[ProllyInfamous]

It would be incredible to think that Mark Zuckerberg genuinely thought their Metaverse/VR investment was going to be akin to Xerox's bayarea PARC campus (developer of modern networking / GUI &c). I guess both were ultimately profit-negative financial disasters.

[jordanb]

Watching their demo video was the perfect encapsulation of "this was not made for users" I have ever seen. First of all the idea of hanging out in a digital world with Mark Zuckerberg is so bleak. I can't imagine a worse hang.

But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!

[dasil003]

In other words they haven't really pushed the vision forward since the Jaws 19 hologram in Back To The Future 2.

[nradov]

I guess they read William Gibson's 2007 novel Spook Country and tried to build that. It had virtual street art as a plot device.

https://williamgibsonbooks.com/#books

[schrodinger]

It's easy to get caught up in your own hype when you're surrounded entirely by people who always tell you what you want to hear.

[chokma]

Maybe the sycophantic behavior of AI models comes from rich people having them build to behave the same as their personal yes-men. A person accustomed to never hearing "no" won't like a machine that tells them off.

[rubyn00bie]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… For years this has been said, and for most of us isn’t something we’ve been able to experience until recently. Yet, now we can see how chatbots have made sane folks lose their minds, by simply being too agreeable. I think it’s a grim look at what it’s like to be hyper wealthy. The odds that they’ve completely disassociated from reality, IMHO, have increased exponentially after seeing the effects on “normal” people. The only difference is us plebs, don’t have the resources to then bring our distorted view of reality to life.

[Esophagus4]

I guess he had nothing to lose by making those big bets really.

He’s got one of the biggest free cash flow machines in the world, so he’d rather swing and miss than not swing and be left behind, given that with $200B top line, there is essentially no financial penalty for a swing and a miss.

It does look goofy to have made such a big gamble on something as stupid as Metaverse in hindsight, though.

[wolvoleo]

I do think he had a point. He should just have put it on the slow burner. Not throw billions at it against the steady stream of technological improvement.

I do think virtual interfaces will be a thing when the tech is ready. Not really ready player one style but more like what they have in the expanse for computer tech.