They offer that it might enable companies “to embed computing into the real world and to embed the real world into computing” (the Microsoft C.E.O., Satya Nadella)-and that it could make “the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences” (the Tencent C.E.O., Pony Ma). They suggest that the metaverse will be a “massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users” (the venture capitalist Matthew Ball). What they are saying is incredible, not least because it is entirely speculative. (The term “metaverse” itself, which has its origins in dystopian science fiction, has been aggressively promoted by companies with worlds to sell.) Reading about the metaverse, I’ve often had the uneasy feeling that I am taking something far too seriously-giving credence to the wrong things, internalizing the wrong logic-simply because a small number of world-historically wealthy people have told me to. As the concept of the metaverse has snaked into the discourse, predictions about it have seemed mainly to reflect the desires of the corporations that are setting the terms of the conversation. The key idea is that, no matter what you’re doing in the metaverse, or where you are, your identities and assets will be multi-platform and transportable: you’ll be the same “you” at work and at leisure. In recent months, the metaverse has been described as a kind of online place, combining virtual reality, augmented reality, the Internet, entertainment experiences, gaming, and remote work. I think it is useful, in attempts to forecast the future, to be humble about the enormous mystery of other people’s desires. Watching Zuckerberg stroll through a blandly monied virtual set, appointed, as if from a drop-down menu, with books and trinkets and unused-looking sports equipment, I wondered if there were people who wanted this, or would find this vision exciting. I thought of him most recently while watching Mark Zuckerberg deliver an hour-long presentation on Facebook’s rebrand-it is now called Meta-and its newfound focus on building the “metaverse”: a vast and integrated virtual world. It is hard to know what anyone else really wants, and I think of this man often. FarmVille, our host confirmed pleasantly-it was a game, a farming simulator, played by tens of millions of people on Facebook-before asking if we might be interested in some eggs. The dog nosed around in the vegetable beds. Through the picture window, we could see mist rising from the evergreens. “FarmVille?” I asked, half awake, spreading honey over a slice of toast.
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