Galleria Rustica

Though a recent tech-sector downturn has hit metaverse stalwarts like Meta Platforms Inc. and Roblox Corp. particularly hard, it hasn’t stopped firms from doling out million-dollar paydays to new executives as a down payment to secure their digital future. Gartner Inc. analysts say one in four people will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse within a few years. What we’ll be doing there isn’t clear, but P&G, for one, hopes it will involve engagement with Crest toothpaste or Herbal Essences shampoo.

Bloomberg: Chief Metaverse Officers Are Getting Million-Dollar Paydays. So What Do They Do All Day?

Nearly two decades before companies like Meta began pouring billions of dollars into the metaverse, a little company called Linden Lab already had one. In Part 1 of our series, we meet the programmers who built Second Life — a 3-D virtual world where users could be and do whatever they could imagine. And we meet the intrepid users who were the pioneers of this brave new world.

WSJ Podcasts: How to Build a Metaverse, Part 1: Genesis

The app walked me through a brief tutorial that largely centered on how to operate an in-app wearable wrist device that for obvious business reasons they couldn’t just call an Apple Watch. I was already wearing a whole big thing on my face and holding two controllers in my hands. But sure, why not throw in a pretend fourth interface? I learned how to run and jump within the Horizons Worlds world, which made me wonder if I was going to have to flee some kind of virtual danger, and there was even a lesson in grasping and firing a “gun” that shot colorful balls through targets. Thank goodness for the Second Ametament, I guess. It took me a bunch of wild flailing to figure out which things I was supposed to point and click at and which I was supposed to reach out and “touch.” All of this felt profoundly not relaxing. And, by this point, the loud instructions coming from the Oculus’ speakers had driven my wife out of the actual room where we were both sitting.

Slate: Getting Away From It All in Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse

Social-media users were quick to deride the image, with some likening the graphics to 1990s video games like Zelda and Quake, and 2007’s Second Life.

Insider: Mark Zuckerberg unveils new, boyish metaverse avatar after getting mocked for creepy, dead-eyed version

But what if, instead of thinking of the metaverse as a set of interconnected virtual places, we think of it as a communications medium? Using this metaphor, we see the metaverse as a continuation of a line that passes through messaging and email to “rendezvous”-type social apps like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and, for wide broadcast, Twitch + Discord. This is a progression from text to images to video, and from store-and-forward networks to real time (and, for broadcast, “stored time,” which is a useful way of thinking about recorded video), but in each case, the interactions are not place based but happening in the ether between two or more connected people. The occasion is more the point than the place.

O’Reilly: The Metaverse Is Not a Place