AR pioneer warns that metaverse could make “reality disappear” | Hacker News Reader

AR pioneer warns that metaverse could make “reality disappear”

futurism.com

53 pointsbonkerbits42 comments

"You have violated the terms of service and your account has been suspended. You no longer have access to Reality."

You know you're going in the wrong direction as a species if a corporation can have control of your every interaction, and they can take that access away if they so wish. They do it today, why should it be any different when the metaverse exists?

I think it's fine if a company can control what I do in their property, real or virtual.

The issue (and I wouldn't say this usually) is government. There need to be updated monopoly laws so that that companies with defacto state-level control over what people do cannot exist or are treated as utilities that everyone had a right to.

And government has to stop restricting people from doing stuff in real life, so that we're not pushed into on online dystopia. Importantly, this includes ready ways for everyone to go about their lives and interactions with government without a need for a smart phone, digital ID, or anything similar. Maybe if governments solve the monopoly problem this can be revisited.

I strongly disagree.

How much of the world do you own that you get to "make the rules" for?

If corporations are allowed to "make the rules" for property with impunity-- you will find yourself at their mercy for the vast majority of your life.

Yes, companies do not have some kind of right to do anything they want because "they worked for it". It's the other way around: people grant companies the privilege of making money as long as they provide a benefit and thus (of course) don't hurt consumers.

Companies are an agglomeration of humans, and we should never allow an organized group of people to make life miserable for ordinary individuals. If that happens, then democracy is lost.

I'm confused by the strength of your disagreement. You're using a website that has rules about what you can do. Presumably you only let the people you want to into your house? Are you saying you don't agree with property rights? I suspect I'm misunderstanding.

There's a big difference between personal ownership and corporate ownership. There's a huge legal and ethical gap between your living room and a Wal-Mart parking lot.

What is the difference? What are we disagreeing about here?

We are disagreeing about this line:

>I think it's fine if a company can control what I do in their property, real or virtual.

and this argument:

>Presumably you only let the people you want to into your house? Are you saying you don't agree with property rights?

"Property rights" are not some universal constant. They're just whatever we pragmatically decide is a reasonable amount of control to grant to someone to make life run smoothly for everyone. We're allowed to make different rules for different cases, and the "living room" and "Wal-Mart" cases clearly warrant different rules. Specifically, what happens in your house - a private place where you sleep - directly impinges on your personal well-being and safety, while Wal-Mart - a corporate entity with no feeling, consciousness, need for sleep or sense of pain - is almost entirely unaffected by what happens in one of their parking lots, which also happens to be a public place.

There is no reason, no benefit to society, to allow a corporation unbridled control over your behavior merely because they need premises to conduct business.

If every company in the world said you couldn’t buy from them, you would die. Does Corporate America get to have that power?

It’s the company town again, but worse.

Rosenberg contends AR will be practically impossible to live without [1], and that its most obvious use case is labeling persons in your environment — and labeling them in a way they have zero control over, and limited ability to opt out of. Rosenberg hints this may exacerbate interpersonal conflict, and that removing the shroud of anonymity from public spaces could make the metaverse difficult to escape from.

[1]: https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-...

I wonder if it will be common for people to don disguises in the future to escape this labeling?

I play a concerning amount of VR Chat because it helped me greatly during COVID while I was single. It is an amazing experience, but I find it very dangerous for society in some ways. It has improved my mental health I think, but it's limiting my real world socialization so I don't know if it's that healthy.

You can very easily replace your real life with it outside of work and bills, and get all of your social needs from it. As someone with crippling social anxiety, it removes something that triggers my social anxiety and I'm able to easily make friends. People are more open, identity just isn't a thing because everyone is anything they want to be, people are more open to being 'close' to other people and forming relationships with them. I've been comparing it to the early internet in the 90's and 2000's, especially since the entire game outside of the base code is something like 99% community created by artists with great creativity.

I dance a lot in VR in EDM clubs which I have never done in real life. The other night I went to a real world concert and I danced for the first time in my life. I felt confident and knew other people didn't care, finally. People started talking to me, they were interested in me. I honestly didn't even know how to process it until the show was over, but it was definitely because of my gained confidence in VR.

It's the bleeding edge of the metaverse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wUg9HCODU

You say it's limiting your real world socialization but given you're now comfortable dancing at concerts and making friends it sounds like overall it's been positive socially in a way that could have been harder to achieve without it

It's interesting how much your experience echo's mine (I just jumped out of a VRC dance meet a moment ago)

I can definitely see social VR eating more of the world in the long run however. I can't say for sure this is a bad thing, just different. I think it's something the next generations won't feel negative about in the same way, for them it'll just be the nature of the world

Dystopian maybe, but think of the great ROI.

The 21st century (so far) distilled down to a single sentence. Bravo.

Eh, I think of what Jaron Lanier said years ago about how VR is more ethical when it's time-limited and kinda clunky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRN_dZNJUM&t=1935s

I'm already inundated with endless popups, advertisements, surveys, and other requests when I browse the web on my mobile device.

I don't want to have to do that for everyday living too.

Hate sounding like an ad myself but the builtin adblocker on Brave is a lifesaver for cleaning up shitty mobile sites (ie, almost all of them).

Not looking forward to have to whitelist the programs being side-loaded into my VR interface so I don't get giant modal popups blocking my entire universe.

> modal popups

How about modal NPC bystanders blocking your way, forcing you to notice some commercial signage. You will be a targeted individual in meta!

I look forward to my sketchy Billboard blocker that uses my spare neural electricity to mine Monero after its developer gets hacked.

Firefox on Android has uBlock origin, works well for me.

So does Yandex Browser

I can’t help but draw a comparison between metaverse, and meta as is used describe an optimal play strategy in competitive games. In the latter, the meta is controlled by the company pushing out new content. In the former, I imagine the company formerly known as Facebook will have control over the metaverse in a similar way. The difference being one is an entertaining game and the other will have real effects on the real world.

Somewhat ironic is that lots of people are looking forward to virtual worlds where they can explore without reality getting in the way.

Slowly at first, in fits and starts, but likely people will get ensnared into it and like social media, find it difficult to live without.

Then, the company, or whoever controls it will become pretty powerful not only in this synthetic realm but also in reality as the barrier from one to another is blurred.

It feels like many of us are already living in a dystopian nightmare, even without the metaverse. Day-after-day of mentally draining video calls, constant slack notifications...

That trend had been going on for quite a while now. When you consider the amount of time people are spending on TV, gaming, movies and social networks it’s pretty clear that people are already spending a lot of time in virtual reality and prefer it that way. And I see that trend continuing.

What’s scary is that if this reality is controlled by large companies with profit motives. They already manipulate us a lot all kinds of media.

I would argue that all your examples are mixed reality at best. I find VR tech incredible interesting but can’t spend more than 30 min in my Quest 2. When I use my other devices my reality - the real world - is still present both in the peripheral vision and in my mental awareness. Reading Kindle or browsing HN are not even close to VR, so we are yet to see whether VR tech will replace any existing tech interactions.

This Japanese/Colombian short film on that theme from a few years ago has really stuck with me

>HYPER-REALITY https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs

It's dystopian, but maybe inevitable? It might be the only way for economic growth and standard of livings (or some dystopian version of these standards) to continue increasing globally without the human ecological footprint becoming even more disastrous than it currently is. People's lives becoming more virtual may be a (sad) way to use a smaller amount of real world resources and stop trampling the planet.

So more of the same.

Lifecycle of medias is immutable. IIRC, the stages are something like pioneers, settlers, robber barons, wasteland, rediscovery by hipsters, etc.

yeah black mirror is a horror series about technology going in the wrong direction. it was entertainment, not a documentary

Still less an instruction manual or idea sourcebook.

If the people addicted to social media disappear behind VR headsets, that will be so nice.

I'm not convinced this is any different from the current situation where they bury themselves behind their phone screens.

Well we are getting a metaverse, just like we are getting a crypto economy. Our choices are around the form it takes, not if it will happen. If good people sit idly by, or dismiss it, we will get the worst versions of both.

Isn't that the whole point? We get somewhere to escape the real world and Big Company get their own world without existing regulation and oversight.

1996 is calling: https://www.crockford.com/living.html

Let's all love Lain.

A metaverse managed by Lain, not Zuckerberg? One can only hope..

we haven't seen this level of product hype since the Segway....remember that hypestorm?

It feels like different people have a different understanding what the Metaverse is[1]. Is it Microsoft Chat[2] but in 3D and VR and Zuck spying on you? Is it reality but with augmented data on top of it (I just gave the definition of AR)?

We already have technology modifying reality, like how you can be in the middle of Mongolia and still be in constant contact with your friends in San Francisco. I've had friends meeting in real life and laughing about the funny post someone made on FB (when FB was still a thing...).

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEqyQgWIe4

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