A seven-foot statue depicting Ms. Chan in a silver, flowing robe that Mr. Zuckerberg commissioned last year sits on the property.
There was once a rumour that Jeff Bezos had a fully equipped Starbucks installed at his home. It turned out to be false, but is nevertheless entirely believable because the one thing all Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk and many other tech billionaires share is a lack of class. Ironically one of the few things money cannot buy.
Of all the problems that the existence of billionaires creates, the biggest is simply the fact that having that much money gives individuals too much power. Sure, you, the average person, might get drunk and dream about buying up an entire town’s worth of land to build your exclusive treehouse survivalist kingdom, but you don’t have the means to actually do it. And that is a good thing. When society allows people to get 10-figure net worths, all of the most idiotic fever dreams of the human mind begin springing into reality.
That is not progress. Capitalism’s tendency to grant godlike powers to the sort of people that are sociopathic and tasteless enough to accumulate billions of dollars is one of its most embarrassing flaws.
This is clearly an area Zuckerberg is passionate about to a truly painful degree. So far, though, the best use case — the best use case — for even the more credulous believers is meetings. I cannot imagine buying dedicated expensive hardware for meetings, but I am probably not in the right market; two-and-a-half years into working from home and I still have not bought a ring light. Regardless, that sounds pretty dull. Are businesses champing at the bit to have staff sit in a virtual board room instead of just on a call? Is this solving a meaningful problem for them?
It is not. But enough people will believe it is. Over the last couple of years, when remote work became more mainstream, people perceived the lack of gadgets as the reason remote work is difficult.
Three months into the pandemic, LinkedIn was full of posts of people showing off the latest crap they bought. When remote work sucks, it’s because the images are pixelated, the lighting is terrible, and our voices aren’t clear enough. And so we use our prime memberships to buy gadgets: a better webcam, a ring light, and a radio-grade microphone.
None of this will make you communicate better. Not a webcam, not a microphone or better lighting. And certainly not a digital representation of yourself in a virtual world.
Nevertheless, VR will play a role in the future of remote work. Not that it solves an actual problem, but because it’s inevitable. Managers in suits will see this and think, ‘maybe that will sort out the disconnect we’re feeling.’