Meta has been the leader in AR/VR technology. Last year, they showed us a glimpse of the Orion, a fully functional, sleek, AI-powered VR headset.
With its rebranding, Meta has made it its mission to become a pioneer of the metaverse—a virtual space that can be interacted with. After a few months of silence on the AR/VR front and official news, the silence has been broken by a leaked memo.
This leaked memo by the CTO of Meta’s Reality Labs, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, is very telling. In it, he says that 2025 is a critical year and will prove whether the metaverse is a visionary feat or a legendary misadventure.
Here’s the breakdown of the memo:
- Meta will be coming out with a dozen or more AI-powered wearables.
- They need to drive engagement and sales across the board, but especially MR.
- Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality game, must be a hit for their long-term plans to work.
- He is reading Stephen Levy’s book “Insanely Great” and says he has some pointers. He says that the people who worked on it —The Macintosh— talk about it with great pride because of its innovative nature— even though they left on bad terms.
- He then talks about the greatness of the work and for his teams at Reality Labs to understand the weight of the work they are doing. One of the things he says,
“The path is clear. You don’t need to come up with a bunch of new ideas to do this great work. Most people in the organization just need to execute the work laid out before them to succeed. It is about operational excellence. It is about master craftsmanship. It is about filling our products with “Give A Damn.” This is about having pride in our work.”
It is all telling of one sign: Meta wants this to be the next big thing.
This leaked memo is fascinating. Why? Because it provides the mindset of Meta’s leaders.
They believe they are creating the next evolution of computing. A virtual world within our own— one that is as true as the real one.
This is just a step towards it.
However, as Andrew puts it, only time will tell if this is what they want it to be or if it proves to be technology’s biggest blunder.