[HN Gopher] The Great Bifurcation
___________________________________________________________________
The Great Bifurcation
Author : oedmarap
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-12-14 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| At this stage in development of a new "space" or perhaps I should
| say "plane of existence" in the case of meta, you need to get as
| far away from regulation as possible. There will be many
| casualties, as there always are in pioneering endeavours, but
| these are just a necessary part of advancement.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Which is - of course - easy to say when it is not the sailors
| themselves who are subject to the suffering.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Are you ready to be the casualty?
| nickdothutton wrote:
| At times in my career I have been a "pioneer", at times a
| "settler", and at other times a "town planner". While
| university friends took up offers from Oracle, Microsoft,
| Sun, I started work at one of the first ISPs. Terrible pay,
| zero benefits. Funding the company partly on our own meagre
| personal credit limits, but the thrill of building something
| from scratch that we were sure would change the world and
| that should be built. If not us then who? We thought. It
| worked out well for us, but most others didn't make it.
| gostsamo wrote:
| This is the version where you take the risk, pay the price,
| and/or reap the rewards. When we talk about casualties,
| there is another story for people who didn't take the risk,
| did not reap any rewards, but paid the price anyway. When
| we talk about externalizing the costs, those are the people
| meant to pay them.
|
| So, excuse me, but when someone talks about inevitable
| casualties while enthusiastically pushing against
| regulations, it means that they do not intend to be the
| casualty and are looking for ways to push someone else
| under the bus.
|
| Progress is something wonderful, but it should prove itself
| before us, not we in front of it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a necessary part of advancement_
|
| Plenty of heretics have been burned through history in the name
| of advancement to a superior moral plane. Of course, that was
| horse shit.
|
| The criticism levied against crypto and the meta verse is in a
| similar vein. To what are we advancing? How do we measure
| progress? And who wants to go there?
| chx wrote:
| He quotes Stephen Diehl but not
| https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/nothing-burger.html -- either
| he missed it or doesn't want to include it because it offers a
| very sharp rebuke of all things crypto:
|
| > Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be
| better done on a centralized database. Except crime.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I love the comment about the "real world" being the physical
| world and the digital world combined. I go back to some of the
| old computer games I have played, and they seem like real places
| to me, where I have memories and feel a certain nostalgia. They
| were certainly a "real experience", even though they were
| digital.
|
| One theory of consciousness is that it is a series of
| experiences. In that respect digital experiences are real.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| Agree with the idea that the physical and digital worlds are
| bifurcating.
|
| The main way I see it is in discourse, and particularly the way
| in which people seem to believe "their way" is the only way, when
| actually they're just in a bubble.
|
| Comments here allude to it. Many people have been diving into the
| virtual world since lockdowns became mainstream. But many others
| have gone the complete other way - many of the groups I'm in have
| been rejecting technology more and more because they now value
| human experience far more.
|
| This is only one example, but as far as I can tell, these two
| groups are almost completely at loggerheads now, the other side
| just seems baffling to them.
| MR4D wrote:
| > Where I disagree is with the idea that the physical world and
| the digital world are increasingly "being overlaid and coming
| together"; in fact, I think the opposite is happening: the
| physical world and digital world are increasingly bifurcating.
|
| Usually I agree with Ben, but on this I think he's dead wrong.
|
| For a simple example, text messages are technically virtual, but
| they arrive on a physical device (your phone).
|
| More and more we will see these sorts of interactions increase -
| whether it's maps displayed on your windshield (or your
| computerized glasses), the ability to checkout using crypto
| (Paypal, Visa, etc), or play games (Pokemon Go), we are at the
| very beginning of the _integration_ of the virtual with the
| physical.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Blockchain I suspect will have a similar future and history to
| portable document format (PDF), an important facet of a much
| larger world, a solution that was originally looking for a
| problem slotted into an evolving world.
|
| Regarding online 'chat' clients, Bloomberg terminals have almost
| literally been the tool used to run the financial world(s) for
| decades. Different speeds, different needs...
| travisgriggs wrote:
| The majority of this article is history telling, told through the
| lens of one persons particular narrative, cutting that history up
| into conveniently sized chapters (1.0, 2.0, etc).
|
| Then the article shifts gears to the authors own transition to
| living in a new place, adapting to that change, and then
| describing the now as a bifurcated existence (real life proximal,
| and through the invisible network society/work).
|
| The second part would have stood on its own fine and didn't need
| the "history as I see it" preamble. I don't know why authorship
| on the net, in this bifurcated space, has to choose between
| tweets and long form. It's ok to write a longer-than-a-tweet
| developed point.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| I am utterly confused about the visions for the Metaverse. Would
| it be a parallel economy where people can find work, start
| businesses, buy and sell "3D" property, talk to audiences in an
| imaginary 3D world? Or probably some kind of a channel that
| substitutes in-person meetings and social life? In both ways it
| looks like a dangerous proposition where some arbitrary company
| defines your reality and the rules of life, the available forms
| of expression, the available actions, etc.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think the idea is that it's all of the above. Facebook is
| trying to create an all encompassing space that effectively
| replaces the internet.
| dcist wrote:
| It will be censored, curated, moderated, and filtered by
| Facebook. No thanks.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| As the online world socially envelopes our subjective view of
| reality, is anyone else who grew up predominantly online simply
| dropping out? I've been spending more time on my meatspace
| hobbies, watching TV and movies, and generally avoiding
| interactions with the internet outside of work. I feel better for
| it and like I had been wasting so much time before on internet
| arguments and getting dopamine-hits from outrage based media
| experiences.
| handrous wrote:
| "Elder millennial" checking in. I'd not have any Internet
| service at home, including on cell phones, if not for a few
| things that require it--even if I didn't work from home, my
| spouse's job (teacher) requires home Internet these day (even
| pre-pandemic), and it's practically required for kids in k-12
| school now, too.
|
| If not for external pressure to have it, I'd not find it worth
| ~$1,000/yr for home Internet and ~$400/yr for my cell phone's
| Internet service. That's a hell of a lot of entertainment money
| to put toward something else, and that's before you pay for
| anything on top of it (say, streaming services). In fact, it'd
| almost be worth paying that much to get my wasted Internet time
| back (he writes, on HN).
|
| In my teens I couldn't wait to jack straight in to the 'net.
| Now? Screw it. I'd rather live entirely in meatspace. I think
| the whole thing's been, overall, a mistake that I wish we could
| obliterate.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yes, but I'm not entirely sure it is related. The reason I
| think I've taken up more real-world hobbies and moved farther
| away from online stuff is that it seems like everything online
| these days is trying to sell me something. If not a product,
| then a scam, or FOMO about some new fad, or the latest
| conspiracy theory, or outrage about some thing or another. I
| don't think it used to be this way, it used to be a place I
| could go to hang out with people who had similar interests and
| talk about them. Theoretically that's what this place is and it
| still seems like people are trying to sell me shit all the time
| (mostly blockchain nonsense, web frameworks, and cloud
| services).
|
| Has it gone this way because of the ever-increasing
| monetization of it? I'm inclined to think so, but it's also
| possible it's just the natural result of becoming more widely
| used. Tragedy of the commons and all that.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| If I were a betting man, I'd bet that some upcoming generation
| (maybe the one after Gen Z but who knows) will turn away from
| the digital world.
| bttf wrote:
| I experienced a similar transition, albeit this was over 10
| years ago. I've come to realize that a balance between both
| meatspace and hyperspace ends up being most satisfying. For me,
| the former was very valuable in introducing new experiences
| (learning and playing music, construction projects, hobbies
| like hiking and surfing), but the lack of cognitive and
| 'online' stimulation will make itself apparent over time.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| I wonder if more and more people will rather be in the Metaverse
| like Ready Player One, so that real estate and real world prices
| will crash. I am looking forward for it.
|
| After that, maybe I'll buy an Island and create my own country
| and invite all of my family members that are now scattered in
| different countries, and build my own kingdom, in the real world,
| my own rules, my own philosophies.
|
| ah.., a man can dream...
| ladyattis wrote:
| I just don't see how the metaverse has any more advantages than
| the virtual worlds of past decades. We've seen it in the mid-90s
| with many failed companies and only a couple of moderate
| successes in the 2000s with Second Life and IMVU plus MMOs if you
| want to expand the definition of virtual worlds to include games.
| The idea that you can replace the majority of in-person
| interactions with virtual ones is nonsensical to me; sometimes
| it's better to let people meet face-to-face. And it just seems to
| me it's all about puffing up the egos of Silicon Valley
| executives and letting them evade taxes at the same time thanks
| to the blockchain angle.
| dummydata wrote:
| > This is the type of role blockchains will fill: provide
| uniqueness and portability where necessary
|
| What does portability mean in this context? I assume he just
| means it's a digital asset so it is inherently easy to move
| around.
|
| I believe a better wording would have been interoperable.
| [deleted]
| humanistbot wrote:
| I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second
| Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this
| narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the
| future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money
| for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life
| speculators who got rich in the bubble.
|
| Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think
| it'll be different because people have to buy an expensive and
| uncomfortable VR headset?
| likpok wrote:
| Good VR headsets are cheaper than computers today and cheaper
| than computers were back when Second Life was getting started.
| People almost universally own smartphones which can support a
| LOT of additional activity.
|
| That's not to say that the metaverse will take off (I think it
| still lacks a compelling use case), but many of the parameters
| have changed.
| [deleted]
| shostack wrote:
| Expense is coming down, and form factors and weight are rapidly
| shrinking while performance of displays improves.
|
| Whatever gripes you have about the space, it is hard to deny
| the rapid evolution we're seeing due to the influx of
| investment.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What makes the difference in my mind is that AR technology is
| gaining steam. There's a chance that we'll have a new desire to
| link the spatial, physical world to spatial and virtual
| interactions.
|
| The push to own the metaverse seems like a land grand.
| abletonlive wrote:
| really? I have yet to seen anybody that actually cares about
| AR at all in my day to day interactions
| jayd16 wrote:
| Microsoft is pushing Hololens dev, Meta is pushing AR
| features into the Quest, Snap just put out some AR
| spectacles. There's development interest but the consumer
| devices aren't quite ready yet so there's no real market
| quite yet.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Quite a few people interested in the circles I walk in, but
| pretty much everyone also agrees that the technology just
| isn't particularly close to viable yet (cost is high,
| general usability is low). And that's ignoring the google-
| glass style problems there would be with general use.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are both technology and social aspects.
|
| The technology has to be at the point where you can
| casually wear fashionable glasses which overlay easily
| readable information.
|
| And other people would need to be OK with the fact that
| people are wearing said glasses that put them on candid
| camera at all times.
| bmitc wrote:
| Hasn't VR been gaining steam for a while now, as in, never
| coming around? All I see are companies massively pushing for
| it, but I don't see any real take up. Anything that I've seen
| seems like a gimmick and not something that will actually
| stick or resonate with people.
| jayd16 wrote:
| There's ~15 million VR units sitting around and there's
| steady growth. That's much more than the zero from a few
| years ago but you're right its not massive popular. There's
| just enough that some VR game devs are finding success but
| by no means is it a gold rush and I don't mean to imply
| that.
| bmitc wrote:
| I think sitting around is the key point. :P I have a
| PlayStation VR headset that does just that. There was
| only one game that ever actually drew me in with VR, and
| that was Thumper.
|
| My theory is that I think the companies that sell these
| things are just really good at hyping and selling the
| headsets. I just don't see what the end game is. It's
| certainly possible that I'm wrong about all this though.
| jobu wrote:
| It seems like AR is the key to making the Metaverse a thing.
| VR is neat, but the current experience reminds me of 3D TVs
| from a few years back - gimmicky and awkward. Even if parts
| of the physical and digital worlds bifurcate, I still think
| there's a lot more AR could do by linking them and making it
| possible to build a digital world on top of the physical.
|
| The Daemon series by Daniel Suarez showed an impressive
| vision of what AR could do in a not-so-distant future where
| online information is linked to physical entities. The things
| to make it work like haptic suits or lightweight AR classes
| with overlays and a HUD are getting fairly close technology-
| wise.
| jobu wrote:
| * lightweight AR _glasses_
| sofard wrote:
| I seriously wonder whether there will be a cultural rebellion
| against the digitization of our lived experiences. It seems
| like everyone (even the youngest who grew up in a fully digital
| world) feels like we're on this path to black mirror dystopia,
| but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat
| it. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road there's a cultural
| movement that decides "we're opting out of all this"
| imbnwa wrote:
| So the Lo-Techs in Johnny Mnemonic?
| distrill wrote:
| This sounds sort of like the setting of Dune.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think the limit was reached with the backlash against
| Google Glass. Having a camera on your face was a bridge too
| far. Phones you can put away.
|
| Some people like VR but they use it at home.
|
| On the other hand, earbuds and smart watches haven't had the
| same issues.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think the backlash against Google Glass might have
| subsided if it had been a useful device that was widely
| available. (Of course, the wide release version was on
| watches)
|
| As it was, wearing a Google Glass was making several
| statements: I have acccess to this special thing; I'm going
| to wear this mostly useless object in a highly visible
| location on my body; and if actually using it in public, I
| don't care that having a one-sided conversation with a
| computer annoys those around me (kind of like talking on a
| phone/bluetooth headset, but worse). Maybe the camera was
| the anchor for the issue, but I don't think it was the real
| issue; I don't recall seeing articles about people being
| shunned for wearing the Snapchat camera glasses.
| fragmede wrote:
| I think it's as simple as the fact that Snapchat glasses
| weren't $1,500 in a time before crypto.
| ghaff wrote:
| I tend to agree.
|
| If/when we have AR glasses that are reasonably priced and
| genuinely useful, I'm inclined to think they'll be
| broadly accepted. Yes, there will be people including
| some of the people reading this who will be upset about
| the panopticon-like invasion of privacy associated with
| always-on cameras everywhere. But they'll be largely
| ignored just as they are today with respect to
| video/photos being just a smartphone in the pocket away.
|
| It's easy to forget that less than 20 years ago taking a
| photo, much less a video, was a pretty deliberate act
| involving equipment that most people didn't routinely
| carry with them.
| pxtail wrote:
| Google has lame boring marketing and is just not
| fashionable enough at this moment, just wait until Apple
| iGlass ProPrivacy(tm) appears on the market, lines at the
| Apple Store will be record long and owners will wear it
| with pride and sense of accomplishment/superiority.
| toast0 wrote:
| I mean, if it's the same product, more or less an Apple
| Watch you have to strain your eyes to see, I expect it'll
| have the same lack of customers, even if Apple invents
| it. Maybe with less backlash.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| Boiling frogs, man.
|
| Google Glass was just too sudden a change. Another decade
| of eroding our collective sense of privacy and boundaries
| means it might be more successful now than it was back when
| we still had some expectation of personal privacy.
| handrous wrote:
| > on this path to black mirror dystopia
|
| A bunch of episodes of Black Mirror aren't really even about
| the future. They're criticism of things _right now_ (or,
| rather, when the episodes were made).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It seems safe to extend this comment to all episodes of
| every TV show.
| earleybird wrote:
| While that may be generally true I'm inclined to think
| that Black Mirror brought the perspective into sharp
| relief.
| fragmede wrote:
| As soon as good AR glasses come out though, Black Mirror's
| an instruction manual on what app to write.
| servytor wrote:
| I took a course in university on sci-fi and the professor
| said that all science fiction was a reflection of the
| moment it was written, and had almost nothing to do with
| prognosticating.
| batekush wrote:
| Ursula K LeGuin's introduction to The Left Hand of
| Darkness, 1976
| https://www.penguin.com/ajax/books/excerpt/9780441007318
|
| "The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will
| be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the
| twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that
| you turn to the writers of fiction for such information.
| It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is
| tell you what they're like, and what you're like--what's
| going on--what the weather is now, today, this moment,
| the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen,
| listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't
| tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell
| you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in
| this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming,
| another third of it spent in telling lies."
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| This is partially why many people prefer the term
| "speculative fiction" over "science fiction"
| interfixus wrote:
| 1984 was just an anagram of 1948, the year Orwell was
| writing in.
| moolcool wrote:
| It's not like we're not culturally flirting with that
| already. Film photography and vinyl have both seen massive
| resurgences lately.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Massive" niche resurgences. Nothing remotely mainstream.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I'm gonna say vinyl is a bit more than mainstream. I can
| buy records at Walmart. That usually means a trend is
| widespread.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's less niche than I would have guessed--about 5% of
| industry revenue and about the same as CDs (which
| surprised me a bit given that I still sometimes buy CDs
| and haven't bough vinyl for decades). Still, that's
| revenue not listens or anything like that so that's still
| pretty much a rounding error.
| derwiki wrote:
| Wonder if the same will hold for books?
| ghaff wrote:
| Ebooks never gained the completely dominant position that
| digital photography and music did. And even those among
| us who prefer ebooks for fiction consisting of flowing
| text still prefer printed books for a lot of more
| reference-oriented or "coffee table" books.
| foobiekr wrote:
| As someone who went all-in on ebooks for 10+Y, having
| bought a kindle immediately and used it extensively, I've
| gone back to books. The kindle experience just isn't as
| good and it took me a long time to simply accept that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I like the Kindle especially for travel. Lighting in
| hotel rooms/planes often is less than ideal and it's
| great to not be forced to choose a book I'm going to be
| in the mood to read on a given trip. But, for the most
| part, I don't like cookbooks and other essentially
| reference books on Kindle/iPad. (I still buy them
| sometimes but mostly because I got some sort of $1/$2
| deal.)
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yeah, kindle is only for travel and for when I'm living
| abroad in places where I just can't get access to non-
| mass market paperbacks and so need to order from the
| e-book store
| moolcool wrote:
| What didn't you like about the kindle? I absolutely love
| mine, and almost dislike paper books in comparison.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Slow. So awful for going back and forth that I stopped
| doing it. Smaller display than I'd like. I have special
| hate for the touchscreen kindles, I really prefer my 1st
| hen kindle to the current version. Actual forward and
| backward buttons.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| anecdotal, but I went to a concert recently and was
| amazed/thrilled to see maybe five or ten isolated instances
| of someone pulling out their phone to take a few second clip
| for insta or snapchat or whatever
|
| 5-ish years ago it would be common to see 25-45% of the crowd
| with their phones up and out recording almost the entire show
| jollybean wrote:
| "but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to
| combat it. "
|
| Just don't use it.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'm going to call it now: The zeitgeist of the 2030s and
| 2040s will be a focus on biology to contrast with technology.
| So instead of trying to eliminate humans from the equation,
| we'll see a group of people who take parts of tech they like
| (such as systems thinking) and focus it on human improvement
| instead of external tech.
|
| Think genetically engineered humans vs. cyborgs; there will
| be a focus on holistic 'working with' human impulses and
| neurology instead of 'what can the tech accomplish'?
|
| That'd be my guess.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| Regarding the zeitgeist change: don't you think that
| expectation windows for results based on success of
| disrupting markets by tech have shrunk to a point where
| it's not possible for a more long term and complex projects
| (biology being one of them) to attract enough talent? I
| feel like such changes are only possible based on big
| crises
| Mezzie wrote:
| I do, but I also think that we'll see this biology
| flowering from non-tech people who have some tech skill.
| So it won't be tech companies moving into biology space,
| it will be lab workers and students who know some coding
| realizing that 'hey, I could do this thing using my
| phone' and sharing with each other. I also think that as
| the sector grows and we see more people trained, we'll
| see a medical research boom the same way we saw a boom in
| devs in the 90s so the talent base will expand a LOT.
|
| The expectation windows are set by investors, and I think
| biology has a good shot at being able to get
| resources/funding without having to rely too heavily on
| VCs or investors (think government and academic funding).
| Likewise, there's no Microsoft, Google, or FB waiting in
| the wings to buy up/bury any advancements.
|
| I also think we're overdue for some major social changes
| because our current ways aren't sustainable (regardless
| of what you think the problems are + what 'side' you're
| on, I think we can almost all agree that this can't
| continue). The main problem I think IS that we're too
| short sighted currently, and we'll have to correct that,
| so I do think long-term projects will become easier in
| the early 2030s.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > Likewise, there's no Microsoft, Google, or FB waiting
| in the wings to buy up/bury any advancements
|
| Why is "big pharma" not this?
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I think you have a point, I am betting on human-to-human
| occupations, especially psychology, gender roles being
| shrunk might bring some new ideas and shake the field up.
| pedalpete wrote:
| This is starting to happen now, and we're working on it
| related to neurology and improving sleep at
| https://soundmind.co
|
| Cyborg always has the feeling of a severely augmented and
| strange human. I'm surprised by the number of people who
| have no interest in Neuralink, and say they wouldn't go
| near it.
|
| As we're seeing the mental health benefits of sometimes
| turning off our digital devices and focusing on ourselves,
| I think this will drive the future of us not being always
| connected, but being connected when we want to.
|
| I think what you're pointing to is correct, Augmented
| Humanity, rather than Augmented Reality.
| nefitty wrote:
| How many video game developers rarely play video games? I bet
| most game devs don't count gaming amongst their defining
| interests.
|
| There seems to be a majority swath of humans who get hooked
| on unproductive hobbies. Drugs, partying, social media, video
| games. I'm talking HOOKED, dreams framed by the TikTok UI,
| taking work off to watch a Counterstrike tournament, weeks of
| back-to-back hangovers.
|
| I mean, I've been there. I too hear the lull of chemical
| dissociation.
|
| What I'm wondering is, what happens as that lullaby gets
| louder and brighter and more attractive, in sync with people
| working less and less as automation forms a mechanical sheen
| on all economic activity?
|
| I'll just toss this one I caught as I wrote that: You think
| the opioid epidemic is bad? Is it better or worse for us that
| our addictions can't annihilate us in an instant? How many
| people are in their rooms right now, alone, entangled in
| expensive parasocial relationships and expensive video game
| habits?
|
| What if people aren't stealing and robbing shit for drugs
| anymore, but are doing it to donate to their favorite
| streamer, or buy the new Supreme hoodie or buy a PS5?
| foobiekr wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, but I think it's more subtle.
|
| Every game developer I've ever known, which is a good
| number, was a hard core gamer who loved games. Most of them
| really reduced it as they get older - not just because as
| you get older you just don't have the time or energy, but
| because doing something for work just kind of ruins it for
| most people.
|
| That last bit is very common: my wife is a professional
| artist and doing that as her profession has just about
| ruined her interest in painting and drawing despite doing
| it for a lifetime. I was a hobby coder my entire life until
| mid-way through my career. Now although I sometimes do
| short stints, I gotta say, it is kind of ruined for me.
|
| So, sure, you are probably right, but probably for the
| wrong reasons.
|
| As for "unproductive hobbies" the reality is that all
| hobbies are basically unproductive. The stained glass
| artists I know struggle to give away their output because
| there's only so much anyone around them wants, but their
| hobby is to produce it. Ditto the painters, woodworkers,
| etc. Yes, these can give you practice with useful skills,
| but they're still basically generating a waste product, and
| if you try selling it, on average, you're just trying to
| mitigate your losses, piece work is almost never
| financially sound. This is all to say that one shouldn't
| view hobbies as "productive" or not, you should view them
| as providing benefits not directly related to the activity.
| Hiking, running, cycling, weightlifting - these are all
| "unproductive" but they are useful practices. Games aren't
| devoid of value in this sense - hand eye coordination,
| rapid tactical thinking, etc. are all skills you develop
| and maintain with practice.
|
| That said, I'm 100% on board with you about the parasocial
| relationship thing, but to note the obvious, the real
| elephant in that particular room is social networking in
| all of its guises. Video games aren't even close, and, if
| anything, are probably closer to the "real relationship"
| end of the spectrum than any other online endeavor. I know
| many gamer groups who have transitioned to real life on
| multiple dimensions, far more than "hey these are the
| people i interacted with on Twitter" and other purely
| ephemeral constructs.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| I wouldn't consider "Hiking, running, cycling,
| weightlifting" to be "unproductive". It is pretty well
| established that regular exercise routines improve your
| quality of life in many physical and mental ways.
|
| You are correct that social media and online gaming are
| not the same: I have heard numerous examples of online
| gaming friendships transforming into real life
| friendships, but I have never heard of people on
| twitter/tick-tock/etc forming real life relationships.
|
| I believe that gaming is fine in moderation, but as soon
| as gaming starts to negatively impact other aspects of
| your life -- personal health, relationships, work/study
| commitments -- you need to cut back. I have seen numerous
| people squander away their education and futures to video
| games. I'm guilty myself of letting video games
| negatively impact my life and it can be hard to find the
| right balance.
| ladyattis wrote:
| Well John Romero got fired for slacking off on development
| of Quake 1 playing Doom deathmatches all the time. So I can
| imagine some devs love the games they make but probably not
| that many.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for
| digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life
| speculators who got rich in the bubble.
|
| A lot of dumb things happened in the past, especially with
| companies that tried to substitute virtual scarcity speculation
| for an actual business model.
|
| It's easy to mock them for how ridiculous it all is, but I
| don't see any evidence that Meta is charging down a path of
| repeating all of the failed business models of years past.
|
| I think a lot of the old timers who have seen hype cycles of
| past businesses are projecting too much of those old, failed
| businesses on to this new wave of activities. Everyone is so
| busy speculating that Meta is going to fail that it's hard to
| actually understand what they're doing or what their business
| model really is.
|
| Regardless, it's trivial to see that video games and VR of 2021
| are nothing like the Second Life of almost two decades prior.
| Back then, video games and even computer-based entertainment
| were a niche hobby. Today, video games are everywhere, VR is
| cheap, and everyone is already attached to their phones 24/7.
| I'm interested to see where this goes.
| fragmede wrote:
| Roblox seems to be doing alright with virtual scarcity, with
| designer avatar accessories going for $15,000 in some cases.
| (Roblox takes at 30% cut of the transaction.) I'm not exactly
| sure why they're successful with it, but just because
| Blizzard failed at a real life auction house doesn't mean
| everyone failed at it.
| focusedone wrote:
| Anyone remember LambdaMoo? This has all happened before.
|
| What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what
| will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
|
| I think focusing on stupid looking headsets misses the author's
| point. He's looking toward a decentralization of thought
| aggregation and how that will impact the 'real world'. Maybe
| it'll be similar when cable happened and we all stopped
| watching the same three channels?
| lumost wrote:
| My two cents. Great proclamations of vaporware often come before
| a tech reset - be they VR, AI over reach, future money, or some
| other boondoggle that everyone is meant to love but actually
| sucks and people hate.
|
| Facebook is pivoting to a non existant technology, and no one
| even knows whether anyone would want it if it existed. Everyone
| is dumping dollars on self driving cars and other AI tech that
| Keeps missing deadlines.
|
| As long as there is free money, tech companies will burn it
| trying to invent the future. But at some point, if the illusion
| is pierced, everyone will just see a money pyre.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| > Facebook is pivoting to a non existant technology, and no one
| even knows whether anyone would want it if it existed.
|
| This is not true. The tech exists, Facebook is creating hoopla
| about a VR video game to distract from its offenses and to
| dissuade regulation. You can't regulate something that is
| undefined.
|
| I don't disagree with the rest of your point.
| lumost wrote:
| The Metaverse FB is pitching is either a ridiculously over-
| hyped video game, or vaporware. Arguably there may not be a
| difference.
|
| In the media, the main reference has been the "snowcrash"
| novel or "ready player one" level of immersion. Which is tech
| we fundamentally lack a reference for how to build.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Again, "level of immersion" is subjective to what? How good
| the graphics can be? How much rumble your hardware has?
|
| If Zuckerberg was smart he'd aim for something closer to
| The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| The one ad that I saw for Meta (The Tiger & The Buffalo /
| this is going to fun) certainly make the "metaverse" look
| like it's supposed to feel like drug-induced
| hallucinations.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| I'll buy FB stock once they release news of a neural
| implant plug into the matrix kind of technology.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| heisenbit wrote:
| How many different digital selves are we going to fracture? Ben
| seems to manage 6 different lives.
|
| As a rule of thumb a manager can manage about 10 direct reports.
| Fewer if there is deep interaction and more if there is only a
| very light touch expected.
|
| Other rules of thumb indicate the people may directly interact
| with around 100. Given that for some thing to become a registered
| club in Germany one needs 7 people which may well be sensible
| lower threshold for a long term social endeavor. Combined give a
| max of 13 social circles.
|
| This thinking is reminiscent of Google Groups social circle
| thinking but on a heterogeneous technical and administrative
| foundation.
| boringg wrote:
| I like Ben's writing but this one seems a bit of a stretch for
| me. I do like the bucketing of tech eras. Though in regards to
| the Metaverse I feel like he might be drinking too much of the
| kool-aid.
|
| Metaverse feels like google glasses to me without any of the
| actual quasi benefits/hard-tech that google glasses created. That
| and Zuckerberg has killed any good will to build a project with
| such grandiose vision with the general public.
|
| And any experience to unite it under one roof seems a bit
| optimistic.
| rajekas wrote:
| I agree with the thrust of this article, especially this line:
|
| "For a long time I felt somewhat unique in this regard, but COVID
| has made my longstanding reality the norm for many more people.
| Their physical world is defined by their family and hometown,
| which no longer needs to be near their work, which is entirely
| online; everything from friends to entertainment has followed the
| same path."
|
| The unbundling of physical and digital reality is certainly
| happening, but I also think new forms of rebundling are also
| happening. Before COVID, I would never dream of calling my
| daughter in the next room, but now I do it all the time - not
| (only) because I am lazy, but because the call or text is less
| intrusive than knocking on the door and therefore has better UX.
|
| To see what's happening as only:
|
| 1) "the real world is the combination of the digital world and
| the physical world and that the real world is not just the
| physical world."
|
| or
|
| 2) "the Metaverse is the set of experiences that are completely
| online, and thus defined by their malleability and scalability"
|
| is to downplay the combinatorial possibilities of dis-aggregating
| and recombining the digital and the physical. It feels to me that
| a certain 'computational style' is becoming widespread tacit
| knowledge and shouldn't be identified only with the
| digital/online/virtual.
| ineedasername wrote:
| COVID-driven bifurcation is still uncertain in how "sticky" it
| will be. With much of the initial panic over and many people
| getting vaccinated, there's already a little backtracking to
| old habits, along with the people who never changed their
| habits much in the first place through their resistance to
| COVID precautions.
|
| I'd be surprised if we _ever_ went fully back to a pre-COVID
| status quo, but I think the changes will be significantly
| slower.
| sidpatil wrote:
| > Before COVID, I would never dream of calling my daughter in
| the next room, but now I do it all the time - not (only)
| because I am lazy, but because the call or text is less
| intrusive than knocking on the door and therefore has better
| UX.
|
| Back in the mid-to-late 20th century, it used to be a luxury to
| have a whole-home intercom system. Eventually, the
| functionality was subsumed by cordless telephone systems.
|
| Texting someone in the next room over just feels like the next
| step in the evolution of intercom.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| It wasn't until you mentioned texting your daughter in the next
| room that I realized that I've been doing the same with my
| wife. On several occasions I'll be in the living room, she'll
| be in the bedroom, and we'll text each other about what to eat
| for dinner. It never occurred to me to ponder about that sudden
| change in behavior.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I had been doing this way before the pandemic. Sometimes
| family members are wearing headphones and such, it just
| seemed polite.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| On the other hand, knocking on my door is the only way to
| get my attention when I'm at my desk. Typically, I'll have
| my headphones on and my phone out of view (but not in my
| pocket).
| simonh wrote:
| I think the author is stretching the separation of the online
| world from the 'real world' to support the bifurcation thesis.
| The online world isn't a separate reality or separate world.
|
| 'This is a place with no need for traditional money, or
| traditional art; the native solution is obviously superior. To
| put it another way, "None of this real world stuff has any
| digital world value" -- the critique goes both ways.'
|
| The Metaverse isn't a computer game, or at least isn't only a
| computer game made up of entirely imagined content. As an
| extension of the internet it's primary purpose is to do away
| with the physical separation and distance between real world
| people and resources.
|
| Fundamentally networks are communication systems, whether it's
| a telephone network, the Web or the Metaverse. It's about
| taking resources that are physically distributed all around the
| world and making them function as though they were right next
| to each other, re-composing them in different ways.
|
| The first phase was to allow you to log on to a server anywhere
| in the world, instead of only the one in your building. The
| next step with the Web 1.0 was to link and re-compose documents
| regardless of what server they were located on. The next step
| with web 2.0 was to give access to applications running on any
| server anywhere, rather than just applications installed on
| your local computer. Social media was another phase which did
| for interpersonal relationships and communication what the
| original web did for documents.
|
| The Metaverse doesn't really add any new capabilities here,
| it's just a new user interface. It's a VR browser instead of a
| web browser. It's not a new world anymore than the combination
| of facebook and twitter are a new world, they're not, they're
| just a way for real world people to talk to each other. With
| the Metaverse they will virtually stand next to each other
| instead. My kids already do this in Minecraft, Valorant and
| LoL.
|
| The bifurcation thesis works in terms of businesses, and that's
| what Stratechery is about, but the article doesn't actually
| analyse the business implications of any of this.
| bckr wrote:
| > It's a VR browser instead of a web browser
|
| Does this actually exist? My impression is that the Met*verse
| is just a marketing term for something that doesn't exist yet
| [deleted]
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > why wouldn't you want the most immersive experience possible?
|
| That folks potentially _don 't_ want the most immersive
| experience possible would be the thing that will end up burning
| piles of money and sinking the virtual reality vision of the
| metaverse that some have.
|
| It's not a given that people will want the immersion. After all,
| Facetime is a relatively extremely niche and rare way to
| communicate every day when compared to low tech texting.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| I still cannot see any reason I'd want to connect any identifier
| or avatar across different online worlds apart from gaming. Am I
| missing something?
|
| For sure Meta wants to connect everything so it has a whole
| picture of its users so it can serve ads but why would people be
| compelled to connect their discords/linkedin/facebook or whatever
| personas when a key part of the web is anonymity, I don't even
| use the same handles for hn/reddit
| jasondigitized wrote:
| It seems to me that Reddit would be a far more interesting
| place if you had separate identity with its own reputation /
| karma per subreddit.
| dhosek wrote:
| That's one of the nice things about
| StackOverflow/StackExchange. On the flip side, some (maybe
| most? all?) communities are tyrannical about the
| question/answer format and the discussion forums on SO/SX are
| pretty awful. Why can't everything be exactly the way that
| _I_ want it?
| larrysalibra wrote:
| Because you might want to leverage the reputation, credibility
| and following you built in one online community to another.
| Example: I learned about patio11 here on HN and was impressed
| by him actions in this community which lead me to follow
| patio11 on Twitter.
|
| I agree that one of the great things about the internet is that
| you don't _have_ to have the same identity in different
| communities. It 's optional. Facebook's business model gives
| them a strong incentive to remove that optionality.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| He's patio11 though that's his identifier like any in-game
| name, it make no difference if used as a username or as a
| 'metaverse' identifier. If I want to verify metaverse user
| 102372193, I'd go to their profile hoping they've linked
| their twitter
| reginold wrote:
| ENS is solving for this by creating a common identity
| across crypto wallets: https://ens.domains/
|
| That way he can be patio11 across all platforms if he
| wishes (and doesnt need to worry about getting "patio11" on
| every new platform that's created). Or, he can just create
| a subwallet with a different identity but still rolls up
| into his main wallet.
|
| It also protects against somoene putting their twitter in
| their profile and pretending to be patio11. i.e.:
|
| Hey HN I'm patio11, here's proof, I linked my twitter:
| https://twitter.com/patio11
| patio11 wrote:
| Yes, and as I'm a notorious crypto skeptic, someone squat
| on that ENS domain (with good intentions) and I really
| don't care that much.
|
| Casually, rather than e.g. legally or as a matter of
| trademark, I "own" patio11 across all the namespaces
| because I've put in the work over the years to make
| people associate that with me. This doesn't necessarily
| work in reverse; you should probably not assume patio11
| DMing you in a Chinese MMORPG is actually me and will
| actually wire you money if you give them all your dragon
| eggs.
|
| If I need to auth myself to a savvy technologist in a
| channel not known to be controlled by me, I don't say
| "Trust the display name" or "Trust that I also know my
| username on Twitter." I publish something somewhere where
| the technologist would know "Hmm compromise of that
| account would be a much larger problem for him than this
| transaction." (Bonus: invariably relies on public key
| cryptography; no blockchain required.)
| tuxman wrote:
| It is a shame that Zoom appears to have killed Keybase.
| Having a safe, secure identity management system to link
| social media and software development accounts is
| currently a gaping hole in providing trust online. ENS is
| useful for crypto wallets specifically, but there is
| still missing a general identity management solution.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I don't even use one handle on HN or Reddit over time, I change
| every couple years.
|
| But those are sites where there's not much value in keeping the
| same identity for the average person. Only at the very top end
| is your identity meaningful on some sites.
|
| On Twitter and Facebook, however, I've keep my real name
| identity for well over a decade. There _is_ value for the
| average person there to be known by a consistent identifier.
|
| I don't know which approach I'll take with the metaverse. My
| instinct is that I'm going to want my identity to be quite
| malleable. In a place that's all about expressiveness (or at
| least that _should_ be its core purpose) I think I 'll want
| different identities depending on what it is I'm expressing.
| bsedlm wrote:
| [delete]
| Rastonbury wrote:
| If they already do it, then what is the point of a new
| 'metaverse' for government? Most manage taxes and what not
| just fine with whatever identifiers they have been using
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Even in gaming having multiple identities is a bonus, or even
| if you have the same identity having radically different
| customisation per game is important. I actually find it weird
| playing games if they actually bother to use my steam profile
| picture.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| That's why I find many aspects of the metaverse antithetical
| to what the internet is. Like the reduction of privacy of
| anonymity. Or the ownership of internet things, the internet
| is scalable and open in that I can own a website or in a
| games I can dress up my characters in anything I want without
| buying an NFT, I can even perfectly replicate your 1 of 500
| limited edition metaverse sneakers, obviously I don't own the
| real thing but is anyone going to check the blockchain?
|
| I can definitely picture a vibrant market where people trade
| these things, but compared to the market that Meta dominates
| now I can only imagine it being tiny in comparison.
| teebs wrote:
| > This gets to the other mistake Diehl makes in that article,
| which, ironically, echoes a similar mistake made by many crypto
| absolutists: there is no reason why the Metaverse, or any web
| application for that matter, will be built on the blockchain. Why
| would you use the world's slowest database when a centralized one
| is far more scalable and performant? It is not as if WhatsApp or
| Signal are built on top of the plain old telephone service; they
| simply leverage the fact that phone numbers are unique and thus
| suitable as identifiers. This is the type of role blockchains
| will fill: provide uniqueness and portability where necessary, in
| a way that makes it possible to not just live your life entirely
| online, but as many lives simultaneously as your might wish,
| locked in nowhere.
|
| Halfway through this paragraph I thought Ben was arguing that
| phone numbers are a centralized service that shows that
| blockchain isn't necessary. Instead, he's arguing that blockchain
| will create "unique portable identities." This is an old vision
| that many companies have been pushing for a long time - "log in
| with Facebook" "sign in with Apple" etc. Today, we've pretty much
| settled on phone numbers and email addresses as a unique,
| portable identifier (plus accounts from big tech companies). You
| can even easily create new email addresses if you want multiple
| identities. Why do we need the blockchain to solve this problem
| either?
|
| Another example of the same thing: he says that it doesn't make
| sense to use LLCs, which are built for the physical world, in the
| digital world. He says that the digital world can use DAOs. But,
| of course, "Stratechery" isn't a DAO - it's an LLC. Meta is an
| LLC. LLCs are already non-physical, even if they're not purely
| digital. That's precisely why LLCs were invented - to decouple
| capital from physical ownership. Why do we need DAOs when we
| already have LLCs? Is it just that you don't need a lawyer to
| make a DAO?
|
| Ben spends a lot of time in this article arguing that blockchain
| can be better than centralized services for some purposes - but
| then fails to argue what those purposes are, in my opinion.
|
| To me, conflating the metaverse/VR - which I think is overhyped
| but has some obvious value - with blockchain - which is a lot
| harder for me to understand - is a mistake.
| dhosek wrote:
| What the hell is a DAO anyway? The link on the article was to a
| paywalled article and I know it only as Data Access Object.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is not what I expected, but I guess it tells more about me
| than anything else given that stratchery doesn't typically cover
| such subjects. What I thought the subject is going to be about
| society bifurcation along the traditional 'haves' and 'havenots'.
|
| For the record, I am not sure he is wrong. I just went in there
| with different expectations.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > What I thought the subject is going to be about society
| bifurcation along the traditional 'haves' and 'havenots'.
|
| Theoretically, isn't metaverse the height of commodity
| fetishism?
| strict9 wrote:
| I'm glad he addresses Stephen Diehl and his anti-crypto screeds.
| Nearly all of Diehl's criticism is some form of _"None of this
| digital stuff has any real world value."_
|
| But the thing is, this digital stuff does have value to the
| people that own them. Diehl's opinion that the value is zero does
| not make it true.
|
| It's very reminiscent of Clifford Stoll's articles. Stoll was a
| brilliant engineer and writer, but a terrible predictor of the
| future. "Why the Internet will fail" is probably Stoll's most
| famous column.
| maxwell wrote:
| Terrible predictor?
|
| "While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an
| icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender
| our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual
| reality where frustration is legion and where-in the holy names
| of Education and Progress-important aspects of human
| interactions are relentlessly devalued."
| LordFast wrote:
| "In the end, the most important connection between the Metaverse
| and the physical world will be you: right now you are in the
| Metaverse, reading this Article; perhaps you will linger on
| Twitter or get started with your remote work. And then you'll
| stand up from your computer, or take off your headset, eat dinner
| and tuck in your kids, aware that their bifurcated future will be
| fundamentally different from your unitary past."
|
| How is this different than me in 2001 using ICQ to chat with my
| friends/classmates about life/schoolwork, using Yahoo to read
| news, using forums to consume content and learn new things, and
| going out to dinner with my family/girlfriend IRL?
|
| How is any of this actually a new paradigm?
| brodouevencode wrote:
| It's not, really, but it is more pervasive. In 2001 the
| internet was a thing, and one with great potential even if
| massively economically overvalued at the time (dot-com bust),
| but primarily relegated to those with a baseline interest in
| technology. Dial up was still used in a very large way. But in
| 2001 we were on the precipice of the explosion of web 2.0 and
| better hardware, namely smartphones, and that's when things
| really took off.
|
| I think the difference here is the overall human approach to
| digital and physical lives. In 2001 the line between the two
| was clear and distinct. Now, for many, those lines blurred, and
| have blurred hard. Almost to the point to where their online
| manifestation has become their physical manifestation. Look at
| the language carryover from online to meatspace. More than once
| have I heard someone say "el oh el". And not in a sarcastic
| way. It's only a matter of time before desired physical
| characteristics bleed over. (Pretty sure it would be pretty
| easy to make an argument that it already has.)
| dcist wrote:
| It's not. It's the same thing, now with a headset and better
| graphics!
| raydev wrote:
| Perhaps the new part is that it's now accessible to everyone
| and not just tech-savvy/nerd-types/households with enough
| income to blow on a PC.
| detaro wrote:
| Which of the things the parent listed are for "tech-
| savvy/nerd-types"?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| To be fair, late 90s/early 2000s Internet was pretty much
| run for tech-savvy/nerd-types. Kind of hard to imagine now,
| but it was considered quite eccentric to have an Internet-
| habit back then.
| raydev wrote:
| I was only aware of a few households that owned a computer
| in the late 90s/early 00s. And only one had reliable
| dialup.
|
| My closest friend got DSL in 2000-ish. But again, it was
| because his dad worked from home occasionally. No one else
| in my large extended family or friendgroup was online in
| any significant way.
|
| Among my peers at school, I think most of them had heard of
| AIM by that point, but most didn't have screennames.
|
| Personally, we couldn't afford a PC at that time.
| [deleted]
| inasio wrote:
| He made the case that the connection to the blockchain would be
| only as a unique individual identifier, rather than like you
| use your phone for signal/whatsapp. Not sure if it's sad (all
| the hype for that) or funny
| motohagiography wrote:
| How does one bet against the Metaverse?
|
| People hating on Web3 appear to do so because they aren't makers.
| They persuade and complain, but they don't build or risk. The
| Metaverse is just another centrally planned architected model
| that must be imposed from above. From what I can tell, that's
| just fancy communism meets Bentham and Taylor, all for your own
| good surely. The current platform owners are just not cool enough
| to pull it off. Nobody wants to be them.
|
| Facebook mainly worked because it had the Eros of a demographic
| bump from rich, elite college students. (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros_(concept) ) When it started,
| it had the one thing everybody wanted. Now it does not, and
| economically, it is an inferior good. Instagram will also age out
| like a boy band. The schools do not have it anymore either. The
| absolute best the planned Metaverse will achieve is to contain
| some captive populations, and be a kind of global prisoner
| entertainment system like television has become.
|
| When people say they are doing things "for humanity," it's
| usually because there are no specific people who actually want
| what they are proposing. Admittedly it is a familiar conceit, but
| now I know it when I see it, and I would like to get short.
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| > People hating on Web3 appear to do so because they aren't
| makers.
|
| That statement is false.
| nix0n wrote:
| > How does one bet against "the Metaverse"?
|
| Competitors to VR experiences include, real world experiences,
| and psychedelics.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Nature grows mushrooms free for the picking. That's $1000
| less than a silly VR helmet.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Health care records seem to be outside this vision as they are
| inherently connected to the physical world yet invaluable for
| both epidemiology and marketing.
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