Remember the metaverse? It was only a couple of years ago when it gave the impression of every technology, media and entertainment company Difficulty adapting right into a future through which normal people lead parallel digital lives online and walk around in three-dimensional computer worlds as virtual reality avatars.
However, this hype has probably not paid off to this point, perhaps because audiences have seen movies like Ready Player One and The Matrix and absorbed their dystopian lessons.
And there was a brand new shiny object. With the arrival of ChatGPT, big technology turned to a rather more immediate and seemingly concrete future topic: artificial intelligence.
Studio heads – from Sony Pictures’ Tony Vinciquerra to Paramount’s future owner David Ellison – are turning to AI models to streamline production and lower your expenses. Even Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Facebook’s parent company, which has poured billions of dollars into its metaverse dream, has, like many others, focused more to AI.
Suffice it to say that loads has modified within the two years because the creator and investor founded the corporate. Matthew Ball wrote the book “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything.” Ball, whose essays within the fields of media and technology are highly influential, has revised and expanded his work and even given it a brand new subtitle: “Building the spatial Internet.”
When I spoke to Ball last week, he certainly hadn't given up on his ideas about the web of the future, even though artificial intelligence has clearly surpassed the metaverse in terms of excitement in the tech industry and fear among consumers.
Apple's Vision Pro has made some progress in growing the headset market despite the $3,500 price tag and the lingering stigma of wearing a computer in front of your face. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies that play a major role in plans for the metaverse have been quietly recovering after a bumpy period, he said.
Ball has also written a lot about the state of the box office.
This conversation has been shortened for length and clarity.
What are the biggest changes you have seen in this space since publishing your original Metaverse book a few years ago?
The three biggest changes involve head-mounted displays, including wearable glasses, as well as goggles, blockchains and artificial intelligence. Each of these three categories seems to have experienced decades of development in the last two and a half years alone.
Let's go through them one by one, starting with the headset computers. Apple releases its Vision Pro and suddenly people are talking about VR and AR glasses again. What happened?
This is a great example. We have seen the highest profile and probably most important product launch in the category, which is a massive validation that this category is being shaped by a company with unparalleled experience in disrupting outdated, stagnant or unsuccessful categories and breaking the stigma.
Seeing all of these things come together – Apple's investments, Apple's brand, Apple's retail presence and the associated ability to communicate value propositions – is a remarkable case study.
It feels like Apple Vision Pro was an opportunity to use the technology Mainstream. Did it work?
I don't believe in citing anecdotes as facts, but my followers on Twitter should have as many Vision Pro and head-mounted display fans as anyone else. I regularly ask those who own one how many of them have used the device in the last 48 hours and how many of them have not used it in the last 30 days.
And the result usually shows that only about 20% of people have used it within the last 48 hours and two-thirds haven't touched it in a month. And if you take as an example my followers who spent $4,000 on a device and haven't touched it for 30 or more days after owning it for five or less months, it's clear that it's missing the mark, at least so far.
Is it a content issue that is keeping these devices from reaching the masses? Or is it a technology or hardware issue?
The consensus is that they are three different things. The price, the form factor and the applications or content. And right now all three things are limitations, and they are also connected. One of the reasons why the device is uncomfortable and heavy is because it is powerful. It is powerful so that it can offer better content. But that also means it is expensive. If you sacrifice performance, the price goes down but the experience gets worse.
OK, what about blockchain?
Blockchain has probably gone through a puberty in the last two and a half years. Of course, the total market value of cryptocurrencies fell from $3 trillion to $800 billion and then almost reached its all-time high again. And along the way there was the decline of FTX and many others.
This technology also has one of the worst branding problems ever, to the point where the biggest laugh line of the Tom Brady Roast Did Nikki Glaser make fun of him for promoting cryptocurrencies?
I agree that there is a Stigma problem. That's certainly true. And NFTs haven't really recovered in any way. But overall, crypto is on the upswing. There's more regulatory clarity, there's more institutional adoption, and it's back to about 85% of its all-time high, even though we've gone from a zero-interest rate period to a 45-year high in interest rates.
What role does AI play in your theory about the future of the Internet?
It's absolutely true that artificial intelligence has taken marginal dollars away from AR, VR, and metaverse investments. It's changed the narrative around the metaverse hype cycle. I think it's not appreciated enough how closely intertwined these topics have always been and how everything the metaverse requires and all the technologies around it essentially rely on AI.
The CEO of Roblox has said that he believes that in a few years it will be possible to bring entire worlds to life. Disney's ability to create a virtual space anywhere near the size of Disneyland is incredibly expensive. If you actually wanted to create something equivalent to Galaxy's Edge in a virtual world, it's not actually clear that it would be cheaper than creating Galaxy's Edge as it is today.
Through artificial intelligence, we are actually seeing that cost drop extraordinarily, and that is changing what is possible. Ultimately, the dream of visiting a virtual Disney theme park is not just walking around the Avengers Campus, but actually going there and interacting with Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr.
You recently wrote about the long-term declines in Cinema attendance per capita. Do you think the increasing proliferation of these digital technologies will further disrupt traditional entertainment consumption?
Yes. As I explain in detail in the article, there is something of a misconception about what has caused the decline in moviegoing. Essentially, this decline is limited to 2- to 24-year-olds, who are going to the movies less than ever.
In this younger demographic, we often hear the argument that no matter how much you play Roblox, Fortnite, or Call of Duty, it's no substitute for going to the movies again each year, is it?
And yet we see that social media platforms, social video platforms like TikTok, and social gaming experiences have significantly displaced typical behaviors, whether it's going to the movies, babysitting, or going to the mall with friends. And that aligns with broader measures that show we're spending more time alone than ever before.
This trend has been going on for so long that it is hard to say it will slow down. The question, of course, is: where is the bottom?
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