The problem people have is that time and time again Facebook releases products, after massive amounts of engineering and research, that are focused on trivialities. Another way to flirt with people. Another way to post photos to the internet. A more fun way to read about the inane status update your ex-girlfriend posted about the food she just ate.
Look at Facebook's commercials, the ones where the person is on the phone reading about some random bullshit while they are at a dinner table with their family. Facebook wears their shallow view of human interaction on their sleeve: stupid interactions with your "friends" (ie, people you don't really see often in real life) are held up as some paragon of human communication. You don't discuss deep ideas on Facebook. You don't find information and increase human knowledge through Facebook. You don't experience new things or communicate with people outside of your comfort zone through Facebook.
Zuck gets on stage and talks about this world of global connections, and articulates this sweeping vision of a utopia where your whole life is enhanced by Facebook, but what we actually get are cat photos, fake cows, and people yukking it up about celebrity buzzfeed articles.
VR stands out as the tech with the most exciting potential of anything right now, and one that could be something that is driven by the entire community's imagination. Like the web was. The fear is that Facebook will devote its massive engineering resources towards applications of VR that are interesting and fun to 18 year olds trying to get laid, but on the whole not transformative for society in the way VR has the potential to be.
So fundamentally there are two questions. First, is Oculus going to have the latitude to grow its culture the way it was on track to, one which was centralized on applying VR in every way possible. On this front there is reason to be skeptical. The second question is if the environment for developing applications for VR is going to be an open, organic ecosystem despite the hardware provider being Facebook. This seems pretty unknowable, there isn't really a suitable analogy here. If VR takes off there very well could be entire platforms built for it, that recreate the computing experience as a whole. The fear is that this platform may very well be owned by Facebook, and will severely limit the latitude with which people can build experiences for VR.
> Zuck gets on stage and talks about this world of global connections, and articulates this sweeping vision of a utopia where your whole life is enhanced by Facebook, but what we actually get are cat photos, fake cows, and people yukking it up about celebrity buzzfeed articles.
Have you ever considered that this may not be Zuck's fault and that, in fact, this may actually be what the connected world he talks about actually wants?
Do you want Facebook to somehow force the world to become not just more connected but more enlightened? Are we to be cut off from facebook if we post one too many cat photos or stupid chain letter memes? Is that a power we really want anyone to have?
Look at Facebook's commercials, the ones where the person is on the phone reading about some random bullshit while they are at a dinner table with their family. Facebook wears their shallow view of human interaction on their sleeve: stupid interactions with your "friends" (ie, people you don't really see often in real life) are held up as some paragon of human communication. You don't discuss deep ideas on Facebook. You don't find information and increase human knowledge through Facebook. You don't experience new things or communicate with people outside of your comfort zone through Facebook.
Zuck gets on stage and talks about this world of global connections, and articulates this sweeping vision of a utopia where your whole life is enhanced by Facebook, but what we actually get are cat photos, fake cows, and people yukking it up about celebrity buzzfeed articles.
VR stands out as the tech with the most exciting potential of anything right now, and one that could be something that is driven by the entire community's imagination. Like the web was. The fear is that Facebook will devote its massive engineering resources towards applications of VR that are interesting and fun to 18 year olds trying to get laid, but on the whole not transformative for society in the way VR has the potential to be.
So fundamentally there are two questions. First, is Oculus going to have the latitude to grow its culture the way it was on track to, one which was centralized on applying VR in every way possible. On this front there is reason to be skeptical. The second question is if the environment for developing applications for VR is going to be an open, organic ecosystem despite the hardware provider being Facebook. This seems pretty unknowable, there isn't really a suitable analogy here. If VR takes off there very well could be entire platforms built for it, that recreate the computing experience as a whole. The fear is that this platform may very well be owned by Facebook, and will severely limit the latitude with which people can build experiences for VR.