Join Me in The Lattepunkverse
Lattepunk
Remember this?
In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg officially changed the Facebook Company to Meta. From what I can find, Zuck has spent around $42 billion (with a B!) on the Metaverse. And I have yet to meet someone who has actually used it! Wild!
But what inspired this?
Terms to know:
VR - Virtual Reality
AR- Augmented Reality
MR - Mixed Reality
XR- Extended Reality
PR- Puerto Rico
Cool? Let’s continue.
The idea was to get ahead of the next wave of computing. We went from desktops and laptops to cell phones and tablets. Microsoft with Windows and Apple with MacOS controlled the desktop/laptop world. Google with Android and Apple with iOS dominate the mobile computing (see a trend here?) Mark wanted to get ahead of the next wave of computing. He wants to be the Android of Virtual Reality. But why?
Two years ago this nonsense fascinated me! I delved deep into this. Podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, I was on it. Seeing how the first ever mention of the word “metaverse” came from the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, back in the golden days of 1992, I had to check it out.
Let me tell you something reader, this book is a banger! Do yourself a favor and read this. A cornerstone of the cyberpunk genre if you had to read a newsletter where I say it. It may be too much to credit just that book, so I’ll give another book I think was a major inspiration: Ready Player One.
Really good book (also a movie) that I also recommend (skip Ready Player Two, unless you REALLY like the first book). There’s two major things those books have in common. First is that both the characters put on a headset of some sort to teleport themselves into virtual worlds. Good point of reference when you consider the device Meta sells you.
Wait, what about the second thing? Oh yeah. The other thing both those books have in common? The world has gone to shit! They aren’t escaping reality because it’s fun, it’s cause literally reality has nothing to worth experiencing. Now, is that what Meta was trying to imply? Of course not! But…they did release this commercial:
Facebook Meta 'Old Friends' Super Bowl 2022 Commercial - YouTube
All Super Bowl commercials, visit our site: https://superbowlcommercialstube.com/ ✅
Isn’t that cool? We could hang out in a Chuck E. Cheese that never shuts down! Why go see Orangutans or Black Rhinos? The Sunda Tiger? How bout lunch in admiring Blue Whales? They’re endangered now, but by the time we add them to the Metaverse they’ll be the only place you can see them! Isn’t that awesome!?
That’s unfair criticism. I don’t actually believe Meta is killing endangered animals to promote their software (👀), but it's vibe I got from it. We want to bring people together cause there’s no good way to do that on Earth now. To be fair, that’s not their angle, it’s actually gaming.
Which makes sense! People use video games to hang out online with their friends already. Games like Minecraft, Roblox, and World of Warcraft have millions of people log on and hang out in virtual worlds together. I’m not even going to delve into Second Life, which gave off metaverse vibes long before Meta.
Steam is the most popular video game marketplace on PC. They have roughly 33 million users. Of those users, about 2.25% of them have VR Headsets. I’m terrible at math, but my research shows that about 745k Steam users have a headset. To Meta’s credit, more than half of those users are using a Meta headset to play their games. They aren’t the first major headset company to want to do gaming things either.
I actually used the Microsoft HoloLens. Let me tell you something, that thing was sick! One of my previous employers bought one and decided I was the dude that liked tech (strange assumption), so they asked me to set it up. It actually blew my mind. I didn’t think a device like that could exist. It was seriously impressive. So impressive, the US Army wanted to, probably, kill people while using it.
So what does $42 billion show us? That some people like to play VR games? I’m not going to include this multi-billion dollar industry in the conversation, I don't think we're ready for that talk yet. Where is the Metaverse? Why aren't you reading this in it right now?
Luis, why are you writing about this if you’re saying it amounted to nothing? Cause earlier this month, Apple (why do I feel like I’ve mentioned them?) released their virtual rea...uhh, spatial computing device. The Apple Vision Pro.
Now, Tim Apple has always been an advocate of AR. Apple would like to enhance your meatspace with more relevant information. I’m getting déjà vu. It’s like all the Glassholes from 2013. Back in 2013, people were seriously concerned about a product made by Google that could record everyone in public at all times. Google Glass was discontinued, but really, they were way ahead of their time.
But the technology isn't here to produce the product that Apple truly envisions. The Vision Pro is a preview of the world we'll be living in.
Apple isn’t even the only one. Meta has the Ray-Ban partnership that’s pretty popular. And others are joining the race to put technology on your face too. In Apple’s announcement video, they used this scenario to show us a good use of the Vision Pro:
So reader, is this what we want? To watch your kids in through cameras instead of being in the moment? Are these Silicon Valley companies trying to iron out the weird, make this normal for your kids? Maybe your kid’s kids? They probably won’t think it’s weird to sit next to their family while everyone is wearing headsets. I mean, look at us in 2024:
Imagine 2045. This, in my opinion, is a long term investment for all these companies. Google and Microsoft will join the race again. For us, it's about how we prepare for this future.
Until that future arrives, there is something more important happening right now:
We'll save that for the next newsletter...
I want to leave you with some things I've enjoyed this week:
PCGamer had an awesome article about a trade that happened in the 2007 gem of a game, Team Fortress 2. A real life dog (valued at 450 keys ($740ish)) was traded for a virtual sweatshirt (valued at 5400 keys ($8100ish)). Yeah! Check it out.
Along with some 250k other people, I've been hooked on this new game called Balatro. It's a roguelike poker game where you strengthen your hands, increasing their value, and use Joker cards to essentially cheat and make you hands even stronger. I suck at it but its insanely fun.
If you enjoyed this, share it with someone.