WOTW is Meta, short for metaverse. It's the Facebook company's new name. And it sounds very 2021—which isn't necessarily a good thing. Isn't it cool seeing Zuck go balls-to-the-wall with something he believes should exist? Zuck says as much in his interview with Ben Thompson at Stratechery:
One of the things that I've found in building the company so far is that you can't reduce everything to a business case upfront. I think a lot of times the biggest opportunity is you kind of just need to care about them and think that something is going to be awesome and have some conviction and build it. One of the things that I've been surprised about a number of times in my career is when something that seemed really obvious to me and that I expected clearly someone else is going to go build this thing, that they just don't. I think a lot of times things that seem like they're obvious that they should be invested in by someone, it just doesn't happen.
(For subscribers of Stratechery, this summary is also excellent.)
I love Zuck’s visionary attitude, although I worry about the role of the metaverse in our future. The metaverse is a vision conceptualised by Ready Player One and sci-fi everywhere, but it doesn't exist (yet). In a utopian world, it's a decentralised paradise that can be played in, and built by, anyone. In a dystopian future, it's a monopolised superstate, beyond the reach of democracy. It's a place where one corporation (Meta) has ultimate control.
According to Schumpeter and Christensen, disruptive innovation happens bottom-up. Today FAANG each have a subscription to Harvard Business Review. Unlike the auto industry's decline or that of the steel mills, the FAANG companies are innovating from every angle to consolidate their monopolies. Zuck, a decade ago, missed the paradigm shift to a new platform. Facebook sits as a 'mere' app on the iPhone & Android ecosystems: it never became ubiquitous. (nb. The Facebook phone failed, too). This time, he wants to be the creator of the next platform. What, then, is the next paradigm shift?
Zuck's (unsaid) thesis is that, just as there is one social network (Facebook) and one Amazon, there will be one social metaverse. Moreover, just as there is one internet, there is one metaverse. Think of the Metaverse as the ultimate social network: as much online as off, VR and AR. Omniscient, omnipresent: always on. Our work and play may happen on there: an enormous creator economy could thrive. His vision is Web4: a reversion to the principles of Web2 (Read-Write), but with a presence in the physical world.
There is a religious slant to the concept, too. A digital (Zuck-powered) escape to a world beyond the violence and grubbiness of our extraordinary human existence. Sometimes it's worth pinching ourselves that we live at a time when the very rich are building heaven on Earth, accessible on ski goggles.
Who will be welcome in this new Meta world? If the dystopian, centralised version wins: A centralised metaverse will have no privacy, although it will likely pretend to. Will the very rich hang out on it? Likely not to an unhealthy extent: Their lives are too great IRL. Similarly, will those in poverty log in? No, it will be too expensive. So, who is the beneficiary? —the middle. The globalised labour market will squeeze incomes, and the great stagnation will leave people looking for easy ways to escape. Who minds living in a tiny flat in the depts of the Dalston when you can plug in and live the life of a millionaire online? The metaverse is perhaps not a product but a social phenomenon: The point where people spend more than half their offline time in a virtual world. For many, are we not already there?
It's possible to be pessimistic, but it's oddly inevitable. The same could have (and is) said of work moving online, but it's now normalised, and few would question how liberating it is for many workers to work from home. It’s certainly been liberating for me. To see how this could play out, it's worth re-watching Life 2.0, the documentary about Second Life and how it makes and breaks people. I think the metaverse will be the same but with better graphics. “I think it becomes a problem when you ignore your first life”, says the trailer below. How easy will Zuck make it to do just that?
If you have a few mins this week, skip through the metaverse intro video to get a feel for Meta’s ambitious plans.
Live well,
Hector