Predicting the next big thing has been notoriously difficult.

Remember when 3D printers were the future? What about the impending dominance of 3D television or people fleeing New York never to return? How about when Napster seemed like the future of the music industry or MySpace seemed like an unstoppable social media powerhouse.

A lot of the next big things either become not a thing, or a much smaller thing than people expected. 3D printing, for example, hasn’t become a huge part of the average American’s life, but it can come in very handy for space travel, largely because you can’t pack absolutely everything. what you need for your decades-long journey to live on Mars.

In some cases, the next big thing ends up being big, but not as big as expected. The internet hasn’t killed physical retail or even taken 20% of its sales. E-books have done much better, reaching around half of the market, but print books are still a thing.

No one doubts the Metaverse has its uses, but Mark Zuckerberg believes in it so much that he’s bet Facebook’s future on it to the point of renaming his company Meta (Facebook) – Get the Class A report from Meta Platforms Inc.. It would be as if Amazon (AMZN) – Get the report from Amazon.com, Inc.which filed a number of 3D printing patents, dropped its name and became 3DP.

Zuckerberg may be wrong — and one prominent CEO thinks he is — in dampening the Metaverse’s enthusiasm during a recent TV appearance.

What if people wanted reality and not virtual reality?

The internet has been flooded with stories of people spending seemingly absurd amounts of money on metaverse real estate. This could mean virtual land for your real pet (who will have a hard time enjoying the purchase) or some other non-real purchase that seems like a good idea that may actually turn out to be as valuable as buying from someone. a one star for Christmas from a commercial cable.

Expedia (EXPE) – Get the report from Expedia Group, Inc. CEO Peter Kern thinks people will actually stay more interested in the real world and he said so on CNBC on Friday.

“I do not see [the metaverse] as a competitive threat. We’re certainly, like everyone else in the world, sort of intrigued by this…but we’re pretty much on the “true verse,” Kern said in a “Squawk on the Street” interview.

The CEO pressed that point and said he didn’t expect virtual experiences to replace real experiences.

“And I don’t think the metaverse, in my lifetime, will ever make up for being in Paris, being in Rome, being in a national park,” he said. “There’s just no replacement for that, and those experiences are what change our lives. And I don’t think it’s the same with headphones on your couch.”

Mark Zuckerberg thinks he’s wrong

Zuckerberg thinks we’re “on the next chapter for the internet and he explained what he thinks will happen next in a letter that was published around the time Facebook took on the Meta name.

The next platform will be even more immersive – an embodied Internet where you are in the experience, not just looking at it. We call it the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.

The defining quality of the metaverse will be a sense of presence – as if you are there with another person or in another place. Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate social tech dream. That’s why we focus on building it.

In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine – get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create – as well as completely new experiences that don’t quite fit the way we think. computers or telephones today.

Or, people will continue to “get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create,” and more in the same way they do today. Yes, the Metaverse will exist – just like Zoom calls exist when getting together isn’t practical, but maybe most people don’t want to give up reality for VR?

Kern admitted, albeit somewhat ironically, that the Facebook founder/CEO of Meta might be right.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he said. “Maybe in 100 years we’ll all be drumming and sitting around with headphones, but for the foreseeable future we feel pretty good that people want to be in the world.”