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Meta’s Nick Clegg: Fully developed metaverse more than a decade away

Nick Clegg

A fully developed metaverse could be as much as 15 years away, according to a new document written by former Deputy-Prime Minister Nick Clegg, now president of global affairs at Meta.

The nearly 8,000-word meta manifesto, published on Medium, outlines the company’s vision for the future of the largely ill-defined and nascent metaverse.

Those excited about the prospect of a developed metaverse may be disappointed to learn that the former Lib Dem leader expects the fully realised vision of the virtual world to be more than a decade away.

“These innovations aren’t going to happen overnight. We’re in the early stages of this journey. Many of these products will only be fully realised in 10–15 years, if not longer,” Clegg wrote.

Given the amount of work that will have to go into building it, Meta also expects hundreds of jobs to be created for developers, coders and engineers. Clegg described the process as a “job creation engine”.

Data has so far supported this – job postings for metaverse-related roles have soared since Meta rebranded from Facebook in October last year.

Nick Clegg: metaverse tech will be “ground-breaking”

Despite the long wait, Clegg seems confident that the new technology currently in development will be “no less ground-breaking”.

Clegg also describes the metaverse as not a single entity, but more of a patchwork of technologies created and operated by dozens of companies.

“The metaverse is not a single product, in the way Meta’s apps are. Nor is it an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows, or hardware like Apple’s iPhone. Like today’s internet, the metaverse will be a constellation of technologies, platforms, and products,” Clegg wrote.

“It won’t be built, operated, or governed by any one company or institution. It will take a range of companies large and small, civil society, the public sector, and millions of individual creators.”

A study conducted earlier this year projected the ‘metaverse economy’ could be worth more than£10tn

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