I’d much rather see sites like Lemmy, PeerTube, and Mastodon see widespread adoption then the dystopian cyberpunk fever dream in the head of Zuckerburg. Did you not read the novel dude? It’s a freaking warning! That’s like Jeff Bezos reading Fahrenheit 451 and going “holy crap dude, gotta make that a reality like, yesterday!” I want the Fediverse, not the Metaverse! Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
I think the “metaverse” is already dead. Zuckerberg tried to make it happen and it didn’t, and Meta doesn’t have the money to keep pumping into it. I think Meta will still produce the Quest headsets as a cheap alternative to the new Apple ones, but the idea of just hanging out in the metaverse is simply not going to happen.
I don’t know whether the Fediverse will “happen” for the vast majority of people who aren’t very tech savvy, but I’m enjoying it and it’s replaced Reddit for me.
If anything is going to be the next big thing in tech though, it’s AI. The fact that my 65+ year old parents know what ChatGPT is, and have used it, is unreal to me.