The absence of creativity is breathtaking. Zuck pitched ‘Second Life but with horny police and even more fees,’ adding absolutely - fucking - nothing - beyond that. Somehow this failed. Somehow! It is a mystery!
He tried to appeal to normies. The people who use these virtual spaces isn’t your everyday people. Also what company is going to pay, let alone enforce vr meeting spaces. “Ok team, we’re about to go over today’s TPS reports. Put on this motorcycle helmet and awkward gloves for the next two hours.” The only meetings I’ve ever held in those types of virtual spaces is about those virtual spaces.
It’s worse: he’s chasing a joke he didn’t get. Neal Stephenson turning the Lawnmower Man / Johnny Mnemonic floating-equations cyberspace fantasy into a mall was a vicious jab. See “torment nexus” tweet.
There’s ample room for normies in VR. Seated 6DOF is wildly different from using a screen. But there’s no goddamn reason that work would take place in those circumstances. Zuck’s vision is a solution in search of a problem. Dense motherfucker ruined Oculus just to slavishly recreate the restrictions of the physical realm as a boring fake theme park where everything costs real money.
How you look in a video game… should not cost money.
Jesus Christ, even if you were trying to make virtual workplaces happen, the sane approach is to let people build private gardens and invite their friends. Forcing it will stop it from happening. But give people a personal holodeck to decorate and they’ll build a whole goddamn mansion as their glorified Zoom backdrop.
The absence of creativity is breathtaking. Zuck pitched ‘Second Life but with horny police and even more fees,’ adding absolutely - fucking - nothing - beyond that. Somehow this failed. Somehow! It is a mystery!
He tried to appeal to normies. The people who use these virtual spaces isn’t your everyday people. Also what company is going to pay, let alone enforce vr meeting spaces. “Ok team, we’re about to go over today’s TPS reports. Put on this motorcycle helmet and awkward gloves for the next two hours.” The only meetings I’ve ever held in those types of virtual spaces is about those virtual spaces.
It’s worse: he’s chasing a joke he didn’t get. Neal Stephenson turning the Lawnmower Man / Johnny Mnemonic floating-equations cyberspace fantasy into a mall was a vicious jab. See “torment nexus” tweet.
There’s ample room for normies in VR. Seated 6DOF is wildly different from using a screen. But there’s no goddamn reason that work would take place in those circumstances. Zuck’s vision is a solution in search of a problem. Dense motherfucker ruined Oculus just to slavishly recreate the restrictions of the physical realm as a boring fake theme park where everything costs real money.
How you look in a video game… should not cost money.
Jesus Christ, even if you were trying to make virtual workplaces happen, the sane approach is to let people build private gardens and invite their friends. Forcing it will stop it from happening. But give people a personal holodeck to decorate and they’ll build a whole goddamn mansion as their glorified Zoom backdrop.