Mark Zuckerberg testifies about Meta’s virtual reality ambitions
Meta has been spending billions of dollars to develop virtual reality products and has bought many startups over time, is trying to use the deal for Within and other small companies to become a power in the emerging field of the metaverse.Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, was asked a series of questions in federal court on Tuesday about his aspirations for the immersive online world of the metaverse.
Was his company interested in virtual reality? Was it investing in augmented reality? Zuckerberg responded with clipped yes and no answers until a lawyer asked whether Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was “trying to shape the future of technology.”
Zuckerberg hesitated, moved in his seat and replied, “Yes. That’s a fairly broad statement, but yes.”
The exchange came on the seventh day of a hearing in San Jose that has the potential to reshape how tech behemoths buy startups and to stretch the boundaries of antitrust law. The case is set to determine whether the Federal Trade Commission will be granted an injunction to block Meta’s $400 million acquisition of Within, a small company that makes a popular virtual reality fitness game.
The FTC’s challenge of the acquisition is highly unusual. While antitrust law has traditionally focused on preventing deals in established markets and mature areas, the agency is arguing that Meta’s acquisition of Within could snuff out competition in a nascent market — virtual reality — before it’s even clear if that market will thrive. If the FTC blocks the deal, it could set a precedent for antitrust law.
And Meta, which has been spending billions of dollars to develop virtual reality products and has bought many startups over time, is trying to use the deal for Within and other small companies to become a power in the emerging field of the metaverse.
Meta announced it would buy Within in October 2021, soon after Zuckerberg declared that his social network was transforming itself into a metaverse company. In a blog post about the Within deal, Meta was effusive.
experience
In the do-anything-from-anywhere economy, the future of work is evolving, and as we design for a hybrid world, technology rather than physical workspace, will increasingly define the employee experience.
Version one of work-from-anywhere during the early stages of covid-19 was about the “anywhere" part. The next phase of this journey is about making the “work" part better. We need the right tools and devices, the right workspaces for collaboration, and the right culture to make work, well, workIn the early days of cloud, most companies ended up adopting multiple public, private, edge and even telecom clouds to power their business. This “multiple cloud" stage creates huge access to innovation.
In 2022, we started to see an industry shift to true “multicloud" architectures. In 2023, we expect accelerating innovation to focus on making the entire technology ecosystem work as a platform for your digital transformation. We also expect organizations to lean into technology that gives them flexibility and open access to innovation, and to partners who can coordinate the sprawl into an automated working system.
And there’s a good reason—no single solution, platform or provider will deliver on the full promise of technology. That means that the proverbial “walled gardens" of “closed" ecosystems will crumble.
AI will reach an inflection point
We’ve been talking about the promise of AI for years. 2023 is a year that we expect acceleration of real-world use of AI and machine learning. At Dell, we have been on this journey and today have around 1000 projects, products, or efforts focused on using AI to advance our business. That means, we also need more infrastructure optimized for these highly demanding workloads.
In 2023, there will be an even broader range of acceleration chips entering the market and a correlating increase in performance and efficiency. Organizations that ride the second wave of AI will see a distinct competitive advantage. As the industry matures, AI will also become more democratized as open-source AI becomes prevalent and accessible to larger communities.
Momentum will accelerate for Zero Trust architectures
The digital transformation of the global economy is increasing the number of potential attack surfaces. With organizations transforming their security strategies, many are looking at Zero Trust architectures to better secure their environments. The three main tenets are: universal continuous authentication of everything; robust authoritative policy driven behaviour; and deeply integrated threat management.
The real challenge is the current state of the industry and technology makes integration of Zero Trust too complex for most customers. Our job is to ease that burden and simplify the process.
Ultimately, Zero Trust will become the foundation for a new level of data security and trust in a highly distributed multi-cloud world where everything is connected.
This shortlist is at the top of my mind for the next year, but if there’s one thing 2022 taught us, it’s how hard it is to predict the future. No doubt, 2023 will be full of unknowns and surprises. But I am confident that innovation will drive amazing progress. And I’m excited for
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