What happened to the metaverse?

This week I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who was last on the show in 2022 to talk about his book “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everything.” It’s 2024 and it’s safe to say that has not happened yet. But Matt’s still on the case — in fact he just released an almost complete update of the book, now with the much more sober title, “Building the Spatial Internet.”

Matt and I talked a lot about where the previous metaverse hype cycle landed us, and what there is to learn from these boom and bust waves. We talked about the Apple Vision Pro quite a bit; if you read or watched my review when it came out, you’ll know I think the Vision Pro is almost an end point for one set of technologies. I wanted to know if Matt felt the same and what needs to happen to make all of this more mainstream and accessible.

Links:

Fully revised and updated edition to the “The Metaverse” | W.W. Norton

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not | The Verge

Apple’s Vision Pro: five months later | Vergecast

Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball | Decoder

Interviewing Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on the Metaverse, VR/AR, AI | Matthew Ball

Interviewing Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and author Neal Stephenson | Matthew Ball

An Interview with Matthew Ball about Vision Pro and the state of gaming | Stratechery

Tim Sweeney explains how the metaverse might actually work | The Verge

Fortnite is winning the metaverse | The Verge

Is the Metaverse Just Marketing? | NYT

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