Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke at length about building a virtual world metaverse at the company's annual Connect conference.
The metaverse is the Facebook the most ambitious plan ever, which is essentially a future virtual reality where users could live a digital second life with games, friends and work using VR devices. All this would require Oculus VR glasses under the company's umbrella, which would allow people to roam around the online space at will and interact with other users in Horizon Home through avatars.
Plans for the company according to in addition to social gatherings, the metaverse will also be used for work, and users will be able to create dedicated study rooms, sports, games and all sorts of fun activities they can think of. In addition, there would of course be a digital marketplace where companies could trade their virtual services and goods.
Zuckerberg didn't tell us much about the technical background beyond the meta-meme, so we didn't really get a satisfactory answer as to how this would work in practice. On reflection, we do not even understand why it would be good, and for whom, because people almost certainly do not, and we see only the dangers rather than the benefits.
The term metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 Snow Crash in his novel, he meant the virtual reality-based evolution of the internet.
