People just don't want these embodied experiences outside of extremely narrow and controlled circumstances (e.g. games). 3D is just fundamentally not an efficient way of conveying information. Almost all useful information in the world (especially at work) is [hyper]text. Sometimes it's speech, which is just slow, inefficient text. I am absolutely baffled by this movement. Surely nobody actually wants any of this 3D stuff?
There is a genuinely interesting conversation to be had about the metaverse. I think lots of conversations around identity are interesting: what is durable, what is opt-in/opt-out, how do we mediate a la carte personal identity with community standards etc. That's a hugely important conversation the outcomes of which we are feeling right now. This is _much more_ important than what fucking 3D fox avatar you walk around with.
I think there are even interesting conversations to be had around AR, and smart glasses etc. But that have to be predicated on the fact that the technology just _isn't there_. Even if you had amazing smart glasses that weren't massive shitty headsets (that even if some people can tolerate, are worthless for work or on the bus), you'd still have the problem that the UIs are useless. Until we have way, way better AI assistants, you just can't have AR/VR UIs. Because you _need_ high bandwidth text interfaces. In the absence of keyboards that means voice, except the idea of using crappy voice recognition at work, or walking around, is deeply painful. So we'll need really good subvocalisation tech, and that doesn't exist. We'll need really good AI agents (and I genuinely believe the biggest concern of the metaverse is going to be how machines interface with it, not humans), but they don't exist. But that's fine, cos the headsets are crap so none of this is a pressing concern and I am _utterly baffled_ why this conversation is important in 2021. It's all years off.
So I do think this will all one day be relevant, but not now. But even when it is, I think the _absolute least interesting_ bit of it is embodied 3D spaces. Basically nobody has ever wanted that, they don't want it now, they will never want it. It's just a crappy way to do business. It's a fun way to play games, but you know what, 3D on a 2D screen is still fine.
The longer this conversation continues, the more money gets sunk into it, the crazier I feel. Nobody wants to go to work in Minecraft. Nobody wants to go to the pub in Roblox. They're just games that kids enjoy. You cannot build a trillion dollar investment hypothesis off the back of games kids enjoy.
I dunno, this all sounds a bit grumpy, I'm sorry, but part of that is that I genuinely do think there is interesting stuff to discuss here. Maybe 3D worlds are dead on arrival. But making internet spaces ubiquitous and ambient? Interesting. How can I as a human, with privacy needs but a lust for reputation, inhabit these spaces? Interesting. We're just concentrating on the stupidest possible parts of the mataverse right now and there's going to be a spectacular metaverse Winter if we don't dial down the hype.