Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has argued he and others who believed immersive environments would require head-mounted hardware got it wrong.
In a post penned to mark Meta’s recent decision to end its work on the Metaverse after blowing through $80 billion, Stephenson said that twenty years ago, when he worked at virtual reality hardware company Magic Leap, he would ask “Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands?”
“At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,” he wrote. Now he thinks that another 20 years into the future, devices like smartphones will still dominate. “Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces.”
I don’t think VR need to be the “next big thing” but it is just a fun little thing. I have an old HTC Vive and I love firing up beat saber and taking turns with folks when I have company over.
Also vr chat is great!
It seem like people are obsessed with making vr better amd more widespread. I’m content with it to just be a fun little thing I break out every once in a while
Vr would be fine if any complex games arose, and the ones that existed weren’t murdered to make trend chasing pvpve slop
Do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands? At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no,”
So this guy made the same prediction once already and was completely wrong
"When someone’s wearing a head-mounted display, on the other hand, you don’t know whether they are looking at you or not,” he wrote. “Likewise, when someone holds up their phone and aims it at you, it’s obvious that you are on camera. That’s not true in the case of glasses or goggles. So it’s creepy.”
Never heard of sunglasses? Creeps have been using them to covertly ogle strangers in public for generations now, and yet the majority of people own and use them.
This guy is a fucking moron.
Science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse” Metaverse inventor
That’s not what inventing means. That’s like saying George Lucas “invented” hyperspace.
This isn’t even the actual article headline, it’s “Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’”. OP?
I run the hed connected with the link when posting.
I never understood the hype of VR goggles beyond things like VR Chat combined with body trackers. Fun to watch people make an ass of themselves in VR games, but that only lasts so long before it gets boring.
That’s my take, at least.
I really enjoyed Beat Saber for a while. It seemed like the only game that really made VR worth it as a hard requirement, though. Pavlov was fun for a while, too, but my knees definitely suffered.
Went from believing “yes” is inevitable to believing “no” is inevitable instead of learning the lesson that most of this is just random
VR still lives for gaming! Steam VR offers some great experiences, with mods taking that further, and the upcoming Steam Frame headset (if AI doesn’t steal every component in existence). Don’t expect growth for daily digital tasks (Apple VR and the like tried and failed), but the niche has been carved out for gamers!
