Mision de ingles del 12/8/22

                            The coming works

                               

THE U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION REPORTS

that in the first six months of 2022, the word metaverse ap-

peared in regulatory filings more than 1,100 times. The entire

previous year saw 260 mentions. The preceding two decades?

Fewer than a dozen in total. It increasingly feels as though

every corporate executive must mention the metaverse-and,

of course, how it naturally fits the capabilities of their company

better than those of their competitors. Few seem to explain

what it is or exactly what they'll build. The executive class also

appears to disagree over fundamental aspects of this new plat-

form, including the criticality of virtual reality headsets, block-

chains, and crypto, as well as whether it's here now, might be

soon, or is decades in the future.

None of which has constrained investment. Much has been

written of Facebook's name change to Meta and the more than

$10 billion it now loses each year on its metaverse initiatives.

But six more of the largest public companies in the world-

Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tencent-have also

been busy preparing for the metaverse. They are reorganizing

internally, rewriting their job descriptions, reconstructing their

product offerings, and prepping multibillion-dollar product

launches. In January, Microsoft announced the largest acqui-

sition in Big Tech history, paying $75 billion for gaming giant

Activision Blizzard, which would "provide building blocks for

the metaverse." In total, McKinsey & Co. estimates that corpo-

rations, private-equity companies, and venture capitalists made

$120 billion in metaverse-related investments during the first

five months of this year.

Nearly all of the aforementioned work has, thus far, remained

invisible to the average person. Rather like the metaverse it-

self. There isn't really a metaverse product we can go buy, nor

"metaverse revenue" to be found on an income statement. In

fact, it might seem as though the metaverse, to the extent it

ever existed, has already come and gone. Crypto has crashed.

So too has Facebook's market capitalization, which topped

$900 billion when the company changed its name to Meta, but

now sits around $445 billion. This year, video-gaming sales have

fallen by nearly 10%, in part because of the waning of the pan-

demic that forced many people inside.

To many, it's a good thing that the metaverse seems to be

sputtering. The largest tech platforms have already established

enormous influence over our lives, as well as over the technolo-

gies and business models of the modern economy. It's also clear

that there are many problems with today's internet; why not

solve them before moving on to what Mark Zuckerberg calls

"the successor" to it?

The answer is embedded in that very question. The meta-

verse, a 30-year-old term but nearly century-old idea, is forming