Casey Newton on Facebook going Meta:

It struck me, given the recent conversation around how old and out of touch Facebook has been lately, how strong the Boomer vibes were coming from those reacting to Thursday’s presentation. A surprising number of people seem to think that technological progress ended with the smartphone, and that augmented reality, virtual reality, and connected experiences between platforms will never come to pass.

I’m not into all opinions that seems a little bit like an old man shaking his fist at the sky being labelled ‘boomer’ but I completely understand where Casey is coming from here.

I don’t think there is anyone of the opinion that technological advancements stopped at the smartphone but if you are of a certain age the prospect of VR/AR being “the future” has been spouted for decades and is still not here. So it may seem to some that land never seems to appear over the horizon.

All through the 80’s and 90’s VR was promised and hinted at through all sorts of media. Movies like the Lawnmower Man, and video games systems such as the Virtual Boy seemed to be the vanguard of a new era — only for the noise to die out for another couple of decades. We’ve also been searching for the next thing after mobile for years, so I think we can excuse the dismissive tendencies even without whoever is trying to build these things.