<
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/73949/life-at-the-end-of-the-metaverse>
"It is almost midnight at the close of 15th June 2026, and I am standing in the
middle of a world that is supposed to be ending, not that anyone nearby seems
all that concerned by the prospect.
In mundane reality, I am standing in my living room, trying not to bash my
shins on the coffee table, with a £320 lump of plastic strapped to my head.
Conceptually, though, I am in the metaverse—a virtual reality (VR) concept
that, for much of the past decade, big tech promised us was the future.
Mark Zuckerberg was so convinced the metaverse was the next big thing that he
renamed his company after it. Meta, as Facebook is now known, bet the farm on
virtual reality, investing more than $80bn into metaverse-related ventures over
the past five years alone—only to abruptly decide it wasn’t the future after
all.
In March this year it was announced that Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship
metaverse venture, would shut down its VR operations in June, continuing only
as a mobile app. The announcement was quickly reversed, after a fashion, as
Meta promised not to pull the plug on a service users had bought expensive
headsets to access. Instead of a quick end, Horizon Worlds would die slowly—no
longer maintained or updated, but still accessible to those who had already
signed up.
That’s why I’m standing with a Meta Quest headset strapped to my head on 15th
June. Are people going to mark the moment they staved off a virtual reality
apocalypse? Is this the celebration scene at the end of the movie, when
disaster is averted? Will the metaverse be full of cheering crowds?
The short answer was no: Meta has built a whole network of virtual reality
worlds, almost all of them empty. The concept was glitzy: Meta itself would
build a hub, which let you design and build your own VR avatar—initially, to
much derision, without legs, although these were later added.
Users could then build their own themed worlds which anyone could explore,
playing games, buying and selling virtual merchandise and chatting with other
visitors. Meta promised it would host gigs, comedy clubs and more. Big
brands—including Wendy’s, Mini, Cheetos, Fender and the NBA—were lured to build
sponsored worlds. It would be a whole new way to experience the internet.
The busiest venue I can find in Horizon Worlds is Metdonald’s, a VR “parody” of
the fast-food chain, with 29 people inside. I am teleported to a crude carpark
with a decent facsimile of a McDonald’s restaurant inside it. The design
encourages me to go through a drive thru.
When I get to the front, I hear the disembodied voices of American children
trying to get a non-functional ordering screen to do something. “Five thousand
hamburgers please,” one kid says repeatedly, before getting frustrated at
another player standing on top of their car.
Another child tries to challenge me to play one of the games nearby, and is
quickly annoyed when I can’t work out the controls well enough to do so. Meta
spent tens of billions of dollars on building the future of the internet, and
all it has to show for it is a handful of bored children in the parking lot of
an offbrand drive-thru restaurant. Something clearly went very wrong here, but
it’s not immediately clear what—or what that means for big tech’s ability to
shape the future when it’s not what the rest of us want."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Cybersecurity: June 30, 2026
https://www.patreon.com/violetblue/posts/cybersecurity-30-162474210
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
