It was a bold proclamation, and it helped at the time paint a picture of Facebook as a risk-taking, moonshot-hunting Silicon Valley juggernaut in the mold of Google and its X lab. Now, 18 months later, some of those projects are still reportedly in the works, but the team responsible for them no longer go by the DARPA-inspired name Building 8.
According to a report today from Business Insider, Building 8 has been disbanded, with its projects redistributed to new teams within the companys augmented and virtual reality division.
Instead, the two most high-profile projects from the division the brain-computer interface project and an AI- and AR-infused video chat device have been split up between two divisions. That video chat device became Facebook Portal, and the team that developed it formally replaced Building 8 when the device launched in October, as reported by Yahoo at the time.The Portal group, according to Facebook, will be responsible for future hardware projects that involve new, cutting-edge camera technology, as well as AR and VR.
Meanwhile, the brain-computer interface project is now operating out of Facebook Reality Labs, a division created back in May when Facebook underwent a substantial reorganization.
Its still possible Facebook could one day develop a brain-computer interface or, as Dugan promised alongside that announcement at F8, a way to hear using your skin.
Original article