I think it’s sad that all this needs to be given one exciting label when it’s actually multiple trends that aren’t even necessarily related.
One, it is inevitable that our concept of identity will continue to change. How people opt in and out of a persistent identity/persona/brand, and how that interacts with community standards, seems a key concern for the future. This can happen just as much in textual media as anywhere else.
Two, 3D worlds. Most tools we have today are more efficient ways of interacting than being embodied in a space. 3D games on 2D screens are fun but I see no need to somehow standardise and share these, and I certainly don’t want to move any of my day to day interactions into them.
Three, VR and augmented reality. The headsets are just bad. I don’t want to wear one at home, let alone at work or on a bus. AR apps are all janky demos on tiny screens. But it won’t always be like this, eventually let’s assume you have near perfect fidelity in a HUD on some nice sunglasses. That’ll be fun when it happens but it’s more than a decade off so I don’t know why people are making any bets on this stuff now.
Four, AI. When I finally have my cool sunglasses, I will immediately realise that the UI is dreadful. At that point, we better hope that AI and personal assistants have moved on or it’s all going to be for nothing. We will need subvocalisation tech to make these palatable for use at work or in public. If AI is good enough to service these interfaces, however, I strongly suspect the nature of work and life will be radically different anyway. Having a cadre of intelligent agents out there in cyberspace representing my interests? That’s cool, but also makes me think the actual metaverse is going to be optimised for machines not humans. We’re not going to be able to keep up.
Of these, the flashy 3D avatar stuff seems to be what people focus on and yes, does seem a trivially stupid idea. But despite my cynicism, I can’t discount the rest, beyond the fact that it all seems very far off.