<story><title>Microsoft and the Metaverse</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2021/microsoft-and-the-metaverse/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>suby</author><text>All of the discussion around the metaverse as if it&amp;#x27;s something we should take seriously has me baffled. It&amp;#x27;s an ill defined concept and the effort is being led by a company that hardly anyone trusts or even likes.&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell it&amp;#x27;s the internet but in VR with an avatar. Or in other words it&amp;#x27;s the internet but with extra steps in the way of obtaining the information or completing the transaction, not to mention the increased hardware costs (VR headsets are expensive) and bandwidth costs associated with this superfluous fluff.&lt;p&gt;I just don&amp;#x27;t understand how they aren&amp;#x27;t being laughed out of the room. This is fantasy level stuff and it&amp;#x27;s going to be an absolutely massive failure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ALittleLight</author><text>When I was a child I was in an &amp;quot;Odyssey of the Mind&amp;quot; group and in one competition we had to solve some problem and the plan my team came up with had a few steps, one of which was &amp;quot;Build a robot&amp;quot;.  We were all children and none of us had even the slightest idea of how to build a robot or any relevant technical experience or ability.  But somehow, we never realized this deficit and came up with our plan and tried to execute it.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&amp;#x27;t until we had destructively disassembled a power tool that one of us had access to, on the theory that we could use whatever motor was inside of that tool to drive our robot, that we realized we had no idea what we were doing nor any conception of how to build a robot.  I had a feeling of amazement that sticks with me today that we were able to articulate our plan to solve the problem, which depended on our robot helping us with some sub-task, but were completely unaware of the fact that the robot was far beyond our ability to construct.  Our plan was like something that might have worked in a cartoon but not in reality.&lt;p&gt;That feeling comes back to me as a kind of &amp;quot;Build a robot&amp;quot; moment in cases like this.  &amp;quot;In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!&amp;quot;  Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there.&lt;p&gt;Another way of thinking about it is taking the hardest part of the problem and hand waving it away to solve the easier parts and then forgetting that there is a big blank spot in your plan.  It&amp;#x27;s easy and fun to think about all the stuff you can do in a compelling virtual reality metaverse, but you don&amp;#x27;t have one and aren&amp;#x27;t likely to get one any time too soon.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft and the Metaverse</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2021/microsoft-and-the-metaverse/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>suby</author><text>All of the discussion around the metaverse as if it&amp;#x27;s something we should take seriously has me baffled. It&amp;#x27;s an ill defined concept and the effort is being led by a company that hardly anyone trusts or even likes.&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell it&amp;#x27;s the internet but in VR with an avatar. Or in other words it&amp;#x27;s the internet but with extra steps in the way of obtaining the information or completing the transaction, not to mention the increased hardware costs (VR headsets are expensive) and bandwidth costs associated with this superfluous fluff.&lt;p&gt;I just don&amp;#x27;t understand how they aren&amp;#x27;t being laughed out of the room. This is fantasy level stuff and it&amp;#x27;s going to be an absolutely massive failure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jayd16</author><text>&amp;gt;VR headsets are expensive&lt;p&gt;Quest2 is $299, so actually on the scale of a very cheap phone.&lt;p&gt;Maybe some things are more tedious but some things are better.  Ever more ubiquitous computing and contextual&amp;#x2F;spatial computing of AR is really interesting.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t get it but others find AR&amp;#x2F;VR compelling and Microsoft and FB smell money.  It&amp;#x27;s worth talking about why these large companies are spending the effort.</text></comment>