Member-only story
The Metaverse Will Never Happen
How do I know? Because I’ve seen 3D movies.
As a 50-year-old man, I am rooting for the transition to the metaverse, where my hair will always be thick, my Cialis prescription unfilled, and my history cleared.
I wrote a 2015 Time magazine cover story on virtual reality titled “The Surprising Joy of Virtual Reality — And Why It’s About to Change the World.” I did not actually believe it was going to change the world other than in the broadest sense, much like how this Medium column will change the world in that the world now has one more Medium column. But my editors figured “Virtual Reality… Meh” wouldn’t sell subscriptions.
Virtual reality is, however, indeed joyful. It’s really fun for gaming. It’s a huge step forward from lava lamps for marijuana enthusiasts. But that’s not why Mark Zuckerberg paid a 21-year-old kid named Palmer Luckey, who wears Hawaiian shirts and sandals and majored in journalism before dropping out of California State University at Long Beach, $2.3 billion for his VR company.
Zuckerberg believes VR is the final platform, the end of an evolution from cave painting to the printing press to photography to radio to video. It’s where we’ll shop, socialize, play poker on a space station with a robot friend, hold meetings, and — if I can guess the way a guy like…
