I ask this question in all sincerity. Because I just don’t know. Do you?

In the Wall Street Journal’s, The Future of Everything: Work special section this month, the “How We’ll Work in the Metaverse” article caught my eye. The narrative was “a look ahead,” and contended that the work scenarios described soon “won’t be science fiction.”

On the other hand, some tech leaders say we’re already metaversing. Last October Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebrand—Facebook to Meta. And, he said, “We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet, we’ll be right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.” Meta and Mark are quite versed and vocal in their communications about and in the metaverse; it’s here and now.

So too is Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. On Twitter, on YouTube, in interviews that stem back to November 2021 Nadella and his Teams team show and tell about the mighty metaverse. “The metaverse is here, and it’s not only transforming how we see the world but how we participate in it—from factory floor to the meeting room….[We’re] creating an entirely new platform layer which is the metaverse. In a sense the metaverse allows us to embed computing into the real world and the real world into computing.”

Into the Metaverse

The Teams demo that accompanies Nadella’s talk is not your everyday Teams, at least it’s not mine—yet. In Microsoft Teams I still communicate, share content and connect with real people in real time, whether for play or work. Speaking of work, even some of the largest, long-established business tech leaders are launching into the metaverse. In my day job I recently reported that CEO Christian Klein said SAP will “soon” have metaverse-related news.

Perhaps some of your worlds of work and play are more metaversed than others. In his November 2021 Wired magazine article “What is the Metaverse, Exactly?” (subtitled “Everything you never wanted to know about the future of talking about the future.”), Eric Ravenscraft pointed out that “World of Warcraft, for example, is a persistent virtual world where players can buy and sell goods….Is that really what ‘the metaverse’ means? Just some new kinds of video games?” As in other commentaries, Ravenscraft said the term itself—metaverse—isn’t new but is most often first cited in the fictional Snow Crash stories in 1992. Way back then, when “the Internet” was just coming of commercial age?

Ravenscraft skillfully explained that virtual reality and augmented reality are among the technologies mashed up in the metaverse. I especially appreciated his attempt early in the article to convey “a sense of how vague and complex a term the metaverse is. He suggested an exercise: “Mentally replace the phrase ‘the metaverse’ in a sentence with ‘cyberspace.’ Ninety percent of the time the meaning won’t substantially change.” He noted that metaverse isn’t about “any one specific type of technology, but rather a broad shift in how we interact with technology.”

Communications and Content in the Metaverse

So why is a commentary that typically talks about #communicationscontentconnections conversing about the metaverse? Because just as the world of technology continues to turn, and—generally but not always–churn out improvements and progress for our lives, communications, content, and connections already are and will continue to be present in world and at play in the metaverse as it morphs.

Just as the Internet and cyberspace communications, content and collaboration changed where, how and when we work—especially in our work-from-home recent years—whatever the metaverse is and becomes could mean minimal to substantial shifts for business. Communications and content will be persistent, yet different.

And what about connections? That’s where I’m not personally persuaded about, shall we say, the feels of the metaverse. Throughout the course of the Covid-19 pandemic the discussions, research, and documentation of how everyone—children in school to seniors in centers—have missed and suffered without real human contact. Could or will the metaverse provide a substitute or replace such connections, make us feel that “we’ll be right there with people,” as Zuckerberg put it? It’s difficult for me to say or even see a future where I’ll ever be that metaversed.

#CommunicationsContentConnections
#Communications
#Metaverse