[HN Gopher] The metaverse is not bullshit
___________________________________________________________________
The metaverse is not bullshit
Author : realprimoh
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-10-30 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (primoh.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (primoh.net)
| actuallyalys wrote:
| I think the reason the Metaverse feels like bullshit to me is
| because:
|
| --a lot of its marketing, perhaps inadvertently, positions it as
| a replacement for the web rather than evolution or extension.
|
| --it's pushed by a company that has operates multiple walled
| gardens.
|
| --as far as I know, there's no real technical details about how
| the interoperability would work.
|
| I think my and others' reactions would be much different if, for
| example, a browser vendor had proposed a standard way for linking
| to AR environments. While a tiny step, it could lead to a gradual
| but ultimately substantial shift in the web (similar to the way
| video became ubiquitous over the past decade) and is more in line
| with the author's vision of media evolution than the Metaverse's
| marketing seems to suggest it will be. (Edited to add:) I'm not
| saying this approach is the best way of moving forward or would
| be a brilliant success or anything; I just mention it to
| illustrate a more plausible way of developing and integrating VR.
|
| So it's possible the author might be right in the end, but there
| are a lot of red flags.
| snuser wrote:
| At the end of the day the corporate branding and hype building is
| stupid and disingenuous, but people still enjoy interacting with
| 3d content call it what you want
| uncomputation wrote:
| Seems a bit naive to me. OP seems intent that Facebook (or
| "Meta") will play nice and remain decentralized and absolutely
| not "own the metaverse," and uses Google as an example.
| Unfortunately, that very comment painting Google as an underdog
| says that it has become a company which "controls the web." And
| saying that Facebook has developed some open source frameworks
| therefore it will continue to do so is just not holistic. FB
| developed React closed-source and for its own benefit. They
| didn't sit down and look at the state of web development and say
| "hey, let's create a framework for everybody." They say down and
| said "we need a way to easily build UI components and systems
| that scale." It just so happened that other people's interests
| and needs aligned with FB in this particular instance. To say
| that this means FB is somehow inherently interested in being
| "compatible" is fallacious.
|
| I do agree that comparisons with any old technology, positive or
| negative, are inherently slippery. So while I don't much agree
| with the original article, I don't agree with this either because
| how can you? This is simply pointing to a past event (the
| commercialization of the internet) and saying "this will happen
| again." Maybe, maybe not, to quote a Chinese aesop.
|
| But on a deeper level, it seems that the foolish Luddites OP is
| quoting against the internet were not opposed to the very nature
| of the web - a decentralized information system - but rather the
| technical development of it. This is different from the arguments
| against the metaverse, which are almost entirely inherent to its
| nature. I think everyone would accept some lacking VR technology
| or uncomfortable AR glasses, if they agreed on the final
| destination. Unfortunately, most of the criticism of the
| metaverse are against its very nature. There is not a market for
| the metaverse. Nobody seems happy or excited by the idea. And
| come on, really? Saying that VR is anything like really
| interacting with another person? This is like those million and
| one social media apps that are gonna "solve loneliness." Maybe
| this comment will be quoted and flashed up on the Meta Headset 8
| in a decade or two and everyone will have a good laugh at me and
| my foolish blindness, but I don't see a genuine market demand for
| the metaverse and that's my criticism for it.
| megameter wrote:
| Increasingly I agree. It's the Byte Magazine 1981 cover where
| someone inserts an impossibly small floppy disk into an
| impossibly small wristwatch computer; Metaverse = VR world is not
| the literal message, it's placeholder marketing for a complex
| message. The actual things being built to create an interoperable
| metaverse are mostly mundane "gonna need one of these" core
| technologies. The stuff actually trying to directly achieve that
| immediate vision will falter on the technical and social limits
| of what people would actually agree is a good experience. (And to
| know where a lot of these proposals fail, you want the advice of
| anyone with experience in operating virtual worlds and online
| communities.)
|
| Remember, the last "VR wave" hit not all that long ago. Many
| people can recite the limits of that particular tech reasonably
| well - cost, poor accessibility, space requirements, limits on
| viable "camera positions". The proposal of a metaverse is not
| really to double down on that particular bet, but to go back and
| integrate everything top-to-bottom in ways that weren't being
| done before. It will be half bullshit, but some of will stick.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I wonder to what extent the author's positioning as a "technology
| optimist" requires them to try to frame a positive take on the
| metaverse. I'm not questioning whether they believe their own
| essay or not, I'm just wondering if there is a formulation of the
| metaverse which they would not have found reason to be hopeful
| about, even when most people seem to be at least skeptical.
|
| On the other hand, I'm more of a technology fatalist, and I have
| to constantly correct my impulse to think of developments like
| this as by definition another turn of the screw, since that's not
| _always_ the case.
| IvyMike wrote:
| This is the future of the metaverse:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eix7fLsS058
|
| Jokes aside: at some point, we all thought the future would mean
| transitioning from audio calls to video calls. But for a lot of
| people, it transitioned from phone calls to texts. I feel like
| metaverse is just the next video call -- a niche that isn't
| really gonna be mainstream. (Although who knows, when Covid-25
| hits, maybe we'll all be happy to have metaverse instead of
| zoom.)
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I don't have a problem with the concept of "the metaverse".
|
| I have a problem with _Facebook's vision_ of the metaverse.
| lxe wrote:
| The Internet / Web was an evolving ecosystem of enthusiasts and
| companies, with academic roots, standards, and years of
| evolution.
|
| Metaverse is a gimmick, just like Web3 and Second Life, and
| Microsoft Bob, etc...
|
| Grumble grumble...
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| I think you need to re-watch the announcement. Maybe you missed
| the part where they threw in NFTs for some reason (lol)
| realprimoh wrote:
| I would say that the Metaverse also has an evolving ecosystem -
| the crypto space, VR/AR space, and other communities also have
| academic roots, years of progress, and budding companies. The
| argument you made could've been made for the Internet back in
| 1990 IMO.
| evgen wrote:
| No, it is not the same. There is no 'there' there when it
| comes to the so-called metaverse. VR is constantly in a state
| of iterative failure: it solves problems no one has and does
| so rather poorly. The only thing that is different now is
| that there will be a big company throwing its money into the
| metaverse bonfire of value, but if there is one company I
| want to see pissing away time and money chasing a delusion it
| is Facebook.
|
| Back in the pre-dot-com era I worked at a company that
| provided Neal with a lot of his background info on how a
| metaverse might work and many of the plans and guides this
| company developed remain relevant and interesting. We are
| still a decade or more away from hitting any of them on the
| technical side and the open social questions that we were
| able to wave our hands over at the time are now much more
| important to the conversation. Unfortunately these
| discussions would raise uncomfortable questions for both
| Facebook and most of the proponents of this new metaverse.
| _Understated_ wrote:
| I haven't read this article but I have read others about the pros
| and cons of Metaverse.
|
| My take?
|
| It's going to be another method for FB (and other "carefully
| curated partners") to assault your eyeballs with advertising so
| they can make bank.
|
| The end.
| enzino wrote:
| lol so zuckerbook does rebranding with its annual color theme
| change (while it's bleeding users like there's no tomorrow) and
| people call BS? how strange
| [deleted]
| yumraj wrote:
| Metaverse concept in itself, as a utopian/distopian/whatever
| concept is not bullshit, since it's a concept.
|
| Metaverse implementation under the auspices of Mark Zuckerberg
| and the Facebook machinery, is going to be complete and utter
| bull/horse/pig/.../shit and going to do much more harm to
| society, if it picks up, than Facebook is ever capable of.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I get what they are saying but the b.s. part is how it is framed
| as an evolution of the internet. It is and will be yet another
| technology available to those who want to use it. Email is not an
| evolution of papermail, the internet is not an evolution of the
| telephone. It adds value, it does not displace the internet.
|
| I would never want to use VR/AR. I like invisible tech not
| immersive tech. For example, I would prefer holographs to AR/VR
| if the tech was ready. I want tech that is just there and just
| works. When I browse an item at a store, I don't want AR to tell
| me info or let me interact with content about that item, I want
| the store itself to support displays/screens and gesture based
| interaction. I want less tech attached and connected to me. I
| don't like video calls or voice calls, just not comfortable with
| it even with telephones. I like text.
|
| My point is, AR/VR and the tech describe by "metaverse" will
| exist but it will itself become obsoleted by better tech by the
| time it can entirely replace the internet.
|
| Webgl has been around for a while and it hardly replaced regular
| html sites. PWAs are here and they will hardly do the same
| either.
|
| Both authors are arguing a false dichotomy. It is and is not
| bullshit (schrodinger's bullshit?)
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > It is and will be yet another technology available to those
| who want to use it. Email is not an evolution of papermail, the
| internet is not an evolution of the telephone. It adds value,
| it does not displace the internet.
|
| I disagree. The only thing most people get via papermail is
| important government/bank communications and bills. Lots of
| people forgo the use of a telephone and communicate exclusively
| via internet chat/calls.
|
| There is a reason to be worried. Like those older technologies,
| VR/"metaverse" may render more classical paradigms of
| computing, communication and interaction obsolete - meaning,
| leave them either for legacy uses only, or make them only
| useful within a smaller circle of friends or family where the
| use of such classical methods can be pre-agreed and enforced.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Email is not an evolution of papermail
|
| It definitely is! So many people get so many things
| exclusively by email that they would otherwise get by mail.
|
| > the internet is not an evolution of the telephone
|
| Weren't dial-up and then DSL quite literally evolution of the
| telephone connections? And aren't VoIP and other internet
| communication platforms displacing a large use case for the
| telephone?
| LocalH wrote:
| I wouldn't call them an _evolution_ of POTS so much as an
| _overlay_. Dial-up standards were a form of encoding that
| allowed a digital payload to be delivered over lines
| intended for analog signals. DSL is more or less a purified
| version of that.
| dataflow wrote:
| What _would_ constitute an evolution? Would voice calls
| gaining video capability count...? Mail that can include
| digital attachments...?
| badrabbit wrote:
| People use email but they also use papermail. No one writes a
| love letter or send a regular message over paper mail but
| plenty of correspondence still happens by paper mail. Email
| itself is becoming obsoleted now bu newer message protocols
| but papermail will be around. Being used less does not mean
| displaced. Papermail lost the popularity contest but is still
| alive and kicking because the infrastructure is still very
| useful. You wouldn't vote by email but you would via
| papermail. And to your point, there is a reason paper mail is
| used for official purposes. It is the only way to deliver a
| message to the person residing at a fixed physical address.
| sjtindell wrote:
| If you are using the term "metaverse" in casual conversation,
| you've already lost. Twitch, hololive, ar/vr, these are new
| outlets of the same old web. The thing is always evolving. At the
| core, it is still about communication and information.
| tudorw wrote:
| we're there already, they are proposing another window onto it,
| not my favourite window, but just another window
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| As an old timer, it's always a bit tough to read takes like this
| from folks who missed the early days of the web. Obviously
| nobody's age is their fault, and new perspectives will own the
| future. But, as we said back then, your radical ideas have
| occurred to others [0].
|
| Since everyone was fresh off Snow Crash, the early web was full
| of protocol drafts like VRML that were aimed at bringing about an
| immersive version of the decentralized creator space that was
| already blowing our minds. Since all that content was too
| fragmented to make the experience immersive, people built MUDs
| and early MMOs like Second Life to concentrate a critical mass of
| content. So why didn't this come to define the web? IMO:
|
| - Nobody cracked how to jumpstart a real creator economy.
| Protocols only survive if people have incentives to participate,
| which is why the web ended up growing around frustratingly
| centralized pillar services with nefarious network effects.
|
| - In a world of freely connected experiences, "immersive" isn't
| all that attractive. I let individual websites define how they
| present themselves to me, but only begrudgingly. Who would I give
| permission to organize that info into a physical metaphor, and
| why? This is especially true in a mobile first world, where my
| ability to shove a web based experience into my pocket is really
| valuable. Virtual reality is a constraint, not a new medium.
|
| If "this time is different" it's probably because of the first
| bullet above. There is a generation of digital creators that is
| much more prepared to create immersive content than 20 years ago.
| And the biggest social media clearly believe they've learned how
| to organize them into an economy.
|
| But it won't succeed because it's a new idea, or because we have
| better VR headsets. There needs to be a better argument about why
| it is more compelling than the freeform web.
|
| [0]
| https://everything2.com/title/Your+radical+ideas+about...oh%...
| southerntofu wrote:
| The author is confusing many things. If the metaverse is
| interconnected spaces, it requires federated protocols. The
| Internet relies on BGP and TCP/IP for that, with strong
| decentralized governance (via LIRs and RIRs and the IETF).
|
| The author claims Minecraft is an interoperable protocol, which
| is false: you can only run Minecraft where Microsoft distributes
| it (unless you crack/RE it) and you can certainly not expand the
| protocol. Minecraft is a very good example of vendor lock-in
| restricting user freedom.
|
| > FaceTime has taken a huge step forward in connecting people
|
| How so? What did it invent? Everything we do on computers today
| has been there since at least 1968's "Mother of all demos". If
| anything, FaceTime and iMessage and such have restricted people
| connections. We had standard protocols for IM (IRC/XMPP) and they
| deliberately broke away from the federation so that they could
| capture and control users.
|
| > This is not a winner-take-all, zero-sum environment. Video,
| text, images and other forms of media will not die as a result
|
| They may not die, but there's concerns to be raised. About
| accessibility first and foremost: text may not be accessible to
| blind people, but screen readers and braille screens make it so.
| Audio/Video can use transcripts and captions to be accessible.
| What about VR? Does VR care for disabilities?
|
| If VR tech becomes successful, there will be huge incentives for
| the usual evil corps to move everything there to appear modern
| and to better control our attention span. More immersion means
| more addiction, means more exposure to advertisement and more
| susceptibility to various "mind control" techniques.
|
| > But the metaverse actually (theoretically) allows for more
| fairness due to the decentralized nature of it.
|
| How is it decentralized? You make this argument over and over
| again yet all corporations pushing for the metaverse have _never_
| promoted a decentralized standard so far.
|
| > YouTube and TikTok have enabled people from unprivileged
| backgrounds to make money from providing value
|
| That's true for some people, but that's the exception and not the
| norm. Most people who make money don't make interesting content
| (just sponsored shit), and most people who make interesting
| content will be censored due to alleged copyright violation of
| ToS abuse. Youtube and Tiktok are two very good examples of
| everything that's wrong with the Internet as we know it. You may
| or may not agree with Youtube's political censorship, but you
| will certainly agree that TikTok's censorship is going _really
| far_. [0]
|
| > My conclusion and refutation of this point is that cross-
| compatibility is not bullshit. (...) We still text today, but we
| still video call too!
|
| The word you're looking for may be interoperability. And
| interoperability goes against the laws of capitalism. People use
| many different protocols and most are centralized proprietary
| protocols we have zero control over. I really recommend you check
| out Cory Doctorow's talks on interop and monopolies.
|
| > So yes, progress is a good thing, first of all.
|
| Depends how you measure progress. Is it financial? Scientific?
| Based on happiness? Equal access to resources? According to most
| metrics (except economic development) humanity has been going
| backwards for decades, destroying everything it touches.
|
| > technophobia and pessimism of technology
|
| I'm neither technophobic nor a pessimist. I'm a realist: i know
| humanity is capable of the best and the worst depending on the
| circumstances and incentives. There's a lot that's deeply broken
| about our society as it is, and i see the "metaverse" being
| pushed by the most evil actors out there. It cannot be for the
| betterment of humankind because the incentives are wrong to start
| with.
|
| If you're looking for a metaverse project that's not a complete
| dystopian nightmare, it appears Spritely Goblins [1] is the only
| one worth considering, because it aims to be federated and
| standardized, and based on capabilities.
|
| [0] https://www.protocol.com/china/i-built-bytedance-
| censorship-... [1] https://gitlab.com/spritely/goblins
| convolvatron wrote:
| this point you make about interoperability being fundamentally
| opposed to capitalism is _really_ quite key. and this isn't a
| fruitful balancing act like many dichotomies.
|
| the internet is interoperability. and commercial attempts to
| defeat it are weakening the infrastructure as well as the
| technical culture required to evolve it.
|
| the community gave the world a truly marvelous thing, and not
| only did they use it primarily to sell trash, they took the
| keys too.
| rvz wrote:
| > ...is THE only one worth considering, because it aims to be
| federated and standardized, and based on capabilities.
|
| So you're saying THIS is our ONLY hope competing against Meta?
| After looking at the proposals, I really hope it isn't the only
| one. We need more.
|
| Either way, the metaverse has multiple winners.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > So you're saying THIS is our ONLY hope competing against
| Meta?
|
| Not really. I'm saying VR is mostly a waste of resources, and
| that _competing_ against big corp is useless because the
| system is rigged in their favor. We need to change the
| system, otherwise we 're all doomed (see also End:Civ).
|
| Specifically about online VR (what people call the metaverse
| for some reason that eludes me), i'm saying that Spritely
| Goblins is the only project i've read about that is not
| _explicitly designed_ to abuse /exploit people. There may be
| others, but i'm not aware of them. Of course that doesn't
| mean that Spritely protocol can't be abused (like WWW), but
| it's to my knowledge the only protocol that fits the author's
| vision of what the metaverse should be (federated and
| extensible).
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Specifically about online VR (what people call the
| metaverse for some reason that eludes me)
|
| Because that is what Neal Stephenson called it in _Snow
| Crash_, which, though perhaps not the very first, was at
| least the first _widely-popularized_ description of such a
| system. I recommend reading the book and comparing it to
| what we actually have. What we actually have comes up
| pretty short.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of Stephenson, but: William Gibson's
| Neuromancer (trilogy) is probably more deserving of
| credit for initially popularizing the idea of a virtual
| shared environment. Wikipedia gives credit to Vinge's
| 1981 "True Names", but Neuromancer alone has sold more
| copies than that book and all of Stephenson's novels
| combined, not to mention that it won the Hugo and Nebula.
| realprimoh wrote:
| Wow! I'm the author and this is a really good response. I
| really appreciate the detail you've gone into here.
|
| I'm really thankful to hear your different viewpoints in a
| respectful manner.
|
| Re: Minecraft. I realize that Minecraft is just an analogy and
| rather links is a better example of the "decentralized" nature
| of the metaverse. But I'll definitely check out Cory's talks
| about interop as I admittedly can learn a lot more there.
| routerl wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. I wish I could upvote you more.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| FaceTime definitely hasn't connected me to anyone even once.
| I've never owned an Apple device and never plan to do so
| (unless as a curiosity). FaceTime doesn't exist as far as I'm
| concerned. We need more interoperability, not less.
| realprimoh wrote:
| I should've said video calling in general.
| dandotway wrote:
| So why did the author of "No, The Metaverse is Not Bullshit"
| choose to present his thesis using mostly text with a few images?
| Would not using three.js to create a rich web 3D experience have
| been a more compelling argument for the future growth of rich web
| 3D experiences?
|
| https://threejs.org/examples/
| ipaddr wrote:
| Does that page display anything to you? It did not on my mobile
| device. It might not be the best choice over images/text for a
| general audience.
| dandotway wrote:
| Hmm... great point. ;-)
| otras wrote:
| The main thing that needs decoupling for me is the idea of _a_
| Metaverse, which is what the author focuses on as the evolution
| of the internet, and Facebook's efforts to be a leading player in
| the space and define what the Metaverse is.
|
| As much as I would love to believe that there is a benevolent
| future where Meta only owns part of the decentralized Metaverse,
| I'm not sure I believe that now. Facebook is a profit making
| organization that has worked hard to be _the_ place to go to
| online, and it fights hard to keep that status. Facebook bought
| Instagram and WhatsApp. It's working hard to compete with TikTok.
| A Facebook account is required to use an Oculus Quest 2. I don't
| see it quietly accepting a part of the decentralized pie. I see
| the company working hard to both lead and define the space,
| because that's where it sees the growth and the money.
|
| Maybe the Metaverse isn't bullshit, but what Facebook is trying
| to create probably is.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Just because some people dismissed the internet as a fad doesn't
| mean that everything that is dismissed as a fad is going to be
| the next internet.
| paulgb wrote:
| Agreed, but I also think a big factor is that the things that
| make _metaverse_ distinct from what we already have with VR are
| (to the best of my knowledge) entirely hypothetical.
|
| As I understand it, and by the definition in the article, the
| core of the metaverse as a decentralized system implies that
| I'll be able to run a metaverse server that anyone can connect
| to from a client. Since "nobody owns the metaverse", I suppose
| this would be a client that uses some sort of open standard
| (like HTML) rather than any one company's proprietary client.
|
| Is anyone actually building towards that description of the
| metaverse? The biggest players (like Facebook) seem to be
| pursuing a vision where there might be some decentralization
| from the network but the client is still proprietary and owned
| by them.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > Let's take off our cynic hat and put on our optimism hat with
| some kiddish imagination mixed in.
|
| > We watch movies right now on a screen, in front of us. Surround
| sound takes us a step closer to feeling like we're in the movie.
| Some theaters have gusts of air or water droplets during certain
| parts of the movie to increase immersion. Now, imagine watching a
| movie around you, instead of in front of you. It's the same
| reason the Harry Potter rides at Universal Studios are so
| popular. The feeling of a Quidditch ball racing at your face
| while you barely dodge it is just thrilling. Now imagine you're
| able to experience this with your mom, who lives across the
| world, and you guys are able to share awesome experiences like
| these together. FaceTime has taken a huge step forward in
| connecting people and the next logical step is something like VR.
| (Teleportation is the end-goal, I guess)
|
| This can be built right now, no need to invoke the metaverse as a
| requirement.
|
| I do think the deep interoperability side of the whole metaverse
| schtick needs some more thought though. Like why doesn't it exist
| for the web today despite attempts like Gravatar? Or why doesn't
| it exist for games? Interoperability isn't just hard because we
| need common standards but because it doesn't fit the aesthetic
| and/or money making ambitions of the companies who would support
| it.
|
| Then on standards it just ends up laughably naive, we will build
| common standards together but Meta should do it? Has anyone
| looked at the web standards lately!?
|
| A non-corporately owned Metaverse won't happen for the same
| reason we couldn't build the Internet again today. All the power
| is concentrated into a few companies and they're not going to
| share it out of the kindness of their hearts.
| throwaway2016a wrote:
| To me the metaverse in general is approaching bullshit for the
| same reasons 3D TVs largely failed: Not everyone's going to want
| to use it. It doesn't create new novel things you couldn't do
| before, it just makes existing things much less convenient. It
| doesn't solve a real problem.
|
| Why on earth would I want to have a meeting as my 3D avatar?
| Meetings are broken in a lot of ways but having to strap on a
| headset is not the solution to any of those issues.
|
| And no matter how cool you make doing eCommerce in the meta
| verse, a majority of people are going to want to do it via a web
| browser. Why? A web browser requires a fraction of my attention,
| I can keep it open on the side, I can quickly switch tabs.
| Webpages are very information dense. Commerce in the meta verse
| has most of the disadvantages of shopping in a brick and mortar
| store with only a few of the advantages and very few unique
| advantages.
|
| The metaverse creates more immersive experiences but except in
| games it does it for things no one wants to be more immersive.
| I'm betting no one has ever asked: I wish I could have a more
| immersive at home shopping experience. They already had a perfect
| high definition immersive experience in retail stores and chose
| the Internet instead of it.
|
| The only legitimate problem it seems to solve is a bunch of nerds
| (not using as a negative, I myself am a nerd!) read Snow crash,
| Ready Player 1, Nueromancer... heck, even Tom Clancy's Net
| Force... and thought: this sounds cool.
|
| What they miss is that in a majority of those books, the
| metaverse is a way for corporations to create a world in which
| they have all the control and human live in squaller and no
| longer interact with each other in the real world. For the most
| part they were distopias not utopias.
|
| Edit: Seem to have a fun little up down voting war going on that
| is keeping me around +1 which means about half of you agree and
| half disagree... maybe if you disagree you can try saying why in
| a reply instead of downvoting? I would legitimate love to hear
| your reasons why I'm wrong. I'm open minded.
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