I'm in the process of learning Backbone and just read about Meteor, so I might be completely wrong on this. But it seems like Backbone and Meteor are trying to

I'm in the process of learning Backbone and just read about Meteor, so I might be completely wrong on this. But it seems like Backbone and Meteor are trying to solve different problems, and aren't mutually exclusive. Backbone is server-agnostic, and Meteor is somewhat client-agnostic, so you could use Meteor to do the data synchronization and automatic updating, while structuring your client app using Backbone.