Mark Zuckerberg performs a small jump in the air – and lands safely on his own feet. Why is this worth reporting? Because he mastered the hop in virtual reality.
You have to know that the avatars, i.e. the user bodies in today’s virtual reality applications, look more like floating busts. The digital bodies are cut off from the waist. It was more of a necessity than an aesthetic decision. On the one hand, to prevent users from stumbling over their own furniture with their glasses on and thus blind to real reality. And on the other hand, because too much movement in the virtual version of reality leads to people getting nauseated.
When talking about virtual reality, so-called thoughtleader in their contributions to the debate and keynote speeches, they like to talk about immersion and presence, i.e. the feeling of actually being there. But at the big conference that the meta group organized last week to show people how they should live and work in the future, the new legs were the biggest sensation. But there is still a long way to go in this future: On Thursday, Meta admitted in a statement that the air jump performed had been tricked. It didn’t really take place in virtual reality, but was merely created as an artificial animation for the demo video.
Perhaps this is how the metaverse by arrangement prevails
And fundamental questions also arise: Why should people want to seal themselves off from the outside world even more hermetically after two and a half years of experience with home office – and spend 1500 dollars for the necessary technology? Meta is now cooperating with Microsoft to bring Office programs such as Word or Excel into the Metaverse. “We believe that a unified, digital office can make distributed work so much better,” said Zuckerberg.
You then look through the VR glasses, which are nothing more than two displays mounted directly in front of your eyes, into an artificial space in which you in turn stare at a screen. Much more alienation is hard to imagine. In addition, instead of fantastic landscapes, you only have a boring office in mind. But that’s not all of the dystopia: Inside the glasses, five cameras are aimed at the user’s face in order to transfer eye movements and facial features to the avatar. With the meta-company history, it is hard to imagine that the data read out in this way will not also be marketed at some point.
Instead of the future of the Internet, the importance of social interactions in digital spaces and our relationships with the virtual and physical world, it’s ultimately just about more productivity. And another level of control. Because if you’re connected as an avatar, you can’t even quickly turn off the camera. And so perhaps the question of why will soon be easy to answer: Because you have to.
Meta shows how it’s done. The company’s management recently complained that its own employees did not use the glasses often enough. The group’s vice president therefore wrote a fire letter: Everyone who works in the company should make it their task to fall in love with the artificial world. On command.