Goodbye Facebook: now called Meta 0:56
(CNN Spanish) -
Despite the investigations and scandals that currently surround Meta - a company formerly known as Facebook - the social media giant shared more details of its metaverse or metauniverse, a virtual space in which users (to via digital avatars) can walk and interact with each other in real time.
During the annual conference on virtual and augmented reality, Facebook Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Meta, announced the company's name change as well as a series of new concept videos highlighting his vision of what the metaverse would be in the future. .
Facebook changes its company name to Meta
"We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the Internet, and it is also the next chapter for our company," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter from the founder published at the end of Thursday's event.
According to Zuckerberg's vision, the next social platform would be even more immersive.
One in which you no longer just look at the experience, but "you are in the experience."
"Isn't that the ultimate promise of technology to be together with anyone to be able to teleport anywhere and create an experience of anything?" rather than in people.
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"The metaverse gives us the opportunity to change that if we build it right," said Zuckerberg who previously expressed that being able to offer a sense of presence was "the holy grail of online social experiences" and indicated that this is what he has wanted. create, even before starting with Facebook.
But what is the metaverse as envisioned by the CEO of Meta?
According to what was shown during Facebook Connect, the metaverse is a virtual experience well exemplified in the fictional film "Ready Player One" by Steven Spielberg, where users enter the virtual reality universe and find in it everything they could wish for in real life.
The metaverse of Facebook would be a "preventive antidote" to the eventual rituals of digital disconnection, says writer Jorge Carrión
For example, you could send your holographic image to a concert to meet up with a friend who attended in real life, sit at a table during a virtual meeting with your colleagues who are physically in other parts of the world, and play immersive video games with your friends.
In the metaverse, according to Meta, users could do "just about anything you can imagine," be it meet up with friends, play, work, exercise, create, and shop. "If you are in the metaverse every day, you will need clothing and digital tools, and different experiences," explained Zuckerberg, who indicated that the metaverse will offer not only a social experience but also provide trade opportunities.
While Zuckerberg is aware that the metaverse as he envisions it is far from being a tangible reality, the company has been laying the foundations for some time. For example, Facebook recently announced the investment in Horizon, a virtual social world that remains in a private beta testing stage. In terms of hardware, the company has its Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality glasses and “Ray-Ban Stories” smart lenses.
During Thursday's event, Zuckerberg also announced that virtual reality is coming to Messenger calls this year, discussed his plans to operate a virtual marketplace where developers can sell virtual goods, and indicated that a new home screen would come to Oculus. Quest to make chatting and gaming in the virtual world more social. Next year the company will also launch an updated version of its virtual reality glasses, Oculus Quest 2, under the name Project Cambria.
“There is a whole ecosystem.
We are building multiple generations of our virtual reality and augmented reality products at the same time, as well as a new operating system and development model, a digital commerce platform, content studios and, of course, a social platform, ”Zuckerberg told talk about the metaverse, prior to the Connect event.
Facebook seeks to reinvent virtual meetings 0:54
Will the metaverse have the same problems as the internet?
Proponents of the metaverse say there could eventually be huge business potential.
A completely new platform on which to sell digital goods and services.
It could also have benefits on the way humans interact using technology.
"What we're really doing is discovering ways to add technology to our lives to improve them and improve our communication with other people," said Avi Bar-Zeev, founder of virtual reality and augmented reality consultancy RealityPrime and former Apple employee, Amazon. and Microsoft, where he worked on HoloLens.
"It's not just about conquering a whole new world."
What is the metaverse, the topic that attracts the tech giants?
But there are also a number of concerns about how the metaverse could be used or exploited.
Some in the space worry that an ad-based business model creates, on the one hand, people who have and can afford to pay for an ad-free helmet or metaverse experience, replicating inequalities present in the real world.
"I don't want to see a world where we segregate people into those who can afford to get a better experience and those who can't," Bar-Zeev said.
He added that online harassment could become more intense when users are able to assault each other's virtual bodies, rather than simply exchanging unpleasant words on a screen.
Data privacy and security could also become bigger concerns when "more of our lives, our data, our work, our investments now exist in purely virtual form," Ball said.
And other issues, like misinformation and radicalization, could also get worse in the metaverse.
"If you can now replace someone's entire reality with an alternate reality, you can make them believe just about anything," Bar-Zeev said.
"Everyone's responsibility on the field is to prevent bad things as much as possible and to encourage good things."
Clare Duffy and Alejandra Ramos of CNN contributed to this report.
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