By Pen Pendleton and Juliana Wheeler
The metaverse, an immersive and entirely virtual reality, is the next tech frontier. That’s the message of forecasters, investors and startups. Mark Zuckerberg, the leading metaverse evangelist, bet his company’s legacy on it in 2021 when he rebranded Facebook and promised us a future of hologram meetings and three-dimensional gaming.
Unfortunately, the metaverse market has yet to pay off for Zuckerberg. While he’s doubling down on RayBan Meta glasses, his Reality Labs posted more than $50 billion in losses over the past four years. Among startups in the sector, venture capital investment fell 35% in 2023, according to S&P. That’s in stark contrast to AI investment which has exploded by 18 times in the past 10 years, according to Stanford University.
But perhaps the most challenging long-term problem is the public backlash against the perceived drawbacks of on-line life. Opinion leaders across the political spectrum are increasingly calling out the dangers of on-line life, including harassment, misinformation and crypto fraud. How metaverse companies deal with these very real issues will set the tone for the public’s future engagement in this Web 3.0 world.
Here’s an approach that’s circulating among some entrepreneurs, including Herman Narula, CEO of the metaverse technology company, Improbable, and the author of Virtual Society: The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience. If you want to build trust and credibility, elevate the public benefits of the metaverse. Given today’s polarization, global terrorism and escalating warfare, metaverse leaders could communicate a socially redeeming future for the technology. They could suggest, for instance, how users might behave differently in a fully interactive, life-like environment than on social media channels. Think of the impact metaverse advocates could have if they showed us a place where users value civic responsibilities and freedoms; a place where participants resolve conflict peacefully and treat each other with respect.
That might help change public perception, potentially exceeding even the massive value proposition of AI. With a new lens on society, Meta Ray Bans would be more than just fashionable.