221–230 of 391 posts
Let us see about the rumors that Apple will launch Apple glasses this fall. If I wanted AR I much rather have it from Tim Cook than Zuckerberg, and Apple knows how to build hardware. Zuckerberg does not.
I had completely forgot that Facebook had a VR headset. When I said they didn't know how the built hardware I was thinking of their attempt to build an Android phone.
I'm surprised how negative the comments here are, even if it is true that 'metaverse' is turning into a pretty silly buzzword. I think there's still coherent concepts defined by it (interfaces becoming much more inline with what humans find natural, integration of VR+AR capabilities, and the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general). Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be ab…
Whenever some form of immersive "universe" under corporate control is described in fiction, it tends to be a fairly dystopian tale. Every so many years VR is going to "finally be here" ... and then it never materializes. Add to that the head of the corporation in question is a hop, skip and a jump away from near Bond-villain status.
It would be remarkable if the gut reaction of most people were not negative. Which makes your surprise at the negative remarks remarkable.
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> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a ve…
Every community needs a villain, but ask yourself this: whatever happened to Libra? Portal? (Or Building 8 in general.) Did you know that Facebook built its own drone (Aquila) that it abandoned in 2018? M? Facebook Home? Parse? Wirehog? As seen with Google, just having excellent engineers and revenue are insufficient to building lasting products, much less fulfilling an aggressive long-term mission.
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Serious question regarding my flagged comment in this thread since I'm new here: What's wrong with it? Is it not ok to express that I feel a phenomenon is sad? Did I need to go into more detail about how the phenomenon arose? Is criticism of capitalism or our societal systems unacceptable?
Its just dismissive and rude sounding. Why is it sad? Surely the people who built it and use it think its cool. As others said "late stage capitalism" is a very opinionated and loaded phrase. Your comment is very negative, without inviting room for critique or feedback. It does not open a discussion, just judgement and derision.
As for why SL is sad, is because it offers a shallow alternative to RL for people for whom RL is either unaccessible due to economic conditions (hence the late-stage capitalism thing) or for those who just want to escape it altogether (but replace it with a frankly shittier version, as opposed to some completely different fantasy world where you can do stuff you couldn't do in RL such as the aforementioned WoW). Not to mention that vast swathes of the userbase are creepy perverts, but perhaps it is for the best that they've chosen to confine themselves there. Hence, the sum total of this is quite sad imo. In the early stages when it was a fun and novel type of thing and alternatives for similar things were much less widespread, my points don't apply as much, but in 2021, they absolutely do.
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By this logic, FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. I think it's a dangerous line of thinking as the power these company wields absolutely corrupts their governance. Sure they give us cool toys, and they have the marketing budget to make sure know it, but real talk: we need restrictions on their ability to dominate every area instead of cheerlead…
> FAANG is best positioned to every tech innovation because they have the resources and know-how to pursue it. This isn't what I've seen. FAANG, and all large corporations, have many layers of bureaucracy that are required for approval of projects. "New" and "innovative" are "different" and "not well understood" by definition. As the bureaucracy get crusty, and more risk adverse, the ability to get these "unknowns" a…
I'm surprised how negative the comments here are, even if it is true that 'metaverse' is turning into a pretty silly buzzword. I think there's still coherent concepts defined by it (interfaces becoming much more inline with what humans find natural, integration of VR+AR capabilities, and the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general). Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be ab…
> I'm surprised how negative the comments here are Honest discussion about Facebook on tech-centric forums is nearly impossible these days. Facebook and Zuckerberg are favorite villains in the tech discourse in 2021. I don't agree with everything Facebook has done, but the vitriol directed at Facebook has become so disconnected from reality that it's getting hard to take it seriously. > this still does seem like a ve…
It has completely poisoned discussion on a number of virtual reality communities, since Facebook owns Oculus and the Quest 2 is very commercially successful. The /r/virtualreality community has become incredible negative, tribal, and toxic over the last couple years, mostly revolving around conspiratorial speculation about the future of the oculus platform as owned by Facebook. Almost any discussion about any topic is guaranteed to have at least a couple comments somehow relating it back to why Facebook is evil and "destroying VR."
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Its just dismissive and rude sounding. Why is it sad? Surely the people who built it and use it think its cool. As others said "late stage capitalism" is a very opinionated and loaded phrase. Your comment is very negative, without inviting room for critique or feedback. It does not open a discussion, just judgement and derision.
I can see how it's a bit short and simply makes a claim without going into more detail, but clearly there is enough there for people to be able to reply and disagree and why (as the few of you replying to this have). I just don't see the point of flagging such a comment so that it can no longer be replied to. I think it's unfortunate that downvoting and reporting seem to be merged together on this site, since those a…
I'm surprised how negative the comments here are, even if it is true that 'metaverse' is turning into a pretty silly buzzword. I think there's still coherent concepts defined by it (interfaces becoming much more inline with what humans find natural, integration of VR+AR capabilities, and the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general). Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be ab…
>the 'Internet' becoming more and more 'real life' in general >Facebook is absolutely one of the best-positioned companies to be able to become a long-term market leader in these areas I think the reason for the negativity is possibly because maybe a company that's managed to create a massive platform where reality is massively distorted and manipulated algorithmically to maximize ad revenue and engangement, whatever…
IMO Facebook creating the metaverse is like Xerox creating the GUI. Most likely the things that made Facebook successfully in social media will not make them as successful in VR/AR and they’ll either pivot hard or (more likely) lose their market leader position.
(I’m holding FB stock until their AR offering is announced, and possibly for a few years afterwards but I’m doubtful I’ll have their stock in 15 years.)
It was pretty clear to me that had Blizzard a bit more vision they might have been able to pull this trick off with World of Warcraft but at this point I think that too is off the table.
One of the more interesting things I've learned over the course of my career is that the ability of an organization to "change" is tightly governed by the ability of its leadership to "see". Truly the most fascinating part of my time at IBM after it had acquired Blekko was seeing a company from the inside that actively at war with itself between the folks who wanted to modernize it and the "old guard" who wanted to keep the status quo.
As an executive it is important to understand that in order for change to happen, all of your leadership has to see their own role in the new vision and how they will be successful, otherwise they will treat it as a threat and work against it, both actively and passively.
Given how Zuckerberg has handled the disinformation problems at Facebook (essentially by throwing other executives under the bus rather than take ownership) it seems unlikely they would be able to pull of such a transformation. Mostly because the other executives would be sabotaging efforts for fear they would be thrown out.