Rumors of the Metaverse's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Rumors of the Metaverse's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Rumors of the Metaverse’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Contrary to popular belief, the decline of Meta did not stem from its investment in Zuckerberg’s vision for the future. Meta’s plummeting stock was tied to its legacy investment in social media platforms whose lifeblood — the ability to track users and their data — was being choked off by market forces beyond their control.
In all the speculation about the demise of the metaverse, two important points tend to get lost. First and most obviously, Meta and the metaverse are not the same. Even if Meta were to ultimately sink, the metaverse is far bigger than any one company.
Second, inflection points can take a long time to unfold, and we humans often get the timing wrong. Roy Amara, a Stanford University computer scientist coined a “law” for this tendency. Amara’s Law states that we tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but we underestimate it in the long run.
Examples of Amara’s Law abound. There were those who believed the Internet was no more than a passing fad.
There’s also evidence that those declaring the metaverse is dead are underestimating its impact in the long run. To use Gartner’s terms, the naysayers have simply slipped from the “peak of inflated expectations” to the “trough of disillusionment.” But that trough is just that — a temporary dip until the metaverse climbs its way up to the “plateau of productivity.”
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