The Metaverse Fever Dream ↦
Nick Heer é um dos melhores autores que observam a tecnologia. Ele sempre tem opiniões muito bem embasadas que, mesmo quando eu não concordo completamente, me fazem ponderar e reconsiderar minhas certezas. No seu blog Pixel Envy, ele publicou recentemente o que eu acho que é o melhor obituário possível para o metaverso, e as loucuras que empresas como o Facebook, a Epic Games e Roblox fizeram (sem falar projetos como o Decentraland):
It turns out we are okay with having meetings and playing games online, but we actually like seeing live music in-person and travelling to real places. The problems each of these things may have — high costs, environmental impact, and so on — are notable and real, but are not ones with metaverse-based solutions.
The pandemic did not make the metaverse. There was sufficient interest in developing it well before then, and it is possible all of these companies would have announced all these products and services on the same timeline. But in a world without a pandemic, I cannot imagine anyone would have treated these metaverse announcements with anything like the seriousness they did. The pandemic officially ended in the U.S. just six months after the first release of ChatGPT, so it is impossible to disentangle the influence of either. But it is notable to me that the nosedive in mentions of “metaverse” on Meta’s investor calls occurred in Q3 2023 — the quarter immediately following the declared end of the pandemic.
Ele ainda termina com um toque quase esperançoso. Dá pra ver que Heer cresceu vendo a internet florescer. Esse tipo de otimismo é de quem viu protocolos e tecnologias sendo criadas na nossa frente no início da internet:
[…] Whatever that ends up being will probably be the result of people finding something useful and intriguing about doing something different. It will not be the product of big companies redirecting the money hose of platform fees onto themselves.
Recomendo muito o Pixel Envy. É uma ótima leitura toda a manhã.