I agree wholeheartedly. Dissemination of a technology doesn’t seem to primarily be limited by the capacity of the hardware, but rather by willingness of people to adopt it. Saying the tech is getting better doesn’t prove the tech is solving a salient problem. And I don’t see managers and employees being thrilled about strapping on a headset for every meeting. As a simple heuristic, I (somebody who’s logged many hours on my oculus) do not want to meet in the metaverse, for the reasons you state here.
I’ll go even further though; videoconferencing is overrated compared with phone calls. For socializing, sure it’s nice to see peoples’ faces. But when you’re just trying to exchange information, a phone call suffices. As a teacher I never see the faces of people who I’m working with on fundraising… sometimes never even hear their voice if we just exchange emails. If you ran a double-blind experiment with a thousand participants to compare how much information was being conveyed with a video call vs a phone call, sure you might find a smidgen of difference. But I’d wager the effect would be an order of magnitude smaller than if you just gave everyone a cup of coffee before the meeting.
I agree wholeheartedly. Dissemination of a technology doesn’t seem to primarily be limited by the capacity of the hardware, but rather by willingness of people to adopt it. Saying the tech is getting better doesn’t prove the tech is solving a salient problem. And I don’t see managers and employees being thrilled about strapping on a headset for every meeting. As a simple heuristic, I (somebody who’s logged many hours on my oculus) do not want to meet in the metaverse, for the reasons you state here.
I’ll go even further though; videoconferencing is overrated compared with phone calls. For socializing, sure it’s nice to see peoples’ faces. But when you’re just trying to exchange information, a phone call suffices. As a teacher I never see the faces of people who I’m working with on fundraising… sometimes never even hear their voice if we just exchange emails. If you ran a double-blind experiment with a thousand participants to compare how much information was being conveyed with a video call vs a phone call, sure you might find a smidgen of difference. But I’d wager the effect would be an order of magnitude smaller than if you just gave everyone a cup of coffee before the meeting.