Mark Zuckerberg has grown up. At the beginning of his presentation – virtually, of course, it’s about jumping from the real to the digital world – he sits in a staid gray armchair. He is wearing black jeans and a black sweater; the room looks like the living room of a hipster in his mid-thirties: decorative bookshelf, retro bike and surfboard, fancy plants. He speaks like someone who is still hip and cool, a visionary; but also like someone who takes people’s worries and needs seriously and wants to offer solutions, he uses the term “humility” several times. Humility, humility.
The solution, according to Zuck: Metaverse, in which the virtual and real world merge. He wants to combine virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) so that people can meet as avatars in digital space, work together and interact with one another. “I know that people will now say: This is not the time to focus on the future,” says Zuckerberg right at the beginning, given the numerous problems his company has in the present and in the real world, and this works a little Presentation actually like an escape from yourself.
Maybe that’s why he announced at the end, and he actually chose the words “One more thing” from Apple founder Steve Jobs, that he had renamed his company, from Facebook to Meta – the new logo looks like a mixture of glasses and the symbol of infinity.
In a bathrobe to talk to investors
Grown up. That’s probably the worst possible assessment for a guy who, especially in the early days of Facebook, was very proud of not knowing exactly what this platform was supposed to be – except: cool. Who slipped in a bathrobe to talk to investors and later appeared in a hoodie and flip-flops. Naivety, curiosity and megalomania are wonderful when you have an idea in the Harvard dormitory – but not at all cool when you are responsible for a corporation that made $ 29 billion in the last quarter and is about as popular as a brand due to numerous scandals like athlete’s foot.
Zuckerberg, 37, is on an image advertising tour for his company and of course for himself; for a visionary, he does this with an astonishingly predictable strategy: bet on the future. But well, what should it look like, this metaverse? And what will Meta be for a corporation?
Computer games such as Fortnite: Teenagers hang out together, pop stars give virtual concerts in front of millions of fans. Or the fascinating VR experience with the Oculus glasses, which turns you into a Star Wars figure, a boxer or a spectator on the sidelines of sporting events. Facebook, sorry: Meta, bought Oculus in 2014 and now has tons of glasses made. This year alone, Meta is investing around ten billion dollars in the division Facebook Reality Labswho is tinkering with the virtual future.
The end of the screen
Zuckerberg, meanwhile switched from the hipster living room to a virtual room, presents this evolution of the technology industry as the end of the screen: a virtual world in which users are completely immersed and which seems to be limitless. Chess with friends on another continent; a walk through a forest with flying fish; Attending a concert in Los Angeles, even though you are sitting in Kyoto, Japan. Naive question: Is a concert still cool when everyone is sitting at home and you can’t feel the sweat of the others? Too early for that? OK. But you can buy band merchandising for your own avatar. Naturally.
For the group, Metaverse naturally means entering two tech sectors in which the group has not been particularly successful so far: its own mobile operating system and hardware. At the end of the screens, new devices are needed that enable entry into the virtual worlds: VR headsets, glasses for augmented reality, sensors for facial expressions and wristbands for gestures. Facebook wants to deliver that, but does without specific products – the vision is more important at the moment.
That sounds a bit like Facebook twelve years ago. But because many remember the development of Facebook, they fear that utopia will turn into dystopia; a hype that will make few people rich, but ultimately could do more harm than good to humanity. After all, like hardly any other company, Facebook has contributed to transforming the once open network into a collection of closed platforms and ecosystems.
Disturbing insights
What Zuckerberg presented looked like the start of an episode of the science fiction series “Black Mirror” – which always start fascinatingly and then often drift into disaster. He talked about wanting to bring people together. But, and Zuckerberg admits that, that’s exactly what he said on Facebook, and aren’t we just seeing the negative consequences? For a good month and a half, the media have been publishing details from the so-called Facebook files. The internal studies, presentations and chat logs give a disturbing insight into the inner workings of the group.
Zuckerberg is visionary, optimistic and self-confident, but also curious and a bit naive. “We don’t know exactly how it will turn out” is a previous statement by Zuckerberg, and that makes one curious, but also cautious, about what will become of the Metaverse. Ultimately, the goal, and that too, should be stated by every company boss: to inspire young people, i.e. to be cool, instead of optimizing existing platforms for older people.
The presentation, no matter how cool things were shown, is more important for the group with the new name than for humanity. Zuckerberg presented himself as an adult who can still be cool and inspire people under 30. However, they should tell him that these two things are mutually exclusive, and Zuckerberg will also have to make a decision at the Metaverse: be cool for the kids or be cool for the investors. The decision on Facebook is known.