Thread by @normative

I know this is the kind of prediction that can easily become embarrassing, but I really can't see the “metaverse" being that significant in the near term (~5-10yrs), and even beyond that I’d bet on it having relatively limited application.

https://twitter.com/sivavaid/status/1482009713063743496

For most functions—honestly, pretty much about every function other than gaming—navigating a virtual world is just a really bad, inconvenient UI. Wearing a visor so I can have a Zoom meeting in a virtual Shinto shrine might be a fun novelty, but it adds relatively little value.

Assume away the hardware clunkiness and stipulate that we’ve got VR/AR tech so compact it can be squeezed into something indistinguishable in form factor from ordinary glasses.

The hardware itself would surely be popular and convenient in that case (though probably not until then). But do you actually want the interface to be an IMMERSIVE WORLD? Or would you rather have easily-dismissed application windows pop up? I’m betting the latter.

Even in gaming, VR remains a pretty peripheral peripheral. I’ve got a helmet & use it a couple times a year when something cool looking comes out, but way less than my console or desktop.

The GUI easily supplanted the CLI for the vast majority of users because it was a little less efficient, but waaay more intuitive, and I think some people imagine virtual environments as the obvious progression. But it seems like a false analogy.

As a UI, navigating a virtual world is a LOT less efficient than a standard GUI/menu interface, and there’s very little gain in intuitiveness or ease of use. And (again, bar gaming and maybe some educational applications) greater “immersion” is not really a value add.

The “meeting that should have been an e-mail” is sort of a cliché. Why? Because *too much immersion* is annoying and inefficient unless you have a pretty good specific reason for it.

I’d just add, there are plenty examples of “virtual world as interface” without VR goggles. But nobody really uses it except… yup… games and software for children. And I suppose stuff like Second Life, which some people really love, but peaked around a million users.

Probably the smartphone has been the biggest revolution in consumer tech of the last couple decades, and a big part of that is precisely that it’s non-immersive. You pull it out quickly to check Twitter or play Wordle or whatever, then put it away just as quickly.