Not Metaverse, AR is Going to Lead the Next-Gen Revolution: Tim Cook

Apple CEO dislikes the Metaverse and believes a different technology will shape the future.

You might automatically repeat the standard response. It is a virtual world in which people can work, study, play, and shop. But what exactly does that mean? Or how does it appear? Is it enough to persuade you to use it? These are the reservations that Apple CEO Tim Cook has about the metaverse widespread adoption. While he may know a thing or two about radical technology, he is skeptical that the average person understands the concept of the metaverse well enough to meaningfully incorporate it into their daily lives. The metaverse is simply too bizarre. And science suggests he may be on to something. Just strange enough to consider what makes something credible to you.

It's probably based on things you already know, with a dash of something new. In other words, our curiosity is piqued when our desire for novelty is balanced with our aversion to risk. We feel threatened when something is too novel or different. These are known as minimally counterintuitive concepts, or MCIs, in psychology. The less counterintuitive something is, the less it violates our pre-existing ideas about the world, and the easier it is to accept. The metaverse is not in the least bit counterintuitive. Being physically strapped into place with a headset, 'becoming' a cartoon-like persona, and navigating a virtual world amongst other cartoon-like people are not intuitive.

We're looking for community wherever we go. Because of our human need to belong (emotional need to be accepted by members of our peer group), our behavior is both socially and emotionally motivated. The metaverse, on the other hand, necessitates a completely new way of connecting – of being. The cold, virtual avatars avoid the warmth that people seek in social interactions, and the information-laden physical facial expressions that signal someone's intention and emotion in real life are simply no longer available. Making friends in the metaverse becomes more difficult as a result of this. And when something becomes too difficult, we tend to abandon it. Not to mention, given the metaverse experiential ambiguity and concept ambiguity, it is statistically unlikely that the community that would meaningfully satisfy the average person's belonging needs is hanging out in the metaverse.

In our lives, we are the narrators. Our narrative identity implies that we integrate our lived experiences into a consistent, predictable timeline about who we are and what our lives mean. This influences our self-concept, and as a result, we are happier and more confident. We would not only have to rebuild our identities from scratch, but we would also lack a reference point for 'what matters' in a metaverse identity. In real life, we are guided by social status concerns, but how does clout translate to an avatar? It does not stop there. Our identity reconstruction process would be interminable because we would presumably be alternating between different services and vendors within the metaverse (each requiring a unique self-identifying avatar and prescribing unique interaction rules).