Lamina1: Neal Stephenson’s Anti-Commercial Metaverse
redbrick.me
redbrick.me
Is this the anti-commercial metaverse?
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From the article:
> Lamina1 aims to use blockchain technology to hand power back to the people, giving online communities the tools and infrastructure to build their own, more immersive internet.
The article links to a white paper on the lamina1 website: https://www.lamina1.com/docs/Lamina1_Whitepaper_1.1.pdf
For me that has aged like a car salesman in a plaid suit. No thanks.
This is a general point and not a gripe at the anti-crypto crowd: comments that boil down to "I don't like this topic" are not useful and probably don't belong here.
I'm a big fan of his fictional work. I think his track record in startups has not been that great though. Even though he has clearly got some interesting ideas and thoughts. So, I don't have super high hopes that this time is going to be different.
But I think that if you can look beyond the current crypto scandals there might be a need for something like what he is trying to build here. I'm not convinced that what he's building is the right thing technically. But the base observation that copyright, ownership of digital assets, and payments become a lot more complicated in whatever the metaverse is going to be is fundamentally not wrong. It's where our current systems break down.
Novels like Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and his more recent Reamde and "Fall, or Dodge in heaven", all feature some kind of crypto payment systems and it's a recurring theme in his work. Even his baroque cycle is basically an historical science fiction novel that is about the birth of the modern financial system in the seventeenth century. So, he is an author that has a track record of understanding a thing or two about money.
On the contrary, while he is indeed a good author and has written highly enjoyable fictions (well, heavy on the nerdy side but this is HN after all so I think a lot of us have no problem with that), his understanting of how money and knowledge work on a societal level is quite frankly laughable. It is deeply rooted in the californian ideology and very naïve. But it still good fun, and it doesn't take itself to seriously.
However, I'd have one criticism of this (which I've had of other projects including some I've been associated with), and it's that if you're trying to make something radically different than what exists (be that in society, or in the blockchain or metaverse worlds), then it's a bit weird to structure your venture in exactly the same ways as these other things.
Besides Stephenson's word, there is nothing in the presentation that suggests that this is any different from the other initiatives out there.
If ousting commercial interests is a goal, shouldn't this be structured in a much more decentralized way rather than having a corporate startup with a bunch of investors? I'm sure Stephenson doesn't need the money, and I'm sure that would inspire a bunch of hackers to contribute much more than the current structure.
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what's up with that?
edit: Cache rules everything around me.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-Syf6T...