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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Any future avatar based communication system (VR/AR) needs to be open source and auditable if it’s going to mediate a large portion of human affairs and interaction. It also needs to be actually decentralized, the way the web and Internet are.

We are working on it at Mozilla: hubs.mozilla.com

More info here: https://github.com/mozilla/hubs-cloud/wiki/The-Web-Emergent-...

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Why is this requirement particular to AR/VR, or is it just a desire to attach this requirement onto a big tech trend?

Did you even read the link he posted?

Judging from his post the author believes AR/VR can provide a sense of “presence” that will recreate how we interact socially on the net.

I remain skeptical, but this has been a recent argument coming from oculus devs and others in the VR/AR community.

VR communication systems are a toy/gimmick like second life was. I have spent some time with VRchat and see no reason why it would end up becoming a primary method of communication over IM/social media. Its a good way to mess around and have some fun but its less convenient than existing methods.

That’s true today. Is it true 10 years from today?

If AR/VR becomes built into a form factor similar to reading glasses today I suspect we will see a lot more avatar based chatting.

For what purpose though? Front facing cameras are in every device now and IM/voice chat is still more common. I guess it depends if you are communicating for function or for social/entertainment purposes. I just don't see the added value of avatar communication other than the novelty of being a video game character or a fox person

The value of avatar based communication, vs video in particular, is about:

- social presence: the feeling of being together and of unmediated communication

- shared spatial awareness: the ability to have a shared reference frame of physical reality

these are the two key features of face to face communication that digital communication tools have largely failed to replicate. (as studied by academic research)

I also conjecture there's a third:

- ability to dynamically spawn and manipulate contextual mixed media in a shared spatial environment (videos, images, 3d models, data, etc)

These three characteristics combined are met already today to some degree by modern day video games, but VR/AR seems likely to be the key tool to knock down much of the barrier regarding social presence due to its ability to transmit many more forms of non-verbal communication between people than existing tools.

It seems highly likely 5-10 years from now you will be able to wear a device that is comfortable and unobtrusive that can deliver the presence of any other connected user to you instantly, including body language and full spatial awareness. In such a world where these devices exist, it would be pretty stunning to think people would not use them regularly for such purposes.

There are a few things that make it less convenient. One of them like you pointed out is the size and comfort issues but there are other issues. VR/AR chats require your full attention / real time communication. Most communication has left phone calls and moved to asynchronous communication methods. Another is limitations of the space, people spend a large % of there communication time on public transport, instant messaging translates well to this since it requires no listening or making noise and requires minimal space. Full body tracking and spacial awareness is useless when you are sitting down.

I think if people really wanted to primary communicate with facial/avatar awareness, we would see everyone using video calls over social media and IMs.

I think VR/AR communication has some place in the future but I do not see it becoming a serious/primary communication tool.

I'm confused, are you arguing that video calls are not a primary communication tool? If avatar based comms became as common as video calls I'd consider that a primary tool.

Besides, the idea is not that this would meaningfully displace existing media (except perhaps video for some use-cases), but provide a fundamentally new medium for communication that has no present day analog other than face-to-face. Much like current tools, you'd use it when it is the ideal context and situation for it to be maximally useful.

Video calls and other media have distinct tradeoffs, and are objectively worse than face-to-face along a variety of dimensions.

The argument is simple, if you believe:

- people value face-to-face over existing digital communication tools for certain contexts

- VR and AR based communication meaningfully approaches face-to-face in certain ways that existing tools do not

- VR and AR technology will eventually get to a point where it is ubiquitous

Then it seems that tech will be used for those purposes. Either of the latter two assumptions could be wrong, but early research [1] supports the argument of first, and based upon the tech track the second seems highly likely.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173863

> It also needs to be actually decentralized, the way the web and Internet are.

The more you look at the web/Internet, you’ll notice it’s not as decentralized as most people believe

agree, but it's the best example we currently have of a global scale decentralized digital network. (crypto assets aside, which aren't really a good analog to what i'm talking about here) would be happy to make a better one tho!

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