
At the same time, the metaverse could allow much more data collection, from user biometrics to facial recognition. This is concerning, said Gruzd, considering Facebook’s track record regarding privacy and security.
For example, in 2018, a whistleblower revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a firm connected to both Donald Trump’s 2016 election team and the winning Brexit campaign, harvested the private information of up to 87 million Facebook users without permission in 2014.
Despite Facebook discovering the leak in 2015, it didn’t alert users and took limited steps in securing and recovering the stolen information.
Misinformation and radicalization
Gruzd was also certain that Facebook’s current issues like political polarization, hate speech and misinformation would carry into the metaverse.
“I guarantee you that the same problems we observe in social media right now will exist in any other forms of connected reality, simply because we are humans,” he said. “The same factors that drive antisocial behaviour online and some of the other trends like spread of misinformation (won’t stop), there’s just going to be a new place to do that.”
The message is especially prescient in light of the Facebook Papers, a hoard of internal Facebook documents disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
The papers revealed that Facebook rolled back measures preventing hate speech and misinformation months before the Jan. 6 insurrection; employed meagre measures to counter hate speech and misinformation in the developing world; actively chose user engagement over safety, utilizing algorithms that favoured outrage over all other engagement indicators; and much more.
“Naive visions”
Taina Bucher, associate professor of media studies at the University of Oslo in Norway and author of “Facebook”, cautioned that these are still the early days of a product launch. Zuckerberg is trying to hype up the product with “rhetoric and strategic communication,” she said.
“So now begins the task of sorting through these weird, hopelessly naive visions. What are the repercussions and the consequences of all of this?”
The metaverse is so big and multifaceted that there’s bound to be unforeseen problems, not to mention all of Facebook’s existing issues, she said — “problems are just waiting to arise.”
Bucher also wondered how a system designed by a multibillionaire would accommodate people and perspectives from around the world.
“It just feels very privileged. I’m quite certain (the metaverse) can only be imagined from a very specific place, and that place is so exclusive and unrepresentative of the rest of the world,” Bucher said.
“It’s easy to laugh it off now… but it might actually become a reality because it’s Facebook who’s trying to realize it. And then it might not be that funny anymore.”
