It's a vision for when VR/AR transitions from being heavy clunky hardware with niche use cases and early adopters, to lightweight powerful hardware with wide use cases and majority adoption. Similar to how mobile phones started out with a small group of adopters, then technologically evolved enabling more use cases, got small enough to fit in our pockets and now everyone has one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle
The idea that we will work and play in the metaverse is blocked by the hardware right now. If the hardware is amazing (say, a regular looking pair of glasses) and can actually enable an immersive computing experience, that is more productive and better at connecting people, why wouldn't you use it? Regardless of who builds the platforms and experiences.
I wouldn't use a non-FOSS platform or experience for non-corporate reasons. My employer wants me to use a particular hardware? Fine, but I'm not using my money for it, I won't like it, and I'll break it every chance I get.
The idea that I will work and play in the metaverse is forever and eternally blocked by which particular group of assholes is trying to wrangle me. If it's a group that allows me the same access they have, which enable me to wrangle the tech and myself? I'll pay triple the premium, just to stick it to Zuck and other proprietary scum.
I respect your opinion and completely understand where you are coming from, but I think you should also consider the amount of technical effort, organization and money required to build something like an open platform/protocol for the metaverse + all the advanced hardware required. It would be awesome if a group of strangers from the internet were able to band together and build this, but let's face it, they will have no where near the resources and talent a place like Meta, Google, Apple or Microsoft has. They have the top engineers on the planet, hardware pipelines and the resources to actually make these ideas become reality.. or virtual reality? :)
I absolutely respect the technical challenge of the Metaverse, but also: I'm not really interested in it.
I live a fairly tech-minimal lifestyle already. I have my computer, which is largely a tty machine, and my phone. All of my media is either downloaded music files, pirated lectures, or physical books.
I think of VR/AR, the Metaverse, etc. ... and it fills me with a sort of vertigo. I'm desperately in love with my physical existence, as such. I very much abhor any attempt to make computers _more_ present in my life.
I'm happy to wait 30+ years for a Metaverse that doesn't repulse me. If I were to die without ever having worn a VR headset, I'd be likewise happy.
I'm much more interested in finding ways to meaningfully, socially, connect via my terminal. I've been happy with IRC for the past 5 years and see no reason why I won't be happy in the future.
EDIT: thanks to mosh and termux, my phone is also largely a tty machine.
> I wouldn't use a non-FOSS platform or experience
You are in the extreme minority, if smartphone trends are to be treated as any kind of indication. So your actions likely would not matter to Meta/Apple/Google.
Unfortunately, I was born into a world without FOSS phones yet where phones are mandatory. I've therefore unhappily furnished Google with more money than I'd ever have liked to, did my best to scrub the hardware of their taint, and treat it like an adversary.
Thankfully, for now, VR is not mandatory. If it becomes mandatory in the long dusk of my latter years then I will be content as a grumpy old man humbuggering about the kids with their newfangled record players.
And, yes, I am in the extreme minority. It has a negatively, and severely, impacted my social life (on top of being socially ungraceful, I have relatively far less space to ply my social wares). I'm so thoroughly radicalized that this is merely another price I'm happy to pay.
My actions don't matter to them, and I aspire to a day where their actions have a similar impact to me.
I'm with him in that. And I am glad I am able to clarify this for you, Android OS is built upon a FOSS project ( AOSP ) and that is by and large the most popular OS in the world. There's ton of community projects that prove that millions use and contribute to FOSS mobile software.
Oh and there's no way in hell this corny Horizon Workrooms will ever, ever take off.
To me, Meta is a more nefarious hint at the collection and backroom sale of users' metadata.
Whether meta fails or succeeds is not related to the openness of the solution. People do not care. They will literally pay thousands of dollars for a device they do not own if you show them shiny things.
The idea that we will work and play in the metaverse is blocked by the hardware right now. If the hardware is amazing (say, a regular looking pair of glasses) and can actually enable an immersive computing experience, that is more productive and better at connecting people, why wouldn't you use it? Regardless of who builds the platforms and experiences.