Yes, it’s hype. Yes, millions of dollars are being poured into this.
Investors gear up for ‘gold rush’ in metaverse hardware | Financial Times
“Investors need to think about the metaverse as nothing less than the digitisation of human activity and the disruption of everything that hasn’t yet been disrupted,” said Simon Powell, an equity strategist at US investment bank Jefferies. He noted that metaverse projects such as that between Sony and Manchester City would join a near-constant stream of real-world activities mirrored in a virtual space.
It will be tough to escape the noise around Metaverse. Impossible. In simplest terms, it’s the augmentation of virtual reality, wherein you inhabit the “virtual world” as a digital self. The reality is virtual – Facebook is marketing it (now Meta) and funded by several companies as they try to “innovate” beyond mobiles. Whether it’s useful or not, it’s not the point. It’s VC funded frenzy (along with another moniker called “web-3”) because the payouts for gatekeeping are huge. Most “innovations” happen in sidelines, and then lobbying takes care of regulations. Therefore, any company to innovate on decentralized web, they will eventually have to pay a gatepass to avoid stepping on the patents. Its funding to create land, and then grabbing it while fighting the regulators because they don’t understand what’s happening. These are eventual conflicts of interest and raise questions about creating frameworks at the outset.
The process, he said, would ultimately require more processors, vastly more computing power and wearable devices that would drive a wave of hardware demand comparable to the early years of smartphones. The producers of components such as semiconductors, servers, sensors, cameras and displays stand to benefit.
emphasis mine
I’ll be following this closely.
RadOncNotes 