The metaverse continues to attract much media attention, with recent articles from Quartz, The Wall Street Journal and A16Z focused on how the metaverse will change work. Examples include:
The point of all these articles is that we should soon expect to spend at least part of our work lives in metaverse settings.
Quartz's article suggests there will be three main ways the metaverse will change work:
- The metaverse will become an office alternative, with many office workers spending at least some of their time in virtual offices.
- Training will increasingly become metaverse based,
- The metaverse will become the new office lounge and place for what used to be called "water cooler" discussions.
The Wall Street Journal article covers much of the same ground and focuses on the metaverse being a place where people will meet. Key Quote:
When we need to get together with colleagues or customers to do more than chat, we'll log into virtual spaces so realistic it will seem as if we're physically in the same room. We'll see each other in the form of avatars that, if we choose, look nearly identical to our real selves.
A16Z's article focuses on whether or not the metaverse will fully replace traditional offices.
The article's view is that it will augment rather than replace physical spaces and real-life meetings. Key quote:
The metaverse won't replace the physical office, but it will transform it for the better, and the distinction between virtual and physical offices will soon melt away.
We agree with most of these views of how the metaverse will change how and where we work.
But we've been around long enough to have more than a bit of deja vu on this topic.
In 2007 we published a report with Intuit suggesting virtual worlds (what is now called the metaverse) would blossom as a business tool and location over the next decade.
The picture below is from the report and shows an avatar leaving The Gap's Second Life retail store.
Our forecast was wrong, but virtual worlds stayed hot for a few more years.
For example, Network World's 2008 article IBM, Second Life create business-friendly virtual worlds covered a joint-venture between IBM and Second Life to develop virtual world work and business applications. Key quote:
IBM also opened a virtual sales center in Second Life last year and, separately from the Second Life partnership, is building an internal virtual world where workgroups can have meetings.
We attended several meetings in IBM's Second Life meeting center, and we joined many large corporations in opening a virtual office in Second Life.
The four words that are most wrong in forecasting are "this time is different."
But we think things are different for the metaverse than they were in 2007.
The technology is dramatically better, and the shift to remote and distributed work provides an excellent opportunity for the metaverse to succeed. And we think it will.
