Feb 7, 2022
The current Metaverse is a mirage. The pursuit of the Metaverse vision could lead us to a better Internet.
On the first episode of Season 3
of the Cohere podcast, we (Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas)
frame of this season’s topic: the Metaverse.
As they did with “community”, Facebook’s announcement of the
company’s move to focus on the Metaverse, and rebranding to “Meta”,
set off a frenzy of conversation, speculation, and investment.
Made in a move remarkably similar to their 2017 announcement that
Facebook was a “community” company, it remains to be seen if Meta
follows through with creating their version of the Metaverse. It is
interesting to note that Zuck’s “Community” announcement from 2017
appears to have been taken down at some point in the past year
(archive.org
version here).
But this season of Cohere isn’t about Meta. It’s also not (solely) about VR, AR, XR, or related Web3 technologies - it is about the combinatorial effects all of these technologies and trends interacting to shape the next generation of the Internet, and more importantly, how we create a better Internet that is safe, equitable, accessible and inspires the best of human nature instead of exploiting the worst.