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I Want No Part of Our Impending Metaverse Future
The demo of Zuckerberg’s dream was a nightmare
Facebook is now officially a Metaverse company after announcing its rebrand to Meta at its Connect 2021 keynote. Its collection of apps and projects will all fall under this umbrella, a move the company hopes will put out some of the fires burning on its doorstep, drawing attention away from Facebook. (Nice try.)
But the name change was only part of the show. The real meat of the presentation was the Metaverse. While we’ve already seen the Horizon Workrooms demo, which looked like being trapped inside a world with Nintendo Wii avatars (without the fun sports games), here we were given further glimpses into how Zuckerberg sees the technology working and integrating with our lives.
It was less of a dream and more of a dystopian nightmare.
The demo began with Mark going full Ready Player One, as he metaphorically put on his Oculus/Smart Glasses/insert future technology and stepped into the Metaverse. The visuals turned futuristic — it looked like he was entering the Matrix, perhaps very fitting — and suddenly, everything was virtual. He walked around his ‘homespace,’ a lush home filled with views of palm trees and water before his bliss was interrupted by a notification. After choosing something to wear — an…
