Elon Musk: metaverse isn’t ‘compelling’ and Web3 ‘more marketing than reality’

The metaverse and Web3 are two developments supposedly set to revolutionize the digital world. But the richest man IRL, Elon Musk, is just not eager on both. In a recent interview, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO stated he couldn’t see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse, and derided Web3 — a nebulous idea during which web providers are rebuilt round blockchain and cryptocurrency — as “more marketing than reality,” including “I don’t get it.”

Musk admitted that he may simply be “too old” to know these new applied sciences. “Am I like one of those people who was dismissing the internet [in] ‘95 as some fad or something that’s never going to amount to anything?” he advised, earlier than noting that in 1995 he was very a lot one of many people who understood the potential of the web.

Musk’s criticism of the metaverse targeted on an absence of compelling use-cases and a disappointing expertise for customers. “Sure you can put a TV on your nose. I’m not sure that makes you ‘in the metaverse,’” he stated. “I don’t see someone strapping a frigging screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave. That seems — no way.” He later added: “I currently am unable to see a compelling metaverse situation.”

Right now, the “metaverse” is usually an over-hyped branding train for a sequence of digital worlds, a few of that are depending on VR headsets to entry. Critics level out that we’ve mainly tried all this know-how earlier than, with the failed VR increase of the ‘90s and the rise of areas like Second Life within the early 2000s. What this present iteration primarily affords is improved {hardware}, a flashy new title, and billions of {dollars} of backing from giants like Facebook-owned Meta, eager to manage what they see as the following massive digital platform.

Web3 is one other different imaginative and prescient for the way forward for the web, with a lot boosterism pushed by the concept that odd web customers shall be ready straight revenue from their content material and exercise on-line (quite than having this worth captured by a number of behemoth web corporations). Musk didn’t spend a lot time discussing Web3, however he’s beforehand expressed skepticism concerning the challenge on Twitter, becoming a member of fellow tech CEO Jack Dorsey. (Dorsey’s criticism is that Web3 received’t democratize something, however will merely shift energy from present incumbents like Facebook to upstart enterprise capital funds like Andreessen Horowitz.)

Elsewhere within the interview with The Babylon Bee — a conservative and Christian humor web site — Musk mentioned climate change (“I’m not in the camp of super-alarmist global warming,” he stated, however added that adverse results like rising sea ranges are “not a wise risk to take”), the existence of other life in the universe (“If anyone would know about evidence of aliens it would be me, and I’ve seen nothing”) and stated there needs to be a regulatory agency to supervise “advanced AI” that he thinks poses a risk to humanity.

In the start of the episode, Musk additionally took time to match The Babylon Bee to The Onion, which he stated had gotten too “politically correct” and “leftist.” (It’s price noting that Musk was a huge fan of The Onion however modified his thoughts when the publication made fun of him.) Musk stated that The Onion had acquired “the woke mind virus,” which he later described as “arguably one of the biggest threats to modern civilization.”