«Metaverse»
Menlo Park (dpa) – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to “create a virtual environment in which you can be with people in digital spaces”. To this end, Facebook wants to create 10,000 new, highly qualified jobs in the European Union over the next five years.
This “metaverse” should no longer just exist as an abstract utopia, but should be put into practice with active support from Europe.
The investment was announced by top Facebook managers Nick Clegg (Vice President for Global Affairs) and Javier Olivan (Vice President for Central Products) in a blog post: “This investment is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech -Talents. »
Facebook understands “Metaverse” as a world in which physical reality merges with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in a cyber world. The term comes from the American writer Neal Stephenson, who first used it in 1992 in his science fiction novel “Snow Crash”.
It is not yet clear what the Facebook “metaverse” will look like for users. In front of financial analysts, Zuckerberg described the metaverse as the “next generation of the Internet”, which is of great importance. It is the next chapter for Facebook as a company.
Opportunities for creative people
Zuckerberg emphasized that the “Metaverse” offers enormous opportunities for individual creatives and artists, but also for people who want to work and live far away from today’s city centers. They also want to reach people who live in places where the opportunities for education or leisure activities are rather limited. “A realized” metaverse “could come closest to a functioning teleportation device,” he says.
It will be accessible from all devices such as smartphones, PCs and special glasses for virtual and augmented reality experiences. And you will be able to do practically everything there that is also possible on today’s Internet, such as communicating with friends, working or shopping.
In an interview with the US technology portal “The Verge”, Zuckerberg said that the “Metaverse” is certainly not something that a single company will build. “Hopefully a large part of our next chapter will be working in partnership with many other companies, creators, and developers to build this system.” The «Metaverse» can be imagined as an embodied Internet in which one not only looks at content, but also finds oneself in it. “You feel connected to other people as if you were in different places and could have different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily have on a 2D app or website, such as dancing or different types of fitness.”
Zuckerberg has had the idea for this virtual world since his school days. “I remember that in math class I had my notebook with me and just sat there and wrote code and ideas for things that I wanted to program when I came home from school that day,” said the Facebook boss in the Interview. “I was able to do some of that at the time, but one of the things I really wanted to build was basically the feeling of an embodied Internet, where you could be in your surroundings and teleport to different places and be with friends.”
The British ex-vice-premier Clegg, who practically fills the role of the chief lobbyist of the Internet group, said that Facebook was at the beginning of a journey that should help to build the platform of the future. “Together with partner companies, we are developing the” Metaverse “- a new phase of networked, virtual experiences using technologies such as virtual and augmented reality.”
The «Metaverse» has the potential to open up access to completely new creative, social and economic opportunities. “And Europe will help shape it from the start.” No individual company will own and operate the “Metaverse”. “Like the Internet, the” Metaverse “will be characterized by openness and interoperability.”
Clegg: Europe is important for Facebook
Europe is extremely important for Facebook, stressed Clegg. “Thousands of employees and millions of companies who use our apps and tools every day contribute to our success.” The EU has many assets that make it a great place to invest in technology companies.
The announcement by Facebook comes at a time when the US company is under massive pressure internationally. At a hearing in the US Senate in early October, the former Facebook manager and whistleblower Frances Haugen called on politicians to force the online network to be more transparent. The 37-year-old accused Facebook, among other things, of having known from internal studies that Instagram was damaging to the mental health of some teenagers – but nothing was done about it. The company also produced negative headlines because an error in the network settings led to an outage of around six hours on Facebook and its subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211018-99-633058 / 4
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