The vice president for Global Affairs and Communications at Meta Platforms, Nick Clegg, spoke at Lisbon’s Web Summit 2021. He was speaking during a panel that was discussing Facebook and innovation in Europe.
Clegg joined Meta in 2018 after a 20-year tenure in the British political scene. The biggest tech conference in the world has now returned to a physical setting after a 2-year pandemic-induced virtual connection. This time around, the event is showcasing an incredible list of organizations, entrepreneurs, and influencers leading at the cutting-edge of their respective fields.
Based on recent data that was compiled by the Web Summit communications team, it attracted 42,751 attendees coming from 128 countries. 50.5% of these participants are female, representing the highest-ever participation by women in the 10-year event’s history.
Interviewed by a news editor at the Financial Times, Matthew Garrahan, Clegg responded with a sense of joviality and expressiveness. He shared several notable insights into the development and also expected execution of Facebook’s new Meta project.
Clegg shared his personal opinion on the importance that:
“We [Meta] were as open as possible and that we are not seeking to build the metaverse on our own. We are building for the metaverse. The metaverse, I think many people might be relieved to know, is not going to be wholly-owned, administered; and orchestrated by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta.”
The British ex-politician, who served as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party from 2007 to 2015 and deputy prime minister of the UK in a coalition government together with David Cameron from 2010 to 2015, is mostly considered an orange book liberal. It is believed that his political stance aligns with choice and freedom in the private lives of people and the market.
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Clegg shared an opinion that insisted on the importance of fostering collaboration in the pursuit of technological evolution:
“It was important for us to get out there as early as possible; and say the unlike previous technological eruptions which happened very suddenly and then; if you like, society, regulation and law breathlessly try to catch up later — which is perhaps part of the debate we’re having in the wake of the issues that Frances Haugen has brought to light; — that this time we can do it the other way round.”
Facebook’s corporate pivot into the new metaverse market at Facebook’s Connect conference on October 28 puts them among blockchain platforms like Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and The Sandbox in the race to create the architecture of virtual worlds for people to socialize, work, and co-exist with the linking of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other facets of the cryptocurrency world.
