Comment by ApolloFortyNine
1 year ago
If Zuck's obsession with VR isn't curiosity driven research than nothing is.
10 billion yearly losses for something that by all accounts isn't close to magically becoming profitable. It honestly just seems like something he thinks is cool and therefore dumps money in.
It's an example of Zuck's curiosity. When I refer to curiosity-driven research, I mean curiosity driven by the researchers, where the researchers themselves drive the research agenda, not management.
To be fair, though; Facebook, I mean, Meta is a publicly-traded company and if the shareholders get tired of not seeing any ROI from Meta's VR initiatives, then this could compel Zuck to stop. Even Zuck isn't free from business pressures if the funding is coming from Meta and not out of Zuck's personal funds.
Back to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, my understanding of how they worked is that while management did set the overall direction, researchers were given very wide latitude when pursuing this direction with little to no pressure to deliver immediate results and to show that their research would lead to profits. Indeed, at one point AT&T was forbidden by the federal government from entering businesses outside of their phone business, and in the case of Xerox PARC, Robert Taylor was able to negotiate a deal with Xerox executives where Xerox's executives wouldn't meddle in the affairs of PARC for the first five years. (Once those five years ended, the meddling began, culminating with Bob Taylor's famous exit in 1983.)
As far as I know, Mr. Zuckerberg still owns a controlling interest in Meta Platforms.
Since he has 57% of the votes, he can tell everyone to pound sand.
That's right. Research needs to be bottom-up.
Managers heard that too but dramatically misunderstood what that phrase means.
I mean at some point. You either have to find someone rich who has the same curiosity as you and wants to fund it, or fund it yourself.
Is patronage a thing that even really happens anymore?
I bet (litteraly, founded an xr game development company in february) xr/vr games will indeed became a mainstream gaming platform in the next 5 years, maybe even next year. If or when it become the case it may totally become as present as smartphone and replace a lot of monitors, especially if they succeed to reduce them as smartglasses like their totally are progressing to.
if it become the case, meta get 30% of the revenues associated with it.
If it does not, i'm pretty sure they can now make good smartphones and even have a dedicated os. I'm pretty sure they can find a way to make money with it.
A meta quest 3s in inself is an insane experience for 330€ and it's current main disadvantages for gaming are the lack of players and the catalogue size. Even using it as a main monitor with a bluetooth keyboard is "possible". I would have find it 'improbable' a few years ago even as an enthousiasth, i now could totally imagine a headset replacing my screen in a few years with a few improvements on.
What about Musk and push to reach Mars? While I haven't liked Musk from long ago, SpaceX has given some steely eyed rocket men/women a pretty successful playground.