Why Meta is not the metaverse
The metaverse has gained momentum in business ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s shift to Meta — aiming at developing “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it”.
But what if I tell you that Meta is not the metaverse?
What is the metaverse?
The metaverse concept was created by Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash” where the main character explored a virtual landscape that reproduces our real world. “Metaverse” is a portmanteau of Meta (“beyond” in Greek) and Universe — meaning “beyond the universe”. The metaverse’s aim is not to mimic the real world but to go even beyond by fooling users’ “senses into believing that the traditional barriers of time and space have been removed”.
In his research paper on Advertising in the Metaverse, Kim Jooyoung synthesises existing literature and states that the metaverse is “an interoperated persistent network of shared virtual environments where people can interact synchronously through their avatars with other agents and objects”.
Based on this definition, numerous core characteristics can be identified:
Interoperability: a metaverse user should be able to travel between a network of virtual worlds. For instance, ReadyPlayerMe allows users to explore numerous virtual worlds with one consistent identity.
Immersion: the metaverse includes several technologies that favor a total immersion e.g. augmented reality (physical world enhancement), virtual worlds (three-dimensional environments), and mirror worlds (digital representations of the real world).
Synchronisation: users can interact with each other’s in real-time
In addition, Tony Parisi, one of the pioneers in virtual reality, established the seven rules of the metaverse among which: “there is only one metaverse” and “nobody controls the metaverse”.
Meta is not the metaverse
Zuckerberg presented Meta as a more immersive platform that entails augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technology where users can do almost anything they can imagine in real-time. In his Founder’s letter, he specifies that Meta will be interoperable and, thus, open up to a network of virtual environments. The company provided a demo of what it would look like:
For now, Meta seems to share common attributes with the metaverse: immersion, synchronisation, and interoperability. But, is that enough to mean that Meta is the metaverse?
No, Meta is missing one key characteristic: it is aiming at controlling, monopolising, and owning the metaverse. The company is already under the investigation of the Federal Trade Commission related to potential monopolistic practices in the Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality market.
Yet, remember Parisi’s rules of the metaverse — the metaverse is one and no person, company, organisation or government can control it. Attempts to run the metaverse are damned to fail. Meta won’t be able to offer a complete solution adapted to all kinds of users and this is exactly what we are already experimenting with several projects claiming that they are a metaverse; The Sandbox, Decentraland, WilderWorld, to name but a few.
Consequently, Meta is not the metaverse. It may be considered as an amplified virtual world, a more immersive platform, or something else. And even if one day, Meta would be capable of developing what the metaverse is really about. Would you accept to live in a (virtual) world run by a company that is well-known for its controversies?
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About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
