The Metaverse Has Always Been a Dystopian Idea
vice.com
vice.com
I worked on VR projects for SAIC and Disney about 25 years ago, and as much as I criticize Facebook over privacy issues, I like Mark Z’s vision here, in addition to Microsoft’s vision of shared virtual workspaces and AR augmentation. Being an Apple fanboy, I also anticipate their future products and systems in this space.
I have been joking/teasing family and friends for many years that governments would fade to black and corporations would rule all. I am 70 and retired so it feels like being naked no longer being associated with a large corporation (I may un-retire). I am channeling William Gibson here, but affiliations to corporations may become the new citizenship. Entrepreneurs will exist to service corporations with new tech and ideas but with little chance of forming mega-corporations themselves.
My brain went “I’d like to turn to butter now but I buy it: misquoting Twain, “only fiction has to make sense, not reality” plus you know, DARPA is a big place, and imagineering could be useful…”
Sir, I've been alive for lesser years than your experience but this is already happening. Vast majority of new products and services each day are just tools which function inside mega-corporation's products.
An entrepreneur without good network, funds are delegated to using API of a Big Tech product to build a product to solve some minor problem and eventually that feature would be rolled out natively crushing the product of that entrepreneur; Occasionally if there's good connections they'll get acquired.
You've professed that you're Apple fanboy, I appreciate your honesty but Apple hasn't hidden the fact that they are trying to crush Spotify at every chance they get in favor of Apple Music. If a startup like Spotify which has all the support it can get from being cash rich has to put up with this, What chance does someone from a village have to compete with valley?
It's not just new-age entrepreneurs, Look at News Media many who have survived for over hundred years even under colonizing forces are now at the mercy of Facebook, Google, Apple and many of them have already perished.
It's also not as described in that article, the author is shoehorning something written a while go to fit a currently popular narrative. I don't think Stephenson really does dystopian / utopian, right / wrong, moral / immoral. He constructs plausible settings where people roam and do as people do.
As a tangent, I hope this new hype results in a high production value adaptation of Snowcrash or one of his other works (seveneves!), Stephenson really deserves a higher place in our cultural pantheon.
+1 (though I think his place is higher and more secure than this comment suggests. Or not!)
Stephenson's place in the sci-fi canon (if such a thing can be said to exist) was sealed when he wrote, first, _Snow Crash_ and, later, _Cryptonomicon_ (though I find the latter a tad overwrought).
With zero insight into the film industry's relationship to Stephenson's literary estate: Many of Stephenson's novels have trouble sticking their endings. _Snow Crash_ does not have this problem but _Cryptonomicon_ does. Same problem for _REAMDE_ which is very cinematic but takes a long way to wrapping its plotlines.
Extrapolating from that speculative line, if Stephenson refuses to give the film/TV industry artistic license with regard to screenplays of his novels, producers may be unwilling to move forward. That said, I thought Amazon was going to do a version of _Snow Crash_…
Taking a moment to sing Stephenson's praise names, _The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ is my favorite of his novels. Superb pacing, fascinating vision of technology, and strong sociocultural relevance. Plus, _The Diamond Age_ knocks the stuffing out its ending!
If you've not read it yet, what are you waiting for?
That makes two of us! I always doubted there were others, so welcome to the club :)
I tried to get my wife into it but failed because the intro to the book is very much not like rest. All the talk of implanting guns in the head made it seem like it was going to be action sci-fi. The intro to Snow Crash is also not like the rest, but it is so hilarious that I don't mind. I always assumed that his editor(s) didn't know what to do with it, but knew there was so much awesomeness that they just left it as-is.
Snow Crash has been optioned for one project or another for over 20 years. As of May 2020, HBO was adapting it to a TV series. Here’s hoping that’s still on track!
https://www.cbr.com/snow-crash-hbo-max-adaptation-dream-cybe...
Looking towards the next 200 years, it seems likely that there's a lot more hardship and privation in humanity's future. Whether due to climate change or the need to colonize Mars or some asteroid or whatever. Tech that can help make immiserated conditions more tolerable may well be hugely valuable to humanity. In a manner analogous to Christianity's role during the long decline of Ancient Rome. This may well be the greatest boon of the internet, when future historians look back at this time.
Perhaps it's only natural. As a soceity, we are always seeking to lower the cost of obtaining stimuli and qualia. Things got complicated as we improved our living condition (making the shift from hunter-gathering to farming, and in the modern time migrating from rural to urban for job opportunities and access to facilities and infrastructure like universities, indie music scene, etc)
The complexity of a modern life makes it more difficult/costly to experience authentic human connection for the city dwellers (e.g. vs tribes who are still hunter-gathers). We also lost our connections with the terrains and plants.
As a coping mechanism most people look for cheaper alternatives to obtain stimuli and qualia. It's sad but there is very little we can do about that.
For the minority of us who realized this is a problem, I believe the only way out is to acheive hyper-intelligence (e.g. by becoming an expert in a field and taking psychedelics) so you can be the master of your physiology and mind, while still be able to get complex work done and be resourceful and affluent.
[edit: elaboration]
That’s your belief sure but I can identify at least one other way out: return to a less “modern” lifestyle.
But then it gets harder/costlier to access opporunities, facilities (eg health care) and infrastructures, as well as social and monetray capitals and (economical and politcal) power.
That being said, of course the metaverse will happen and the boundaries between the physical and the digital will become thin. I only hope we can do it without losing track of what really matters.
Which is what?
Mathematicians have long lived in a useful non-physical reality. So have many artists and writers.
Certainly improving physical reality remains valuable, but the non-physical world will likely grow in real as well as ephemeral value at a higher rate.
From a purely functional angle, the physical world does not include many affordances that the digital world provides for our minds, ability to communicate, learn, discover, etc. Virtual worlds will adapt to our minds, being the ultimate mental tools. And our minds will co-adapt.
Where that goes, nobody knows. But along with AI its likely to be the story of this century.
A site like this is bound to have naive views of arts like this. But it's not correct.
Art lives within the world of physical reality - otherwise, we would not be able to perceive it. Art is the enhancement of some aspect to reality, not a departure from it.
Value requires purpose, so the question is: from what is each individual's purpose derived in the virtual world, where we can leave the physical behind? And is there a purpose to our physical being that we do harm by neglecting?
To me our physical world has much purpose, and the virtual world, in whatever form it takes, is only valuable to the extent it allows me to fulfill my purpose in the physical.
What purpose does The Simpsons fulfill in the physical world?
This is just a step further than what already exists. And it's already happening; nobody can stop it, no matter how many pearls you clutch.
And they will only be willing to pay if they want or need to do something with it. Wants and needs require some purpose, some intention, to drive them.
The Simpsons gives the viewer a break for a short time, during which they can recharge. Or maybe it gives them a viewpoint with which to understand the world that they find useful. Or maybe the viewer has decided that life's purpose is to watch everything on tv.
I'm not asking anyone to stop anything, I only gave my own viewpoint that my purpose comes from the physical world. I have no problem with others finding theirs elsewhere.
Sure we can. It’s not an act of god. Nothing about technology is inevitable or emergent. If it happens, it will happen because people chose to make it so.
And there’s nothing binding us to that choice, even if it is “just a step further than what already exists”. We can choose something else.
Just like nobody was forced to buy a model T. Nobody was forced to plug their phone line into their computer. Nobody was forced to get a streaming box.
This is happening because people desire it on the margin. And the network effects will make it more attractive each time somebody adopts it.
With the right feedback and props almost any pursuit could be closely simulated. VR could transform practical education and training and make it so easily available that anyone wanting to learn any skill could progress through the most difficult and expensive stages of learning for essentially free and then go on to complete their training in real life if they so choose.
The ability to meet with people from anywhere on earth instantly with all the nuances of physical presence properly simulated would provide the equivalent network effects of living in a vibrant urban centre, again for practically no cost.
The benefits of really well executed VR are almost identical to the invention of a sci-fi teleporter and replicator. The places you could visit and activities you could perform would probably provide 80% of the value of the real thing. For people who can afford to do these things in real life it's a pale imitation but for those who can't it's revolutionary.
Except it does provide many things that are necessary (e.g. food, clean water) whereas the digital world is not necessary for anything, really.
So it is necessary.
We could survive without it, in some sense, but not without a global catastrophe. Coordination, communication, efficient finance and logistics, etc. provide huge leverage on our physical resources.
My view of Facebook is just as dim as yours.
b) Facebook is going to do what's best for them. :/
I of course agree about (b) and I think it's about whether Facebook sees their metaverse as the next generation VR platform or as just one VR experience.
- me circa '89 with my head filled with Neuromancer and Mondo 2000
Hello Rio, btw.
The book is both deadly-serious but also self-indulgent, playful, not serious writing per se.
It's long been a part of why I think the web is better & more interesting than most tech projects: hypertext markup language is a medium, a somewhat legible one (alas considerbly less so with the advent of webapps & especially React). There's not presently a lot of hooks, reasons why regular folk would want to immerse themselves in it's technics, the stratification will continue, but I continue to think there are some not-fully-visible tidal forces that make the web potentially one day more compelling, as an interesting empowering useful primary & general interface to computing in general.
VR goggles are too anti-social on the local scale. Have kids? Dog? Spouse? Hard to see they will accept that you shield yourself off completely for long periods of time. You won't even see them coming when they start to grow tired... This is a fundamental flaw.
Then the metaverse... What is the usecase? Why is it fun or why is it useful? It might be cool for a while, but so are lots of other MMOs out there...
And I see the same sorta energy in people playing VR chat today.
What I think you miss as the usecase here is people who aren't quite happy with their identity, or are and choose a different more extreme representation. The difference between being yourself and being a fox for example.
Plenty of people in the world today are lonely, and online connection is what fills the void. They don't have kids, dogs, or spouses. They're a sixteen year old in the middle of nowhere, or a socially anxious programmer living in a shoe box.
It wasn't until years later I (somehow) managed to form a relationship with someone - who is now my wife and mother of my child - that I'm far, far happier. From my experience, VR and Second Life et al are not the answer. Getting out there and experiencing life reaps far more benefits.
> aren't quite happy with their identity,
I found the best thing to do is find like-minded people IRL.
The Black Mirror / Surrogates dystopia is already here, and most people can't get enough of it.
What's noteworthy about RPO isn't the poverty, it's the fact that everything in the Metaverse, and the book itself, is just a repetition of the same nostalgic elements over and over. There is no actual future in the RPO Oasis, just past, in the same way Hollywood (mentioned in another comment) and video game studios increasingly keep re-publishing the same franchises over and over.
So the real threat coming from the Metaverse might not be the poverty or degrading infrastructure which is a sort of obvious one, but the erosion of our capacity to produce any sort of genuine novelty or imagine alternative worlds. Ironically enough, the Metaverse which is supposed to be a sort of wellspring of new ideas is more like a haunted house where you end up trapped like some kind of half-abandoned MMO where people, half-dead, run through the same stories over and over.
Important to point out that Fisher saw this inability to produce any futures as a feature of our political, cultural and economic system (i.e. 'neoliberalism' overused term nowadays) and not just a particular technology.