7 ms·

Can someone please define 'metaverse' in the context of... whatever this article is about? Like jfc people, 'End users will experience the metaverse through th

by tomc1985 5y ago

Can someone please define 'metaverse' in the context of... whatever this article is about? Like jfc people, 'End users will experience the metaverse through the default device delivered experience.' sounds like the most doublespeakiest doublespeak ever to have been written. I love tech and this lofty shit makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Speak plainly and simply, folks.

slver 5y ago
Basically bunch of wanking about futuristic AR sci-fi technology that the author has decided to accept as proven to be coming, but actually isn't. See flying cars 20 years ago.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I assume it's a reference, at least in part, to the virtual reality world in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
- OedipusRex 5y ago
  Which is where this falls apart. In the book the Metaverse is basically a completely novel location in “VR”. If we’re pursuing a Metaverse, VR Chat is closer to a Metaverse than Apple.
mikepurvis 5y ago
It's right there in the first paragraph: "I’ve been less sure they understood the full scope needed to build a compelling AR ecosystem – a metaverse."
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I saw that, and the definition still says nothing. Ok, so a metaverse is somehow the realization of the "full scope" needed for a compelling AR ecosystem? And what exactly does that mean, and how does that define this particular usage of the (heavily overloaded) term 'metaverse'? Meta meaning 'about', so a universe about a universe? edit/ugh: googling the term says 'a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.' Like wtf does that have to do with the meta root word here? There is far too much abstraction in this vocabulary defining a thing that is very real.
  - blowski 5y ago
    To understand the metaverse first you need to understand the metaverse. That's what I take from these comments and the article.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      mind_blown.gif /s
  - lallysingh 5y ago
    It's the universe (the regular meatspace one) augmented with metadata, traditionally named such in AR/VR circles. Metadata like names, statistics, directions, etc. Such as a HUD you'd see in first-person video games. Another use of the term (not here) would be a way to jump between VR systems, but they never generalized well enough to make that a significant thing. Right now Steam would count
grawprog 5y ago
I could be wrong, but sifting through that utterly terrible corporate buzzword filled whatever the hell that was... I think it's what Apple's calling their new Augmented Reality platform...I think...or what the author is calling what could be Apple's potential AR platform...maybe?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Completely agree. The words "metaverse substrate" just set my BS meter to a thousand, so I didn't even bother reading the article at first. Then I did read (most of it), and still my BS meter was at a thousand. If you can't explain what you mean in simple, easy to understand language, and you're not talking about quantum physics, you're just bullshitting. Should be required reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu...
- grork 5y ago
  As alluded to in another reply, it is a bit of a BS term! But it’s also not totally unfair. I think much of the metaverse & AR ecosystem doesn’t have great terminology. I mean ‘slap some goggles on and touch floaty doo-hickeys that you see but they aren’t really there’ doesn’t quite have the same curb appeal…
beeandapenguin 5y ago
In general, the term 'metaverse' is commonly used in the AR/VR space to describe virtual worlds. Today, in (virtual) reality it feels somewhat analogous to an "immersive operating system". It's the entry point for doing other things on a VR system. Some examples: Roblox, Facebook Horizon, VRChat, NEOS
deeviant 5y ago
Of course, I think I can help. What is trying to be communicated here is psychographic content will be delivered via standard device substrates existing in well aligned usage patterns that will no doubt delight the end-user with value. Metaverse here simply means they will deliver an experience that is parallel to user expectation yet orthogonal to the digital representation of the physical model of the prevailing social zeitgeist. Or maybe someone just read Ready Player One recently, and is just thinking: We're going to build the Oasis but nobody could possibility understand what that is, I'll have to break it down into easy-to-misunderstand corpobabble.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I appreciate the irony of your second paragraph
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  > We’re going to build the Oasis and The Black Sun was there first. Can i interest you in a loose collection of extremely janky perl scripts? The bar’s owner hates it but, who cares? If he kicks us out we can just race bikes for a while until the fuss blows over.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nixpulvis 5y ago
    Any idea where a guy can score The Librarian these days? Wikipedia is cool and all, but it's lacking a certain... finesse. On a more serious note, I think these are different metaverses. Ours is pretty much locked in VR as far as I can tell, and Apple is building an overlay on zeroth-order reality, aka AR. Arguably harder and more powerful if done properly. Which I'm sure it won't be. :P
    - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
      > Arguably harder and more powerful if done properly. Which I'm sure it won't be. My response is kind of stuck between "that's overly cynical, isn't it" and "statistically speaking, that's pretty likely". (I was actually working at an early AR project at Nokia a bit over a decade ago, at the time called Point & Find, later called CityLens. It gave me a feeling that good AR may be one of those things that remains "just a couple years away" for decades.)
sombremesa 5y ago
> Can someone please define 'metaverse' in the context of... whatever this article is about? Personally, I dislike the term and I believe that it causes people to lose credibility when they use it. However, I can define it to some extent. Consider the term 'universe' in the context of 'a particular sphere of activity, interest, or experience'. For example, the 'Harry Potter universe'. The 'metaverse' is simply such a 'universe' that you can't really opt out of, because it's a layer on top of, rather than distinct from, the regular old world. This is why AR is often considered to be such an intrinsic aspect of it. Now, you might say that 'the internet' is just such a metaverse, but it isn't because it doesn't benefit the people who peddle the buzzword.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I guess I don't get what's so meta about it. We're not talking about a universe that describes universes. Metaphysics = the physics of physics Metascience = studying science itself with science Metaphilosophy = Philosophy about philosophy itself Metadata = data describing data Gaming 'meta' = the game of how to best play the game 'Meta' is one of those ultra-abstract terms that obfuscates the meaning of whatever word it is attached to unless the listener gives or has given the word a fair amount of thought. Ah, then maybe that is why it is being used here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - heisenzombie 5y ago
    I think that in the context of AR they actually are trying to talk about "universes that describe a universe". A "metaverse" is a "universe" in the sense that it's a shared 4D spacetime that you can explore (using some technology to give you a window into it). It's "meta" because it's layered on top of our "base universe": It's there to describe and augment the physical universe we exist in. For example: If, in your vision (via glasses, or a HUD, or a pane of glass or a brain implant), there's a big 3D arrow hovering above a road then the arrow exists in the "metaverse" and the road exists in the physical universe that the metaverse is describing.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Ads that follow you around in VR. There will be no escape. Also, Apple will try to make useful things appear in your VR goggles - like showing you how to get home on a map, when in fact you're planning to go out for a drink, or go grocery shopping, or anything but. This is a terrible article, but the idea is - if not sound, at least potentially interesting. It's basically enhanced location-aware cognition, taking input from everything around you - sound, video, tactile input, GPS location, event history, AI-enhanced memory - and combining it in real time to produce (checks notes...) "a new class of life-enhancing interactions." The problem? It needs a lot of moving parts working together seamlessly with better-than-human performance and reliability. Otherwise it will be a kludgy distracting nightmare of failed meta-everything - like the most annoying and useless intern anyone has ever had, only everywhere.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Great, then I look forward to another useless technobauble being hamfistedly shoved down my throat.
- Accujack 5y ago
  Except it won't go on a coffee run.
- eecc 5y ago
  > Otherwise it will be a kludgy distracting nightmare of failed meta-everything - like the most annoying and useless intern anyone has ever had, only everywhere. Clippy?
  - dole 5y ago
    Can I just get Alexa on a drone that perpetually follows me around and broadcasts (or projects visually) occasional targeted advertising? /s
    - eecc 5y ago
      Don't give them ideas, the marketing team is everywhere /s (I hope)
canadianfella 5y ago
> most doublespeakiest doublespeak > Speak plainly and simply, folk Ironic
memco 5y ago
I was also confused and clicked just to try to figure out what the headline meant. In the very beginning of the article there's this line: > I’ve been less sure they understood the full scope needed to build a compelling AR ecosystem – a metaverse. Seems this is about augmented reality being integrated into the regular experience of a significant population.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
The Metaverse in this context is a continuously updated digital copy of the real world, where the "environment" is generated passively by users. Imagine a city park where a handful of people have glasses with cameras on them that are continuously sending a geo-located feed of the images to a map server which processes it into a 3D reconstruction. You could watch in real time as the city park is reconstructed and updated in real time 3D, add in virtual content, make content "layers" for different digital assets, track interactions etc... It's a globally crowdsourced, consistently updated real time digital twin of the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
infradig 5y ago
A highly-reflective model of Earth's visible and intangible aspects outlined by David Gelernter (1991) in his book “Mirror Worlds”.

slver 5y ago

Basically bunch of wanking about futuristic AR sci-fi technology that the author has decided to accept as proven to be coming, but actually isn't. See flying cars 20 years ago.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

I assume it's a reference, at least in part, to the virtual reality world in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

OedipusRex 5y ago
Which is where this falls apart. In the book the Metaverse is basically a completely novel location in “VR”. If we’re pursuing a Metaverse, VR Chat is closer to a Metaverse than Apple.

mikepurvis 5y ago

It's right there in the first paragraph: "I’ve been less sure they understood the full scope needed to build a compelling AR ecosystem – a metaverse."

tomc1985 5y ago
I saw that, and the definition still says nothing. Ok, so a metaverse is somehow the realization of the "full scope" needed for a compelling AR ecosystem? And what exactly does that mean, and how does that define this particular usage of the (heavily overloaded) term 'metaverse'? Meta meaning 'about', so a universe about a universe? edit/ugh: googling the term says 'a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.' Like wtf does that have to do with the meta root word here? There is far too much abstraction in this vocabulary defining a thing that is very real.
- blowski 5y ago
  To understand the metaverse first you need to understand the metaverse. That's what I take from these comments and the article.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    mind_blown.gif /s
- lallysingh 5y ago
  It's the universe (the regular meatspace one) augmented with metadata, traditionally named such in AR/VR circles. Metadata like names, statistics, directions, etc. Such as a HUD you'd see in first-person video games. Another use of the term (not here) would be a way to jump between VR systems, but they never generalized well enough to make that a significant thing. Right now Steam would count

grawprog 5y ago

I could be wrong, but sifting through that utterly terrible corporate buzzword filled whatever the hell that was... I think it's what Apple's calling their new Augmented Reality platform...I think...or what the author is calling what could be Apple's potential AR platform...maybe?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

Completely agree. The words "metaverse substrate" just set my BS meter to a thousand, so I didn't even bother reading the article at first. Then I did read (most of it), and still my BS meter was at a thousand. If you can't explain what you mean in simple, easy to understand language, and you're not talking about quantum physics, you're just bullshitting. Should be required reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu...

grork 5y ago
As alluded to in another reply, it is a bit of a BS term! But it’s also not totally unfair. I think much of the metaverse & AR ecosystem doesn’t have great terminology. I mean ‘slap some goggles on and touch floaty doo-hickeys that you see but they aren’t really there’ doesn’t quite have the same curb appeal…

beeandapenguin 5y ago

In general, the term 'metaverse' is commonly used in the AR/VR space to describe virtual worlds. Today, in (virtual) reality it feels somewhat analogous to an "immersive operating system". It's the entry point for doing other things on a VR system. Some examples: Roblox, Facebook Horizon, VRChat, NEOS

deeviant 5y ago

Of course, I think I can help. What is trying to be communicated here is psychographic content will be delivered via standard device substrates existing in well aligned usage patterns that will no doubt delight the end-user with value. Metaverse here simply means they will deliver an experience that is parallel to user expectation yet orthogonal to the digital representation of the physical model of the prevailing social zeitgeist. Or maybe someone just read Ready Player One recently, and is just thinking: We're going to build the Oasis but nobody could possibility understand what that is, I'll have to break it down into easy-to-misunderstand corpobabble.

tomc1985 5y ago
I appreciate the irony of your second paragraph
hprotagonist 5y ago
> We’re going to build the Oasis and The Black Sun was there first. Can i interest you in a loose collection of extremely janky perl scripts? The bar’s owner hates it but, who cares? If he kicks us out we can just race bikes for a while until the fuss blows over.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  Any idea where a guy can score The Librarian these days? Wikipedia is cool and all, but it's lacking a certain... finesse. On a more serious note, I think these are different metaverses. Ours is pretty much locked in VR as far as I can tell, and Apple is building an overlay on zeroth-order reality, aka AR. Arguably harder and more powerful if done properly. Which I'm sure it won't be. :P
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    > Arguably harder and more powerful if done properly. Which I'm sure it won't be. My response is kind of stuck between "that's overly cynical, isn't it" and "statistically speaking, that's pretty likely". (I was actually working at an early AR project at Nokia a bit over a decade ago, at the time called Point & Find, later called CityLens. It gave me a feeling that good AR may be one of those things that remains "just a couple years away" for decades.)

sombremesa 5y ago

> Can someone please define 'metaverse' in the context of... whatever this article is about? Personally, I dislike the term and I believe that it causes people to lose credibility when they use it. However, I can define it to some extent. Consider the term 'universe' in the context of 'a particular sphere of activity, interest, or experience'. For example, the 'Harry Potter universe'. The 'metaverse' is simply such a 'universe' that you can't really opt out of, because it's a layer on top of, rather than distinct from, the regular old world. This is why AR is often considered to be such an intrinsic aspect of it. Now, you might say that 'the internet' is just such a metaverse, but it isn't because it doesn't benefit the people who peddle the buzzword.

tomc1985 5y ago
I guess I don't get what's so meta about it. We're not talking about a universe that describes universes. Metaphysics = the physics of physics Metascience = studying science itself with science Metaphilosophy = Philosophy about philosophy itself Metadata = data describing data Gaming 'meta' = the game of how to best play the game 'Meta' is one of those ultra-abstract terms that obfuscates the meaning of whatever word it is attached to unless the listener gives or has given the word a fair amount of thought. Ah, then maybe that is why it is being used here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- heisenzombie 5y ago
  I think that in the context of AR they actually are trying to talk about "universes that describe a universe". A "metaverse" is a "universe" in the sense that it's a shared 4D spacetime that you can explore (using some technology to give you a window into it). It's "meta" because it's layered on top of our "base universe": It's there to describe and augment the physical universe we exist in. For example: If, in your vision (via glasses, or a HUD, or a pane of glass or a brain implant), there's a big 3D arrow hovering above a road then the arrow exists in the "metaverse" and the road exists in the physical universe that the metaverse is describing.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Ads that follow you around in VR. There will be no escape. Also, Apple will try to make useful things appear in your VR goggles - like showing you how to get home on a map, when in fact you're planning to go out for a drink, or go grocery shopping, or anything but. This is a terrible article, but the idea is - if not sound, at least potentially interesting. It's basically enhanced location-aware cognition, taking input from everything around you - sound, video, tactile input, GPS location, event history, AI-enhanced memory - and combining it in real time to produce (checks notes...) "a new class of life-enhancing interactions." The problem? It needs a lot of moving parts working together seamlessly with better-than-human performance and reliability. Otherwise it will be a kludgy distracting nightmare of failed meta-everything - like the most annoying and useless intern anyone has ever had, only everywhere.

tomc1985 5y ago
Great, then I look forward to another useless technobauble being hamfistedly shoved down my throat.
Accujack 5y ago
Except it won't go on a coffee run.
eecc 5y ago
> Otherwise it will be a kludgy distracting nightmare of failed meta-everything - like the most annoying and useless intern anyone has ever had, only everywhere. Clippy?
- dole 5y ago
  Can I just get Alexa on a drone that perpetually follows me around and broadcasts (or projects visually) occasional targeted advertising? /s
  - eecc 5y ago
    Don't give them ideas, the marketing team is everywhere /s (I hope)

canadianfella 5y ago

> most doublespeakiest doublespeak > Speak plainly and simply, folk Ironic

memco 5y ago

I was also confused and clicked just to try to figure out what the headline meant. In the very beginning of the article there's this line: > I’ve been less sure they understood the full scope needed to build a compelling AR ecosystem – a metaverse. Seems this is about augmented reality being integrated into the regular experience of a significant population.

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

The Metaverse in this context is a continuously updated digital copy of the real world, where the "environment" is generated passively by users. Imagine a city park where a handful of people have glasses with cameras on them that are continuously sending a geo-located feed of the images to a map server which processes it into a 3D reconstruction. You could watch in real time as the city park is reconstructed and updated in real time 3D, add in virtual content, make content "layers" for different digital assets, track interactions etc... It's a globally crowdsourced, consistently updated real time digital twin of the world.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

infradig 5y ago

A highly-reflective model of Earth's visible and intangible aspects outlined by David Gelernter (1991) in his book “Mirror Worlds”.