Why the Metaverse Matters
gather.town
gather.town
I would suggest a barometer for whether a new technology does, in fact "matter": how much of the writing about it is by VCs and startups looking to hype their own investments.
In the case of "the Metaverse", that ratio seems to be surprisingly close to 1.0.
(Another barometer of significance is, "Does it have a definition which is sufficiently concrete to say what it isn't?," which the 'metaverse' seems often to conspicuously lack as well.)
Second, the title begs two questions;
The metaverse matters ...to whom?
The metaverse matters ...for what?
I won't deny that the metaverse (whatever that means after Facebook imposes their imprint on it) has some amount of entertainment value and I'm open to that. But I'm wary of it becoming "indespensible" and the minute it appears to go in that direction I'll be looking for alternatives, including giving up on the net if needed (since I'm not working, I can afford to do that -not everyone can). Anything shaped by Facebook (and to be fair, this applies to Amazon and Google as well) is by default antagonistic to its' users interests until proven otherwise.
So far everything I've heard about the metaverse makes it sound like someone's trying to sell me vrchat for business.
This particular version skips the vr for basic video game maps. Ok.
If that's worth $50m in investment congrats I guess. Enjoy it.
The internet already does this, so that -- all by itself -- does not make the "metaverse" matter.