Class Time: $q,$

The General Environment $($Threats & Opportunities$)$

$\backslash$table$[[$Environment$,$Threat $($& why?$),$Opportunity $($& why?$),],[$Economic$,,,],[$Demographic$,$Demographic,,$],[$PolitconLogv:$,$Political $/$ Legal,,$],[$Tectnological$,$Technological,,$],[$Sodocultual$,$Sociocultural,,$],[$Global$,,,]]$

$3...$ Based off Meta: Facebook's Pivot to the Metaverse$-$ A Path to Dystopia or Blue Ocean Utopia Zuckerberg$$s case study

Metaverse

The link between Facebook and Snow crash is not coincidental. In $2014,$ former Facebook data scientist Dean Eckles said new Facebook product managers were required to read Snow crash. Since then, Zuckerberg has been working hard to remove the fiction part of Stephenson$$s sci$-$fi novel, apparently overlooking the dystopic nature of Stephenson$$s vision. Announcing what his metaverse might look like, Zuckerberg zaps himself into a digitized representation of a house that starts from a wireframe then quickly fills in with details. Light pours in$,$ much like it might in a Palo Alto home, but the size of the space feels larger than anything the Palo alto zoning board would permit. Art adorns the walls but so do spacesuits and suits of armor. Look closely and you notice the view outside one window is tropical island, but outside another a Tahoe winter. It is a subtly magical place. There$$s a feeling of privacy, of being in a private space, even if both the feeling and space are entirely illusory. Watching Zuckerberg$$s visons, it difficult to ignore that the space isn$$t genuinely private$-$ especially if the user wearing the google lives in a shared physical space$-$ but that the virtual world, run by Meta, also suffers the same privacy issues Facebook famously struggles with. Mark receives a call from a disembodied voice and lifts his hand, much as he would if he were carrying a phone, which is both impossible and unnecessary in this virtual world. A popup appears in thin air, above his wrist, inviting him to $$Space Room$$ The popup looks like a messenger window, complete with a voice transcribed to speech bubbles. Before beaming himself to the Space Room, he$$s $$just gotta find something to wear$$ and so flips through a few outfits, choosing one that inexplicably looks identical to the outfit he$$s already virtually wearing in his metaverse house. Space Room has four people waiting for him, three dressed normally and one rendered as a robot. They$$re playing cards that float in the air, as one of the meeting participants also does. The group quickly decides to call another person, Naomi, and again Mark lifts his arm as if holding a phone. Although there is no need or place for a phone in this Metaverse, a typical smartphone interface appears. Zuckerberg calls and Naomi answers with video, standing with a flesh$-$ and$-$blood friend on a decidedly non$-$ virtual city street. Although she$$s with somebody else, walking through the streets of New York City, Mark asks, $$Shall we deal you in$$ to the game? Unphased by the odd request to ignore her friend and zap to a virtual spaceship while walking with a friend she zaps them $3$D street art$$ that looks like somebody soled a plate of spaghetti at the international space station, with strands floating above a table. $$Stunning$$ somebody remarks offscreen. We return from the demo metaverse to reality. In $2010,$ Zuckerberg famously declared $$privacy is a social norm of the past$$ but he now stares at the camera and deadpans $$privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one. To emphasize the point, the verbiage also appears on$-$screen the only words spelled out as well as being spoken. Mark barely blinks, and it$$s hard not to think he looks more like a man reading a forced confession $-$ or maybe a statement from the meta legal team$-$ than a true believer in privacy. Even then, it$$s difficult to overlook the passive verbiage $$need to be built$$ as opposed to the more definite $$will be built$$ Getting back to his planned world, Zuckerberg explains that users will have virtual homes, workplaces, and games in the metaverse. Physical products that display anything which can be digitized in the real world will be replaced by virtual metaverse products. For example, there is no need for a real phone in the metaverse: it is replaced by a phone application that presumably has both instant $($and likely free or very low priced$)$ upgrades. Televisions, computer screens, books$-$ really, almost anything people can$$t rest on or eat$-$ will be transformed from a physical thing into a digital app. Many products needn$$t be more than a digital copy of their physical form. For example, the meta$-$owned Oculus Netflix app is already a $3$D projection of cozy living room with a large virtual television screen.