Evans: Facebook cannot centrally build the metaverse
Benedict Evans · Metaverse - beyond the buzzword · Oct 18, 2021 · at 8:08
Independent analyst Benedict Evans argues tech giants claiming they will build the metaverse misunderstand how open network technologies emerge.
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“And now you hear people at Facebook saying, well, we're going to build the metaverse. It's like sitting down in 1994 and saying, well, now we're going to build the web. You know, it's like news corporate, it's like news corporation in 1994 saying, oh, well, what we're going to do is we're going to build the web. But that's not how it works. It's really not. I mean, there's a story about Steve Jobs and Craig McCall. Craig McCall was a pioneer of mobile phones in America in the nineties, talking about the internet and Craig says we should buy it. Which was, and like, he was an incredibly clever, successful man who would not understand a huge amount about technology. We're not, just so you understand, like, that was not an obviously stupid thing to say. And it's the same now, we say, well, we're going to build the metaverse. Like, I don't think that's how technology works anymore. I don't think anyone can build, there's going to be the anything. And I certainly don't think that you can build it.”
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