Meta Dismissive

<p>Casey Newton on <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/facebook-goes-meta">Facebook going Meta</a>:</p><blockquote>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.</blockquote><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>All through the 80’s and 90’s VR was promised and hinted at through all sorts of media. Movies like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film)">the Lawnmower Man</a>, and video games systems such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy">Virtual Boy</a> 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.</p>