Judd Karn
Online Editor
The 6th largest company in the world, Facebook, announced their new name as Meta in their recent keynote.
On October 21st of this year, Facebook announced that it would have big plans for the future and would reveal them October 28th, we now know their big plans were to change their name to Meta, but that was not all.
In the October 28th keynote they changed their parent company’s name from Facebook Inc. to Meta Platforms Inc. (similar to how Google changed their parent company’s name to Alphabet Inc. in 2015) in order to better describe what they want the future of their company to look like.
They also introduced to the world their idea of something they call the metaverse, the metaverse would be a virtual universe of endless possibilities. Think virtual reality (VR) but you can do virtually anything in it: you can work, you can play, you can hang out, you can sleep, etc.; the idea is very similar to that of Ready Player One. Meta thinks this will be the future of the internet, the next level of immersion.
The metaverse is supposed to be accessible by anyone on any device, so you can connect with your phone to someone who’s in a virtual reality world, and Meta is perfectly fit for that with their arsenal of utilities: Oculus is their foothold into virtual reality, Instagram and Facebook are their social media platforms that can integrate into the metaverse, and Messenger & WhatsApp (the most popular messaging service in the world) allow for seamless messaging and calling in and out of the metaverse.
Meta also believes that the metaverse will be the future of education and learning, putting $150 million into education in the metaverse. Meta is also going to try to build a business infrastructure inside the metaverse, with both digital and physical goods, they believe these digitals goods (outfits, exclusive items, digital property etc.) are going to become important as their physical goods.
As the metaverse is still decently far from becoming fully fledged, Meta is working on making the rules for privacy and commerce. Basically, Meta wants to be the early bird to the metaverse worm, getting a head start on integrating into the future of the internet and is putting absurd amounts of money into getting closer to the concept of the metaverse.
Some of their investments can be seen with their virtual reality company, Oculus, Oculus has taken up 75% of the virtual reality market and is continuing to release bleeding-edge technology, releasing new facial tracking technology along with a suite of new technology with their upcoming VR headset. They are doing this so they can slowly slim down the technology until it is able to be packed into the size of normal sunglasses. Meta is also working on using neural signals to allow you to make commands just using your brain and some small hand gestures.
This does all sound great, but it is also extremely scary, the acceleration at which we are getting to this metaverse we pursue is staggering. With this amount of technology, the biggest companies in the world could have even more of our personal information in their hands.
If we don’t have an active privacy policy that actually protects the consumer, the result of the metaverse could be detrimental to society.
While there are many concerns about this metaverse, this metaverse is going to be an amazing utility, but like all utilities, we have to use it correctly.
