Reclaiming Immersive Tech from the Metaverse | Part One

By Dhananjai

This is not an AI generated write up.

This comes from a deeply human experience, and although there might exist words which can better express what I will go on to express here, the writer wants to go ahead and take their time writing this.

Days, now months.

The context of this write up, is about the emerging technology which immersive tech is, it’s potential in human lives and how Facebook failed us, Meta failed us, in more ways than we talk about it. Zuckerberg (for we have a face to this name, and capitalism allows for this concession) pulled in the entire market into an emerging technology with humongous potential; and when the markets fell, they took it down with Meta, the company and with it, our conceptions of what a ‘Metaverse’ is.

We are a small tech company, with deliberate humans who have an imagination for the role of tech in human futures. Ever since pandemic era 2020, for more three years now, we have been dwelling into immersive spaces, and what it can potentially help us achieve in human evolution. This was before Facebook became Meta and in the urban dictionary, immersive worlds became ‘Metaverses’.

We worked extensively with a university in mapping out a learning ecosystem in a live, accessible, immersive environment (in Ahmedabad) — where we learnt that a knowledge dissemination experience should not be restricted in its entry; we built an immersive solution which could be accessible simultaneously on mobile, tablet, laptop and VR, in their distinct audio visual capabilities.

A truly immersive experience should always flow, accessible in any and all form factors which the user chooses.

For a logistics company in Bangalore, we were thinking through a audio/visual journey for a warehousing process flow (We were calling it the Binner Project) and we were understanding

The scope and efficiency of spatial understanding over written understanding in a connected, online world.

For a big FMCG organisation , we discussed an immersive world for architects and the virtually realised houses of their blueprints, and within the house, a multimedia experience of their body of work. The main clients of this biggest wall paints company in India (you can now take three guesses and know who it is) were architects, and they wanted us to envision ideas with which to add value to their trade.

We delved into virtual simulation of space and the possibilities it harbours in building human understanding of space and scale.

And Then Facebook becomes Meta, which creates this big bubble and the Metaverse is thrust with immense urgency on its users. The name change signified the prime importance the company now placed in a technology

Everyone was speaking of Meta, and wondering if they were updated enough to begin to use it. . If they were even eligible yet, to be able to understand the implications of this in their lives. For those around me, It felt out of the reach of all our imaginations.

Many felt left out of it, eventually.

Zuck may have shown a potential vision of a virtual world which can evolve the human-tech relationship, but the only visible thing he could do, was make a video demo about it. We were all watching, with interest.

What are the frameworks with which immersive tech/ works in human networking?

What does it say about the immense amount of data which you can possibly give away in realtime? Where were the discussions around it?

And what of accessibility?

Can everyone afford to be in this information ecosystem? Is everyone able enough to connect to it?

Will some of us be left out?

Meta never spoke about their experiments in this space, and the evidence there is, to its vision.

And then when war happens in an interconnected global world ; and money contracts to those who hold it, economies fall, and then Meta fell, and it let down a huge number of people (they called it ‘letting go’), the imagination of the metaverse, as what ‘Meta’ now symbolised, went down with it.

This huge bubble burst, taking away the flare of immersive tech, which Zuckerberg had obstinately, in panic, in pursuit of market domination, pitched his entire company to.

If we really want to talk about immersive tech, we should understand it, approach it together, and strive towards it. And know that there is in fact, a foundational research and thought given to this tech since sometime now, and that people have gathered together to agree to work on it together.

* * *

(Part 1 of 3)