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Tag: #Metaverse

He’s Baa-aack!

He’s Baa-aack!

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Meta – the company formerly known as Facebook – has gone all in on the metaverse and judging from this past week’s press conference where Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased his latest and greatest, it looks like this time, it might just have legs. Pun intended, of course, for those of us who remember his past iteration of the space and the legless floating torsos.

Now he’s back, like a bad penny, and in case you missed it, here is Everything Revealed in 10 Minutes, including “the launch of 28 chatbots (conversational agents), which supposedly have their own personalities and have been specially designed for younger users. These include Victor, a so-called triathlete who can motivate “you to be your best self”, and Sally, the “free-spirited friend who’ll tell you when to take a deep breath,” France24 reported.

“Meta sees these as “fun” artificial intelligence,” the piece continues. “Others…feel that this latest technological development could mark the first step towards creating “the most dangerous artefacts in human history”, to quote from American philosopher Daniel C. Dennett’s essay about “counterfeit people.” Read More...

This Is Meta Frightening

This Is Meta Frightening

Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash

If you’re wondering why Mark Zuckerberg has poured some $15B into his metaverse project despite seeing ‘no results,’ according to the tech press, we’re wondering why no one pays attention to the man behind the curtain. Following its developer conference, Meta was roundly slammed for not being further along, given the amount of money their Reality Labs received to develop it, to the point where Facebook’s ‘desperate’ metaverse push to build features like avatar legs has Wall Street questioning the company’s future, as Business Insider reported. The publication also asked “How many more warning signs does Mark Zuckerberg need to see before he pulls the plug on his metaverse?”

This just in: At least one big investor is calling for Mark Zuckerberg to throw in the towel on the metaverse, saying Meta ‘lost the confidence of investors’

Or does Zuckerberg see something we don’t? And where did all that money go?

Meta released a new metaverse-friendly headset, and the price tag aside, Meta’s New Headset Will Track Your Eyes for Targeted Ads, Gizmodo reported, coming yet one step closer to reading your mind. “Whether you’re resigned to targeted ads or not, this technology takes data collection to a place we’ve never seen. The Quest Pro isn’t just going to inform Meta about what you say you’re interested in, tracking your eyes and face will give the company unprecedented insight about your emotions.” Read More...

Is Facebook Imploding?

Is Facebook Imploding?

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Although you might believe that we meant to say ‘Meta,’ no, we meant Facebook, which is a division of Meta.

According to Techcrunch, Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B in Q1 – but the 2030s will be ‘exciting’ and damn the torpedoes. Make no mistake about it and according to Input, Mark Zuckerberg is hell-bent on the metaverse — and getting you to work in VR, pointing out that “The Facebook CEO…sees it as the “successor to the mobile internet”…The big question is if anyone will follow Zuckerberg into the metaverse.”

Certainly not Sheryl Sandberg. According to the Wall Street Journal, “One of the world’s most powerful executives became increasingly burned out and disconnected from the mega-business she was instrumental in building. That dovetailed with a company investigation into her activities. Read More...

The New Era of Tracking: Too Much to Swallow?

The New Era of Tracking: Too Much to Swallow?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

 We have entered a new era of tech. Web 3.0, including blockchain/the distributed web, cryptocurrency, the metaverse, 5G and before too long, quantum computing (The Need, Promise, and Reality of Quantum Computing), which will certainly be a huge game-changer.

After all the loss of privacy we’d experienced during Web 2.0h???, as we now like to call it, as capturing all our personal data was supposedly all in the name of selling us yet another pair of, say, sneakers. Oh, and connecting the world through social, too, as it was the social web after all, no matter how anti-social it became over time. But considering how much more the next era in tech is promising – and let’s not forget robotics, connected glasses, eg the upcoming Apple Glasses, the Internet of Things, AI, Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, et al are also in the mix – what a wonderful era of promise awaits us! We’re finally going to get it all right and in fact, to help you prepare, head’s up: “To succeed in the future, you MUST learn web3, @Mishadavinci tweeted.  These 7 world-changing concepts get you up to speed.”

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The Metaverse and the Peloton Saga: A Cautionary Tale

The Metaverse and the Peloton Saga: A Cautionary Tale

Technologies change with time and circumstances. The lockdowns brought the rise of Zoom, Peloton and Hopin, to name a few. But times change, as do needs and fortunes.

While much attention given of late to Peloton, it’s also notable that Virtual events platform Hopin cut(s) 12% of staff, citing goal of ‘sustainable growth.’ As Techcrunch reported, “Following unprecedented growth and several acquisitions, we are reorganizing to align with our goals for greater efficiency and sustainable growth,” the company said in a statement…Hopin acquired five companies in just 2021, including a $250 million purchase of StreamYard.

David Bowie said that tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming, and as TechCrunch noted, Hopin “merely 11 months prior…closed a $400 million raise at a $5.65 billion valuation. Then (founder Johnny) Boufarhat told TechCrunch that “his company intends on being operationally IPO-ready next year.” Read More...

“Beware the Tech Industrial Complex”

“Beware the Tech Industrial Complex”

It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who said that when leaving office, although most people quote his warning to beware the military industrial complex. He was right on both counts, but the former seems just a bit more prescient at this juncture.

The news that grabbed the headlines this week was Microsoft’s $70B bid for the troubled Activision (Microsoft’s Activision buy could shake up gaming), but the real news is that Microsoft is bigger than Google, Amazon and Facebook. But now lawmakers treat it like an ally in antitrust battles.

Odd, given that so much attention is focused these days on anti-trust and Big Tech and note to self, the acquisition would make Microsoft bigger in the gaming space than Nintendo. This, as we stand at the threshold of the metaverse and given Microsoft’s ownership of LinkedIn, this would consolidate its position in the metaverse in both work and play. Read More...

Life, the Metaverse and Everything

Life, the Metaverse and Everything

The reference is the third book in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, FYI.

It’s traditional at this time of the year to either look back at the best/worst ofs from the year before, or to prognosticate about the year ahead.

This point in the trajectory of tech feels different, as we venture across the threshold of Web 3.0. meaning that there have been two prior iterations: Read More...

And the Winner for Worst Company of 2021 Is…

And the Winner for Worst Company of 2021 Is…

According to an audience survey conducted by Yahoo Finance, Facebook/Meta takes the prize, hands down, with 50% more votes than its competitor, Alibaba. According to the article, “its stock price is up 22% year-to-date — strong, but lagging the S&P 500— but down around 13% from its September high.”

So how does one achieve such a dubious honor? Well, there’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg himself, whose list of missteps are just too long to enumerate, considering that many of you no doubt still have holiday shopping to get done and this wouldn’t necessarily be the holiday list worth getting into – again – despite the fact that it is that time of the year.

Then there were “The Facebook Files, a series of investigative reports published by the Wall Street Journal and based on leaks provided by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Much of the publicity around the leaks focused on the impact of Instagram (a subsidiary of Meta Platforms) on teenage girls, and the company’s alleged indifference… Haugen also alleged that Facebook’s potential for radicalization has contributed to genocides in Myanmar and Ethiopia, among a myriad of other concerns expressed in the reports,” as ZeroHedge reminded us. Read More...

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay

The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.

Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world.  Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young.  Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that  it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times. Read More...

The Platform Formerly Known as Facebook

The Platform Formerly Known as Facebook

When recording artist Prince got into a contract dispute with his record label, Warner Brothers, he literally changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and was thereafter referred to as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Which brings us to The Platform Currently Known As Facebook, which will soon be a name to forget, with a nod to those readers among you for whom that ship sailed long ago, name change or not.

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