’The Illusion of Sight’

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World-Building

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What’s happening in the meta= verse? Siva Vaidhyanathan on the stakes of Meta’s pl= ans to finish what Facebook started.

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Jezael Melgoza

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The Reality Labs division<= /strong> of Meta Platforms, the multinational tech conglomerate formerly kn= own as Facebook, lost US$4.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022—br= inging total losses for the year to $13.7 billion—according to an ear= nings report posted on Wednesday, February 1. The purpose of Reality Labs, = and the meaning of the company’s rebranding as Meta, is what CEO Mark= Zuckerberg has described as his “holy grail”: technology that = will allow users to meet, socialize, work, and play games in an immersive &= ldquo;metaverse” of augmented and virtual reality. Meta will, Zuckerb= erg says, create “an embodied internet where you’re in the expe= rience, not just looking at it,” and where the defining quality of th= e experience is a “feeling of presence.” So far, there’s = very limited evidence of consumer demand for this technology. Meanwhile, th= e company laid off 11,000 employees in November. And yet Meta remains commi= tted to the course. Where’s it headed?
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Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the director of the = Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia—and th= e author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Unde= rmines Democracy. Vaidhyanathan sees Zuckerberg’s investmen= t in the metaverse as an extension of his original vision for Facebook&mdas= h;and ultimately, an expression of his belief that virtual and augmented re= ality can realize that vision without Facebook’s social and psycholog= ical downsides. Meta’s losses and layoffs, Vaidhyanathan notes, stem = mostly from transitional business issues; its bet on the metaverse is still= open. But the question, he says, isn’t just whether the metaverse is= something consumers will want; it’s whether it’s something hum= an beings will be willing to sustain deeper into the century—any more= than they were able to sustain totalizing, collectivist visions of human c= onsciousness in the last.
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Vyse: Facebook wa= s one of the biggest companies in the world when it reoriented itself aroun= d the idea of the metaverse. How do you understand the transition?
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Vaidhyanathan= : Like any company, Facebook was looking at emerging challenges to its busi= ness and considering its strategic options for the long term. But fundament= ally, the metaverse represents Mark Zuckerberg’s fullest vision of th= e future—and what he sees as his company’s opportunity to shape= it.
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There’s actually a lot of co= ntinuity between how Zuckerberg saw Facebook from the beginning and how he = sees Meta now. He started Facebook with the idea that it could engineer a d= igital environment where people anywhere could connect—whether to eng= age in hobbies, share music, support sports teams; to forge different kinds= of communities together; even to find the love of our life.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09At the outset, he wouldn&rsquo= ;t have anticipated some of the more negative things people ended up doing = through Facebook—like propagating false information, spreading anger = and hatred, and driving political polarization—which have ended up in= turn defining a lot of its legacy in the world. Zuckerberg seems to have e= arnestly believed that the more we’d live through Facebook, the bette= r off we’d all be.
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And despite all the negative thing= s people ended up doing through Facebook, he has the same idea about Meta: = that he and his teams can design an environment that will allow human being= s to flourish—to be better educated, to be better entertained, to tre= at each other better. Facebook’s mission was initially, “to giv= e people the power to share and make the world more open and connected&rdqu= o;—eventually, “to give people the power to build community and= bring the world closer together.” That’s Meta’s mission = statement today.
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Vyse: So, how did= the idea of a “metaverse” come into the center of this vision?=

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Vaidhyanathan: So= mewhat infamously, the idea comes from science fiction—originally, fr= om a book by Neal Stephenson called Snow Crash. For Stephenson, an= d for other writers who’ve built on the idea, the metaverse is someth= ing that blurs and ultimately erases the lines between what’s virtual= and what’s real. Notably, it was almost always a dystopian, anti-hum= anistic idea—with deep social and psychological costs for the world. = That’s certainly been striking to people who understand the source of= the idea.
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In Meta’s interpretation, of= course, the metaverse represents a future that promises a massive realizat= ion of human potential. To begin with, that means a focus on investments in= consumer-level virtual-reality platforms, for social or professional purpo= ses—that enable people to be in the same room at the same time, where= they might now just be chatting on Slack or meeting on Zoom—or for g= aming.
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The company is also investing in a= ugmented-reality technologies, which incorporate the virtual into our exper= ience of the non-virtual world. That might mean words and images projected = into our eyeglasses—so that as I walk around, I’ll see, say, st= reet names or historical markers in my field of vision.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09But what Zuckerberg ultimately= wants is to fuse the augmented and the virtual, so the lines between them = aren’t entirely clear—so we can engage with the world in an aug= mented way and then easily move into a fully virtual environment. That migh= t start with a headset and eventually shrink to eyeglasses. For people who = are sightless or sight-impaired, it might involve implants or the sort of m= ental-simulation technology that creates the illusion of sight. Which could= be miraculous or shades of Stephenson’s metaverse, or both.

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Richard Horvath

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More from Siva Vaidhyanathan a= t The Signal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“This is a shift= away from being an algorithmically driven social-media platform, = reliant on advertising revenue, to a company that will have multiple revenu= e sources: the sale and lease of hardware and software, plus subscription s= ervices, along with advertising—as they roll out these virtual-realit= y and augmented-reality systems … which, in the end, consumers might= or might not ever really want.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“The ambition of= the metaverse … isn’t unlike the ambitions of t= he modernist architects of the mid-to-late 20th century, who thought they c= ould design whole cities—like Brasília in Brazil or Chandigarh= in India—in ways that would transform the people who lived in them. = The idea was that the buildings in these cities would be so unadorned, so s= tark, so caustic, that we’d have to create lives and connections toge= ther that would be the basis for a better society. None of that worked&mdas= h;or really came close to working—and yet here we are again, with a l= ot of very well-funded engineers and designers doing the same thing with el= ectronic technologies and digital environments..”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“Could some tech= nological components of the metaverse end up being humane? Yes, if= they’re developed incrementally, deliberately, and carefully as tool= s we can use in discrete ways to make our lives better. If your goal is to = make tools that humans can use, rather than virtual or augmented worlds tha= t absorb them—tools they can use maybe to enhance schooling, maybe to= enhance creativity, maybe to support a better quality of life and human fl= ourishing in other ways—that could be positive. If you’re not t= rying to revolutionize everything, then you might actually succeed; you mig= ht actually make our lives a little better.

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