Meta’s first big swing at explaining the metaverse is no ‘1984’

Facebook’s parent Meta has flooded the airwaves with its first major ad campaign for the metaverse starring four museum-going Gen Z’ers entranced by artist Henri Rousseau’s 1909 painting Fight between a Tiger and a Buffalo. In the commercial, the painting springs to life, enveloping the confused museum-goers, who are seen dancing with flamingos and head-bobbing snakes as a hip-hop mix plays. 

The tagline: “This is going to be fun.”

For most viewers, the ad is the first real-world exposure to the theoretical metaverse. Football broadcasts remain some of the highest-viewed TV programming, reaching tens of millions of people each gameweek. And yet, even after a handful of viewings, I came away with no greater understanding of what the metaverse will be or why it’s “going to be fun.” 

Perhaps it’s too early to expect concrete, detailed branding of a still-abstract concept. There’s a reason Madison Avenue exists. But the ad’s shortcomings are a stark reminder of how much work remains for Mark Zuckerberg to define what, exactly, the metaverse entails—and why consumers need it. At a minimum, the spot is no “1984,” Apple’s landmark ad, which expertly evoked a dystopian world in which the company’s new Macintosh computer smashes tyranny through the democratization of information technology. (Oh, the modern-day irony.)

I wasn’t alone in my consternation. ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk skewered Meta’s latest ad, particularly for the self-unaware use of a line—This is the dimension of imagination—straight from The Twilight Zone. At Fast Company, staff editor Jeff Beer asked of the ad: “What the holy hell is this exactly supposed to mean?”

“The reality is that Meta is just one company working on the technological challenges of the purported metaverse, and even then, dancing around a Rousseau with your friends is still a long, long way off,” Beer wrote. “Which means that this ad is a stylish but empty distraction that says absolutely nothing about the brand, the metaverse, or the vision of the company formerly known as Facebook.”

Ultimately, it may not be that hard to explain the metaverse for the masses. In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern gives an informative first-person account of 24 hours in a VR universe, a day filled with virtual office meetings and virtual comedy shows and virtual meditation. 

“Virtual reality—where I attempted to live for 24 hours—is an escape from the real world,” Stern wrote. “Augmented reality brings digital objects into our real world, like holograms. But the AR glasses that are required for us to see those holograms naturally, instead of as obviously superimposed digital sprites, will likely require five to 10 years of hardware evolution.”

In other words, there’s plenty of time for the purveyors of the metaverse to brand this future world. This is going to be fun to watch.

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Jacob Carpenter

NEWSWORTHY

IBM makes a quantum semi-leap. IBM announced its most powerful quantum processor to date on Sunday, a step in its effort to develop a commercially-viable quantum computer that is far more powerful than those currently in operation. Company officials said their Eagle hardware has 127 qubits—the measure of information-processing units in quantum processors—which is roughly double the number of its previous iteration of the technology. IBM hopes to produce a successor with more than 1,000 qubits by 2023, the point at which the processor should become useful for commercial computer applications. Other tech leaders, including Google and Honeywell, also are racing to develop quantum processor breakthroughs.

Bitcoin’s upgrade goes live. Bitcoin introduced its biggest change in four years on Sunday, as the cryptocurrency’s Taproot upgrade officially took hold following several months of testing, CNBC reported. The new feature will bolster privacy and speed up transactions, particularly for smart contracts that automatically execute when pre-set criteria are met. Bitcoin users roundly supported the tweaks, a stark contrast to the 2017 upgrade that split the crypto’s community.

A second Amazon union effort stalls. A group of Amazon employees at the company’s Staten Island warehouses withdrew their request for a union vote Friday, delivering another blow to organized labor’s efforts to take on the e-commerce giant, The New York Times reported. The withdrawal followed concerns that the employees did not gather enough support among workers to hold a vote on whether to unionize. The movement’s supporters said they will continue to gather necessary signatures to earn a vote. The setback comes seven months after Amazon beat back a unionization drive at one of the company’s Alabama warehouses.

Google’s antitrust aggravations continue. A group of state attorneys general filed an amended complaint Friday in their antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company illegally manipulated its online ad service to eliminate competition, Reuters reported. The amended complaint, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, centers on Google’s “Project Bernanke,” a previously secret program that used old data collected through the company’s ad exchange to push out competitors on different Google ad platforms. In a separate case, Google largely lost an appeal last week of a $2.8 billion antitrust verdict in Europe.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Don’t mess with pompompurin. Thousands of people received an ominous-sounding message Friday evening from the FBI, warning about a cyberattack. The supposed threat wasn’t real, but the concerns about cybersecurity are. KrebsOnSecurity reported that a hacker known as “pompompurin” took credit for the hoax, saying they intended to highlight security flaws in the systems of a top national law enforcement agency. The email hack, which the FBI acknowledged in a statement, prompted concerns about online vulnerabilities at government agencies with access to potentially sensitive information.

From the article:

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Pompompurin said the hack was done to point out a glaring vulnerability in the FBI’s system.

“I could’ve 1000% used this to send more legit looking emails, trick companies into handing over data etc.,” Pompompurin said. “And this would’ve never been found by anyone who would responsibly disclose, due to the notice the feds have on their website.”

Pompompurin says the illicit access to the FBI’s email system began with an exploration of its Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), which the bureau describes as “a gateway providing law enforcement agencies, intelligence groups, and criminal justice entities access to beneficial resources.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Biden’s new FCC chair may signal a return to net neutrality, but it could take a while, by Max Ufberg

Elon Musk taunts Bernie Sanders about his age on Twitter after the Senator calls for the wealthy to ‘pay their fair share’, by Justin Bachman and Bloomberg

Infrastructure bill says anti-drunk driving technology must be built into new cars. But what that actually means is unclear, by Nicole Goodkind

A crypto group has raised nearly $3 million in Ether to bid on a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution, by Grady McGregor

Nearly everyone has heard of cryptocurrency but it’s still mostly young men trading it, by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

China launched the new Beijing Stock Exchange to fund small businesses—but it may also ‘cannibalize’ existing bourses, by Yvonne Lau

BEFORE YOU GO

Hope you’re enjoying Edge. Microsoft is making it even harder to change the default browser on the Windows 11 search bar away from the company’s Edge browser, a blow to Firefox and Chrome devotees everywhere, The Verge reports. The Microsoft move comes in response to workarounds generated by Mozilla and third-party developer EdgeDeflector, which aimed to give Windows users more choice in their browser preferences. Microsoft says its taskbar search is an “example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected,” while EdgeDeflector’s developer responds that “these aren’t the actions of an attentive company that cares about its product anymore.” Can’t blame a company for pushing its own product on its own operating system. Can’t blame a competitor for griping about it.