Making a Metaverse That Matters

CHAPTER 13Future Pitfalls—Manipulation, Takedowns, and the Experience Machine

Whatever transpires with Meta's plans for the Metaverse, it's also worth noting another, little known goal that's been rumbling beneath the surface across Silicon Valley from the very beginning.

Back in 2014, shortly after Meta announced acquisition of virtual reality company Oculus VR for $2 billion, the firm's very young founder, Palmer Luckey, appeared onstage at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, at a conference devoted to VR and creating the Metaverse. Someone in the audience asked Luckey why he spoke of a “moral imperative” to bring virtual reality to the masses.

“This is one of those crazy man topics,” Luckey began, “but it comes down to this: Everyone wants to have a happy life, but it's going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want.”

Instead, he went on, developers can now create virtual versions of real experiences reserved only for the wealthy. By which he meant people sitting in the room with him.

“It's easy for us to say, living in the great state of California, that VR is not as good as the real world,” he concluded, “but a lot of people in the world don't have as good an experience in real life as we do here.”

Instead of providing the poor of the world with a better material life, in other words, we might provide them with virtual versions.

“VR can make it so anyone, anywhere can have these experiences,” as Luckey put it to me later.

Luckey has since left the ...