China's tech juggernauts form metaverse research institute

While Meta has been hemorrhaging billions trying to bring CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse to life with little to show for it, China has decided it too will take a crack at the virtual-reality concept. This week reports emerged in China's state-owned Shanghai Securities Journal that some of the nation's most powerful tech …

[Anonymous Coward]

As Gibson said

The old timers realized it had been there all along.

The Metaverse is two things in people heads, one boils down simply a different way to visualize and manipulate data, the other the many splendored idea of the worlds and information those tools allow you to experience.

Facebook keeps failing because every version of the idea they can conceive is limited by the dystopia they wish to perpetuate. Nvidia's idea is more interesting and more useful, but wont inherently attract casual users. That's not it's job, but it means at least the data scientists get it at least. It is a thing that does not just a thing that merely is. Game companies will need to go a different direction too, creating curated experiences that engage and entertain, much narrower in focus.

But the truth is the metaverse has its roots far back into people visualizing telco switch logs and GIS data, of dialup era mail servers and bbs networks, or flows of capitol through the financial system. If we can succeed in building a more universal tool for visualizing and navigating that, it may get attached to the term Metaverse. Or AR, or whatever. The finish line isn't buzzword compliance, it's being able to do things that are worth doing in a new way that isn't just change for changes sake. Whatever realm someone is looking at they need an experience that lets them get stuff done without dragging the UI like an anchor.

Clearly the game industry is already there within their niche, but we haven't seen a universal UI for immersive environments that is more efficient then what we have now in the non-immersive world. I doubt that is going to come out of Facebook, or China. They are more focused on creating a hellscape that steers and watches your every move. They put all their chips on that very specific back end. I'd say the best play is to cut both of them off from whatever standards get build around this new industry. The want other people to build all the parts that matter for them, then allow them to force the whole thing into their framework, under their terms, and under their control.

Let's not do that shall we? Facebook is clearly having trouble buying talent, at any price right now. Next they will try to scoop up whatever new players rise on the game board via acquisition. China will steal the front runners works and try to go it alone with local talent. We should turn that around and poach their talent, leaving them with brain drain and incompatible products. Then if we can get our act together a bit we can buy ourselves a chance to reset the net back to a version we haven't seen in many a year, more open, more free, and hopefully this time well out of the grasping hands that wrecked the first open internet, damning it to a death by 1000 cuts.

[sarusa]

China's ideal realized

A place where every single thing you see is created or at least pre-vetted by the totalitarian state's algorithms and everything you say or do is obsessively recorded forever.

Of course that applies to Facebook's garbage as well, but they're only interested in more venal matters.

[PeterM42]

Some way to go

In an electronic world where Office/Outlook 2019 cannot successfully send a simple PDF to an email recipient, I have grave doubts that much will come of all this "Metaverse" hype.

Blimey, Facebook app won't always rotate to landscape orientation.