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The metaverse is bullshit

• arisAlexis 5y ago
  This is a huge ignorant rant and expresses the anger of the unknown that is coming and anger for missing out. For every new technology there are always articles condemning them. People are resistent to change and that has been proven.
  • Jasper_ 5y ago
    Yeah, not sure what the author is talking about. Once he tries the Segway, he'll know it's the future of transportation. Anything else is FOMO FUD.
    • arisAlexis 5y ago
      How many world thought leaders said the segway is the future of transportation? None. How many for metaverse? Quite a few.
      • Jasper_ 5y ago
        Steve Jobs said cities would be designed for it... Jeff Bezos said everybody would have one...
  • drvdevd 5y ago
    I wouldn't call it an ignorant rant per se, unless the author has not spent much time in an Oculus headset. I had a dev kit in 2013, forgot about it and now have a Quest 2. Will it take over the world? I'm not sure yet but it is a breathtaking improvement in the past decade IMO. If I had a sufficiently advanced, light headset, that could mimic all the functions of my smartphone in VR/AR, I can tell you I would ditch my smartphone and probably never look back. So it's a rant but I'm not sure what about: has the author spent much time in VR lately? Is it Zuckerbergs idea of VR in terms of the sci-fi fictional "metaverse" that bugs them? I mean the author could be right about this being a flop.. but I'm not sure who it will be a flop for - us or Meta.
    • arisAlexis 5y ago
      "The absurdity of it makes me want to scream, or maybe die, or maybe just spoon out the part of my brain that knows what an NFT" this fits the definition of rant I would say.
• hermitcrab 5y ago
  VR is the next 3D cinema. In theory it should be a better, more immersive experience. In reality, it just isn't.
  • paavohtl 5y ago
    VR is very different from 3D cinema, at least in games. A 3D movie is 99.95% the same experience as the 2D version, but VR games are fundamentally different because both the visuals and far more importantly the inputs are in 3D. Many of the player interactions used in Boneworks and Half-Life Alyx are really awkward if not outright impossible in traditional pancake games: using both hands to do different things at the same time, throwing physics objects with specific force and direction or taking cover behind objects of arbitrary size and shape and so on. Having these capabilities of course does not mean that VR games are automatically superior. In fact, the vast majority of VR games are kinda clunky compared to traditional PC and console games. But they enable fundamentally new interactions which are really interesting to experiment with, and shouldn't be discarded as just gimmicks.
• skizm 5y ago
  The metaverse will be Facebook’s VR/AR App Store. They’re churching it up for marketing, but that’s pretty much it. They’re building a bunch of hardware to try and be the Apple in that space. Will it work? Who knows? But they have the cash to try. I’ll be honest, it’s cool someone is throwing money at this problem space. I just worry it is still too early.
• deadalus 5y ago
  Facebook wants more power to censor ordinary people while platforming literal terrorists(Taliban associates, Iran proxies etc) at the same time.
  • notsureaboutpg 5y ago
    Both of those are not literal terrorists as terrorism is defined as the use of violence on a civilian population for a socio-political purpose by a non-state actor That last distinction is how the US itself doesn't get classified as terrorists but can classify Al Qaeda, etc. as terrorists. But Iran proxies (who are government actors in Iraq at least) and the Taliban are government figures of their respective countries.
  • trident5000 5y ago
    That would be twitter
  • noduerme 5y ago
    I think the way the actual sausage is made is that they don't care who they platform. They'll deplatform anyone if enough people make enough noise and threaten their bottom line, but no one makes enough noise about Taliban terrorists or the Burmese military to threaten them politically. I don't think they're even trying to consolidate power. They appear to be in the very unenviable position of hosting half the internet's public verbal diarrhea, with no freakin clue how to deal with it. No sympathy here for the devil, but this is basically inevitable whenever anyone tries to grab the brass ring and take over a totally chaotic system. Facebook is essentially a failed state.
• vbg 5y ago
  The metaverse for me is minecraft roblox reddit any multiplayer computer game. Even hacker news.
• Noos 5y ago
  ...replace metaverse with Bitcoin. For all the hate HN has for the latter, it still exists, and defies its constantly predicted death. At this point if HN says something is bullshit its actually time to start looking at it critically because apparently bullshit survives much longer than what HN actually likes, lol RSS for example.
• mikevm 5y ago
  The Metaverse is the ultimate Truman Show.
• noduerme 5y ago
  [Removed by my better self]
  • noduerme 5y ago
    Now that I'm reading the rest of it, I see his point and he's not stupid. But yes, it does matter who runs it and how it looks and no, second life isn't the fuckin metaverse although it was a really, really nice attempt that he dismisses out of hand as being 'centralized'. Well guess what's centralized now? No, most people don't get a vastly wider experience because the web is so much more than a central 'verse these days. The problem is that the vision they're all locked into is so petty, generic, short sighted and dull.
  • d3nj4l 5y ago
    Please don't do this on HN. This is breaking almost every comment guideline there is and just makes the thread a worse place.
    • noduerme 5y ago
      Fine, you're right. I'm deleting it.
• benatkin 5y ago
  One thing that is very bullshit about the metaverse and also twitch/YouTube is the hype behind "creators". At some point "content" got dropped from "content creators", and people who have this particular hobby or job, rather than others, are elevated to the role of "creator".
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    creator makes money from users. consumer who posts comments, like we do here, does not
    • benatkin 5y ago
      A creator is also a user, no?
      • cblconfederate 5y ago
        A user of another creator. There is a hieararchy of creators and at the top sits Great Architect Zuck
• danparsonson 5y ago
  It seems pretty obvious to me that if we turn the whole internet into Third Life, it will quickly devolve into groups of people standing around and shouting at each other. And that test drive? Even assuming a few people do actually want to do that, 30 seconds in, the car will be full of monkeys and the wheels will turn into cake because the sim was coded by humans on a budget and some 12-year old was bored. As ever, the grand vision totally ignores the realities of human nature.
• atemerev 5y ago
  NFT is no more and no less bullshit than modern art. Cryptocurrencies are no more and no less bullshit than fiat currencies. Metaverse is no more and no less bullshit than all commerce in the real world. The difference is who controls it. It is all about power transfer.
• horsellama 5y ago
  The meta verse should be BS, but it will be not. Like it or not, It’s simply the next new/big thing and we better embrace it before it’s too late. Funny thing, I’ve recently refused a job from one of the big players on the filed because they wouldn’t allow me to work from remote…
• Animats 5y ago
  So far, we have three basic "metaverse" approaches. 1. Augmented reality, that is, overlays on the real world. A cross between Pokemon Go and Google Glass. The Facebook version of this would probably look like that "Hyperreality" video I mention too often. This is all too likely to happen, if only to free up the hands of people who walk through the world staring at their phones. John Carmack expects it as soon as the headgear gets down to eyeglass size. 2. Virtual reality, that is, some simulated place you can visit. This may or may not involve headgear. This is really Second Life with better frame rates, or VRchat with a bigger world. It's striking that the newer metaverse wannabees have far lower visual quality than either of those. Roblox is the technical leader in this area, with a strong R&D team and a good technical roadmap. Unfortunately, their market is centered at age 13, so they censor very heavily. Holding hands is prohibited. 3. Virtual scarcity, that is, NFTs and land in virtual worlds. This is way overhyped. I expect the SEC to come down hard on a lot of that stuff soon, like they did with the ICO crowd in 2018. Selling NFTs for sports team collectables is probably OK. Selling virtual land before you build your virtual world is clearly a security, per the Howey test. The collectable NFT stuff peaked months ago. That works like Beanie Babies on eBay - $5000 asked, no bids, actual sales around $50. It turns out that OpenSea was front-running and Beeple's big sale was not arms-length. Same old scams, shiny new packaging. I'm into the technical end of #2. This is a rather lonely place right now, even in the game development community. There are interesting problems to be solved in building large-scale virtual worlds with high-detail user content. That's not impossible, although many people think it is. (Plug: See [1] for a demo.) The number of people actually doing anything of technical interest, as opposed to blithering about the "metaverse", is surprisingly small. I haven't even found a serious forum where such issues are discussed. I've read about a hundred of My First Metaverse Article at this point, though. [1] https://vimeo.com/640175119 https://vimeo.com/640175119
  • unhammer 5y ago
    I'm guessing by that Hyperreality video you mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs – it's not nearly mentioned enough!
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    I don't believe in headgears, even though facebook will try hard to monetize their investment in oculus. Phones were successful because they adopt the unintrusive form factor of a book: you don't need to make time and space away from reality for it. VR/AR requires the time and space to be alone and it wears out over time as the bandwidth of communication is low, probably even lower than in video chat. But turning every game to a social 3d world you can use on a laptop and (minimally use) in a phone is something that might work. I mean simple social gaming like farmville is already bridging those form factors.
• Stevvo 5y ago
  outline.com link because the website itself has too many ads to be readable. I know It's bad form, but so are those ads.
• entropicgravity 5y ago
  I think of it as the Metastasize.
  • dym_sh 5y ago
    setting up MetaStage for MetaViruses. wear a MetaMask, and equip MetaFilter.
  • otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    Metamphetamine.
• swiley 5y ago
  Yea, it's AOL value-add all over again. It will be around for a while and fizzle out, especially with the hardware requirement.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  I'm sure Facebook is really excited to build a space they own and control completely, as well as have the ability to take a cut of all sales in it. Building a digital company town is right up Facebook's alley.
  • diveanon 5y ago
    *meta is excited
    • heavyset_go 5y ago
      I'm aware.
  • watercooler_guy 5y ago
    Zuckerberg did state, for this interview back in July (https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview https://www.theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-c...), that > ...just like you have the W3C that helps set standards around a bunch of the important internet protocols and how people build the web, I think there will need to be some of that here, too, for defining how developers and creators can build experiences that allow someone to take their avatar and their digital goods and their friends, and be able to teleport seamlessly between all these different experiences. I'm sure Facebook is looking to have a big and profitable presence in the metaverse, but the point is that it's not one big walled garden like Facebook, but more like the Web as a whole.
    • zemo 5y ago
      sure he says that but what they’re doing is the opposite. They’re not releasing standards, they’re not making the equivalent of a cgi-bin server that lets me run my own simulation that someone can transit to from someone else’s simulation, they’re not releasing a high quality client that can target simulations owned by other companies, etc. They say people can make spaces but it’s very Geocities. Sure, people can make stuff inside their playground, but nothing they’re doing makes it easier to set up my own playground on my own infra. Everything they’re doing suggests they think the way to “win” the metaverse is to own all of the spaces. Idiotic. That’s like trying to win the web by having all of the web pages.
• gfodor 5y ago
  Metaverse will be bullshit up until avatarism arrives, then it will be boring and normal. But people like this will still be very confused and upset about what is happening. (Maybe I will too.) The first mainstream passthrough AR device that can stitch out and replace humans will be an eye opener for many people. This will happen next year. Most likely at least Meta and Apple’s will do this. And probably a few others. It will be rough but it won’t be hard to connect the dots. https://gfodor.medium.com/the-rise-of-avatarism-b7ecfa7c42bc https://gfodor.medium.com/the-rise-of-avatarism-b7ecfa7c42bc
  • arpa 5y ago
    I wonder, will they do this while simultaneously broadcasting my real name (as per RealName policies)?
    • prawn 5y ago
      If Facebook insist on real names, I could see a competing or federated metaverse making inroads by protecting identity.
    • gfodor 5y ago
      Facebook? Probably. Which is why (among other things) we should be concerned.
  • sho 5y ago
    You join those dots like the arrival of "Avatarism" is something obvious and inevitable, but reading that blog post doesn't give me that idea at all. Instead, it makes me think the author is way, way too deep into a too-long list of very niche technical and sociological obsessions. A quote: What is Avatarism? Avatarism is a movement to recognize and protect the fundamental human right of freedom of form Yeah, except that right doesn't exist, and no-one thinks it exists. At all. The idea that an entire civilisation is going to agree to all use VR goggles full time to preserve some non-existent "right" for a very small number of weirdoes to only ever be seen as their cartoon fantasy version is, frankly, laughable.
    • 5y ago
• gitgud 5y ago
  > "The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet > Being 'inside' a virtual world was never really the important part" Well, the facebook keynote presents a compelling argument how social interaction with VR can be more meaningful than through a 2D screen in many situations. However, what IS bullshit, is the display of obviously fake demonstrations with highly experimental and expensive technology. The reality is, most of the tech, won't be accessible or even productised for a long time, as they didn't even announce any planned dates...
  • echelon 5y ago
    Zuckerberg sees that anime fans and furries love spending time on VRchat and he wants to build it out for fans of football and the Kardashians. People that buy Louis Vuitton are going to shell out for NFT metaverse skins and wear dorky headsets. That totally tracks.
    • bagels 5y ago
      I have no idea what's going to happen, but computers used to be a thing for "nerds", now everybody uses them every day.
      • TaXaZ 5y ago
        The nerd move on to nerd out the next big things. Nerds by definition find a niche to stand out and life goes on...
    • MrScruff 5y ago
      What is true is that the amount of time people spend finessing their fictional online persona vs their boring reality is dramatically shifting, particularly for younger generations. It's now common for some to use stylized/beautified cartoon 'avatars' in a professional context. People communicate using contrived and performative message board speak with coworkers. Even the 'influencers' spend a large chunk of their life editing and constructing an unrecognisable version of themselves. If you meet some of these people in real life it's obvious why they do so - reality is too dull, too expensive in time and effort to find a way of standing out from the crowd. Online you can pretend to be whatever you want to be. I see this trend continuing.
• arpa 5y ago
  Without even reading the article: you don't say! color me surprised!
• tiagobraw 5y ago
  suprised that no one is talking about neosvr[1], even though I don't use it I definitely can see the appeal. They have metaverse in their name. Their avatar system is beyond phenomenal and they keep adding new things [2]. [1] https://neos.com/ https://neos.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXdgnQ0cEKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXdgnQ0cEKU
  • petre 5y ago
    Wow this is most definitely BS. If that's the future Zuckerborg wants to build, I'll pass, just like I passed on facebook, another stupid idea, now riddled with ads.
• riffraff 5y ago
  I think this post suffers from lack of imagination, but it is very right in two things: portability in the metaverse will never really work, and virtual interfaces won't really be pervasive because simply put they're not better. We've had video calls for decades now, but people still use text messages because not everything needs to be a video call. Likewise, we'll keep using text chats because not everything needs to be VR.
• shafyy 5y ago
  As the article says, it doesn't make sense to have a virtual world that replicates the real world where there is only one "spacetime" entity, so to speak. The author is right, the metaverse is already here and it's called the internet. I disagree with the author that I can see a lot of value in improved social interactions and virtual workspaces in VR once the technology gets there. You can already see glimpses of it with today's hardware and software. And, it makes sense the VR/AR will be the medium to contain all other mediums. But, that doesn't mean that we need to live in "metaverse" as defined by Neal Stephenson or how Zuck imagines it. Yes, you'll be able to create your Facebook (or Meta) avatar, and use it to log into work meetings and social events - but that's not much different than using Facebook Login today. There are already a bunch of siloed social experiences in VR, like Facebook Horizon, VRChat, Altspace and Rec Room. I don't see FB or any other of these apps moving to open protocols that would allow decentralization and federation, just as todays "2D" social media companies, including all the ones owned by FB, aren't doing it. If Zuckerberg is serious about a federated metaverse and open protocols, he should start by opening up Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. In the end, the metaverse will be the internet, but mostly experienced through the medium of VR/AR. Edit: Typos
  • Oddskar 5y ago
    > And, it makes sense the VR/AR will be the medium to contain all other mediums. In the same way that e-books will make normal books completely obsolete? I doubt it.
    • FeepingCreature 5y ago
      Online text has made normal books completely obsolete for me, personally speaking. I now buy books as a fancy way to donate to authors I like.
  • tim333 5y ago
    The metaverse singular seems an odd concept. There will be all sorts of virtual worlds where you can socialise with other real people through VR avatars as there already are such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, Fortnite and so on. Also I guess Minecraft? Whether Meta will be able to dominate the scene if the way they do photo sharing I dunno. Their demo video doesn't enthuse me (https://youtu.be/SAL2JZxpoGY https://youtu.be/SAL2JZxpoGY). I guess they may be able to work the network thing - I put my photos in insta/fb because thats where my friends/family are. But will I go on Meta to chat to mum? Probably not. I think text messaging/phone are fine for that.
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  I much prefer Stratechery analysis than this type of low-blow entertainment.
• kderbyma 5y ago
  I think the metaverse is all the billionaire's attempts to bring about a permanent burning man with psychedelic like experience and immersion.
• justicezyx 5y ago
  MetaVerse is not bullshit, but that's a future that I do not want to live in, and dont want my children either. And I'll do what I could to create better and more convincing alternative...
  • mrweasel 5y ago
    That’s very much my fear. It will happen, regardless of my feelings towards it, but I want no part in it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rklaehn 5y ago
  I think people should not underestimate this. The presentation is cringeworthy, but VR is very attractive for teenagers and preteens. I know this from personal experience with my kids. Same with the concept of NFTs. Using real money to pay for an in game asset like a fortnite skin is completely natural to them.
  • shafyy 5y ago
    What's the connection between NFTs and using real money to pay for Fortnite skins?
    • fivre 5y ago
      The notion that people paying for digital assets means that people will pay for NFTs. It's meaningless, though, since the same (massive) caveats apply as when cryptocoins tried to claim they were a viable and better alternative to traditional financial services: buying and owning digital assets is entirely possible to handle with existing, more efficient technology. Nobody that sells digital assets has any reason to buy into whatever purported benefits a distributed system provides other than hype: you don't need a distributed system if you already control all the servers and everyone is fine with that. The subset of customers that will be _REALLY MAD_ that they can't use their Fortnite skins should Epic disappear is vanishingly small. NFTs don't even have the edge case that they're useful for transactions for illegal goods. It's grifters boosting bullshit trying to make a profit through and through.
    • rklaehn 5y ago
      The idea of paying for an unique digital asset, even if it is just unique by social convention, would not be foreign to my kids. If you think about it, land ownership is also just a very well established social convention.
      • JohnFen 5y ago
        But land ownership gives you an actual, tangible benefit. You get exclusive use of the land. NFTs don't offer anything except bragging rights.
• sound_and_form 5y ago
  How do I opt out? More fundamentally, the lack of an answer to this question is the reason it's bullshit.
• wokwokwok 5y ago
  the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry's very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we've never seen before The tech landscape is littered with failed attempts, but we have here two very technically successful companies, Epic and Facebook, both trying to re-imagine the internet as something different. I'm not sure I'd write them off as a bunch of idiots quite yet. A bunch of idiots with a lot of money maybe... But look: Something is happening. You can close your eyes and pretend it's not. Apps are going to go away and the web continue to be The Way people access information online, and sucky little progressive web applications that hardly anyone is using or making money off are going to become awesome and NFTs will die. I mean, heck, it's only a matter of time until all those people who invested in bitcoin lose it alllllllllll right? You can sit there and laugh as how stupid they all are. ...maybe? If you want to. That's probably not a wise thing to do though. I think there are enough things going on, with enough competent folk doing them, and enough money behind them, that you're looking at the start of a change. Who knows how it'll go, but I think it might surprise people who are sitting around laughing. One thing that you can always bet on: Things change.
  • Animats 5y ago
    Epic Tim Sweeney has been talking up a technically reasonable vision of the Metaverse for several years now. But Epic hasn't shipped much. You can load new game maps into Fortnite. That's about it. Unreal Engine 5 doesn't have much in the way of support for a world where users can change almost everything. It's still based on a model where you do massive optimization during build time.
  • xornox 5y ago
    Exactly. Things are changing and it is not a bad thing if corporates try to be a change. Probably they fail, but even trying is better than doing nothing.
    • harwoodleon 5y ago
      Here’s a thought: maybe corporates will change and may even become obsolete.
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Yes, we have the internet, but Facebook managed to dominate a huge part of it. No wonder they want to keep their dominance in the next level of it. And I would be careful about calling their domination plans bullshit, seeing as they already succeeded once before. Second Life was phantastic, I still miss it to this day. It just had a very clunky interface, which modern devices like VR gear might improve upon. (I know SL is still around, probably many lessons to be learned). Also, "We also have Snow Crash to blame for the absolute hell we find ourselves in today," - wut? Yeah, the "absolute hell" of billionaires investing lots of money to create fun and immersive entertainment options for the rest of us. Truly the worst dystopia imaginable?
  • LordDragonfang 5y ago
    >Yeah, the "absolute hell" of billionaires investing lots of money to create fun and immersive entertainment options for the rest of us. Truly the worst dystopia imaginable? Yes, the "circuses" part of "bread and circuses". Superficial appeasement doesn't really outweigh the all the many other unethical actions made by billionaires - in this case, vying for be the proprietary controllers of the literal reality of the future.
    • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      I don't like centralized control, either, but to claim that we are living in an "absolute hell" right now is just ridiculous. You are not forced to attend the "circus", either, if you don't like it. As for centralized control, that is actually the one thing that disappoints me about the future. Somehow all the SF books glossed over the immense cost required to develop the cutting edge technology. How much money did Facebook spend to create the Oculus Quest? I just don't see hobbyists and hackers create the same level of technology - or think about the Apple M1 SoC. Would hackers have been able to create such a thing in their mom's basement eventually? I rather doubt it. So centralisation is an issue, simply because development costs are so high. It's not simply a conspiracy by evil billionaires.
      • LordDragonfang 5y ago
• Jasper_ 5y ago
  > In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there, and that it's receiving the attention it deserves." You can tell this absolutely makes no sense, because if we're in the metaverse, why the heck am I driving a car around? I can fly, can't I? Or if I can't, I'm going to open up a shop next door that sells metaverse helicopter rides. If I make a vehicle in the metaverse, I'm going add rocket launchers and nos, because that's way more fun than driving a Camry around. Not to mention, you don't need cupholders in VR, because your avatar doesn't have a stomach. You can't test legroom or the seat cushions, because your avatar doesn't don't have a body. So I don't see how you can realistically sell an actual real-world car, because isn't most of its function and design unnecessary in the metaverse? Heck, I don't need the whole front of the car, because the engine doesn't actually exist. The whole metaverse idea is based on clunky, outdated metaphors to the real world like this. Someone who saw Ready Player One in theaters thinks that driving a car in VR is cool, without thinking for five more minutes about why it's actually not.
  • bosawq 5y ago
    Forget about what other people who have nothing in common with you do. Its a trap to focus on it. Many have resources, energy and no sense, taste or imagination. You cant blame them. Its like complaining to a cactus for not producing strawberries. Or yelling at swampland for not turning fertile. What you can do is shift focus, and focus on what you and people like you are working on, and keep the focus there no matter what.
  • codingdave 5y ago
    Roblox will be looked back upon as the MS-DOS of metaverses, yet people go gaga over any vehicle you can make. They (mostly kids) spend an absurd amount of hours just jumping from one place to another to prove they can without falling. They spend real money just to turn their hat a new color. Entire genres of games and activities exist basically to just move around, jump on a few things, see numbers get bigger, and see things change colors. With all that, I truly think yes... people absolutely will drive a car in VR.
• aww_dang 5y ago
  Remember this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML
• throw7 5y ago
  What "they" are after, but aren't saying, is simstim. What gibson already knew is... that shit is for meat toys. I don't doubt it's coming. It's close. In my lifetime? Maybe.
• narrator 5y ago
  The huge excitement of the WEF for the metaverse makes me think this is the Internet this group of billionaires really wanted. The closed controlled platform with a single private corporation running the whole thing. Feels like a Richard Stallman dystopia. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/facebook-meta-what-is-the-metaverse https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/facebook-meta-what-is...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• d3nj4l 5y ago
  > Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. From the guidelines. Here is the original source: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-metaverse-is-bullshit/ https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-metaverse-is-bullshit/ I use (and love) Outline myself wherever it works, but linking to the original source is much better IMO.
• dandotway 5y ago
  Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed many more "forward looking visionary" startups. Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear. The Metaverse will be programmed with text. The quarterly reports outlining its financial losses will be written in text. When journalists ultimately write its obituary, they will write text.
  • laurent92 5y ago
    > News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Try prefixing text with 15 lines of advertising text that you must read, and people will prefer video quickly. In the current world, I don’t click on 30s video quotes because it is prefixed by 30s of ads.
  • fredophile 5y ago
    > Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear. How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.
    • kingkawn 5y ago
      After how it ended I’d argue that they are way less popular now than any of the books
      • finebalance 5y ago
        It's kind of astounding how rapidly the series has disappeared from the mainstream. Couldn't have bungled it up worse had they tried.
• m0zg 5y ago
  It's not even a question. We're long overdue to exit online and return back to the real world. It's a struggle but it's doable. Meet other real people IRL. Go to bars and shows. Have sex instead of watching porn. Marry. Have kids. Have real, physical hobbies instead of computer games and scrolling instagram all day. Exercise. Play sports with other people instead of watching them on TV. Sleep well. Read paper books that you actually own. Cook instead of buying premade processed garbage. Buy durable physical assets instead of renting or buying subscriptions, or buying cheap trash you don't even need. Build lasting relationships and things that matter, not something that will be obsolete within 30 seconds. As a side bonus piss off Big Tech by not participating in their extractive, and increasingly authoritarian surveillance capitalism and brainwashing.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    100% agreee on everything except: > Read paper books that you actually own. What's wrong with reading borrowed books? Public libraries are a marvellous invention!
    • m0zg 5y ago
      Nothing. I'm also a big fan of libraries. I meant not DRM-d to hell Kindle, which Amazon and only Amazon can control, and which you never actually "own".
      • CRConrad 5y ago
        Suspected that, but thought the clarification was important. Thanks!
• namelosw 5y ago
  > The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet You may be right, but here's an anecdote: David Brevik did a post-mortem on Diablo[0] on GDC. He first mentioned they accepted the contract for developing Diablo for Blizzard for $300000 which was extremely underpriced for a team of 15, so they have to look for other revenue such as accepting other contracts developing lame football games for $1 million. As they were busy shipping Diablo, Sabeer Bhatia came to them with an idea of "making the email over the Internet", he replied, "dude this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard! What're you talking about - I've already had my email over the Internet!". Sabeer insists this is a big idea, and offer them 10% of the company, only for an empty office in the back which they're not using in return. But David was stressing out because they were about to ship Diablo, so he turned him down because he want no distraction, ..plus "it's the stupidest idea ever". And the company of Sabeer was called Hotmail. 14 months later the 10% would become $40 million... [0] https://youtu.be/Mlrrc_vy79E?t=2046 https://youtu.be/Mlrrc_vy79E?t=2046
• laingc 5y ago
  The Metaverse is definitely bullshit. It will fail for the same reason that Amazon never managed to beat Barnes & Noble, that the internet failed to become popular, and that nobody ever bought a PC. Just ridiculous.
  • boardwaalk 5y ago
    Strange view of the world. Everything someone wants to succeed will succeed? You could come up with magnitudes more ideas that failed than succeeded, just because that's how the world works. But I guess some rich assholes pushing it makes it more legitimate.
    • laingc 5y ago
      Not at all - it might work and it might not. It’s just that calling it bullshit at this stage is just begging to be proven wrong.
• jamesandthewolf 5y ago
  LOL could not of summed it up better in the least amount of words possible.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Let me be honest: the metaverse may or may not be bullshit. But the Zuck is a doer. Y’all are talkers. Your opinion counts for as much as it did back when you cheered FB down to $13. Y’all don’t have a clue. Blind men trying to describe why color doesn’t matter. Less memory than a nomad. No insight. Lame.
  • silisili 5y ago
    Zuck stole one idea, a good idea, and ran with it. Everything since has been damage control, copying, and buying. Zuck is a determined person at the right place at the right time. Nothing wrong with that. But a 'doer' or even idea guy? We'll see.
    • renewiltord 5y ago
      Yeah yeah and Elon Musk is a PR guy, Bill Gates couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag, Steve Jobs taped four iPhones together and made a (max)iPad lolz etc etc Zero information content article. Ideas can’t be stolen, man. They can only be copied.
• efitz 5y ago
  I think the biggest disconnect between the vision and the reality of the metaverse is that the vision includes a “locality” that does not exist on the internet. There might be interesting reasons to simulate distance in the metaverse that correspond to real world phenomena like latency. Probably not IMO but who knows. But “traveling” in the metaverse has always been a dumb idea; what’s the point? Anyplace you want to go is at most seconds away; the idea of “moving” to get there doesn’t add any value.
• deleted 5y ago
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• rambambram 5y ago
  I'm willing to take this further: The CLOUD is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    "The cloud" was always bullshit. There is no "cloud"; it's only other people's computers.
    • rambambram 5y ago
      I know now, but I once fell into that trap. Just a couple of years I leave the programming field, I come back and everybody talks about 'the cloud', I really thought for another couple of years that I missed something important that only I didn't understand. :')
      • CRConrad 5y ago
        Yeah, so did I for a while -- even though I never left the industry! But as soon as I tried to find out how this "magic" was supposed to work, it evaporated.
• didibus 5y ago
  I think the only BS is the way we.all talk about this stuff, same way the cloud is all hyped up. AR and VR are great tech, when it gets good enough that it's a simple comfortable accessory to wear, and it incurs no strain on your eyes, it'll definitely find many uses. And for sure we'll pursue the tech for better full body tracking, walking in-place, simulated touch, and all that, and if all that one day works similarly well, you can bet lots of people will start using it all too. So now imagine you have this tech all figured out, what would the software look like? Obviously you're talking 3D UX, logically you'll start building virtual worlds to inhabit, eventually you'd want some things to if possible transfer from one app to another, and where all apps are virtual 3D spaces that might mean some of that stuff needs to transfer over. It can even be simple things, if I can now whiteboard virtually, and use my own hand writing on the board, and now I'm in another app, and I'd like to pull up that whiteboard I did? This is equivalent to say Slack letting you send photos or files over. I don't think any of this is far-fetched, it is just a matter of getting the tech to a point where it is easy, comfortable, convenient and all around pleasant to use. Now calling it all a Metaverse, that's in the same league as calling a bunch of remote servers the Cloud. And yes, the article is right, we all have this stuff already, but we have it in 2D, using 2D interfaces like flat monitors, stereo sound, physical keyboards and mouse. Now you're talking what if we had a surround 3D monitor? Surround 3D sound? Full body tracking with milimeter precision? You'd just take all we currently have and upgrade it to be full surround 3D as well. That's all it is.
  • ikr678 5y ago
    The tech quality developing is all well and good, but I dont see in these discussions much consideration to how much space you need clear for immersive VR. If Facebook want this to scale for private use, they need to solve for housing first. I've played a few VR games at friends places, and unless they had the luxury of a spare room for it it's a pain in the ass to create space. I dont see this taking off beyond the affluent first world for this reason, and even then, most first world countries have much smaller housing than the US - The average UK household is less than half the sqft of the US.
    • machiaweliczny 5y ago
• masswerk 5y ago
  I think, one aspect mostly overlooked is the media aspect of the Metaverse. We love media. A medium is a type of projection of a perceived reality and/or an imagination. The important word here is "projection": This includes distortion, bias, texture, it's never lossless, it introduces artefacts, it's also a kind of hashing as we transgress dimensions, projection comes with boundaries and constraints, and by this creates a specific horizon. We love that sort of thing. (For the programmers out there: This is also true for programming languages: these provide a specific projection as a medium for functional thought. It's ok to like or dislike a language.) Creating and loving media is one of the most human things I can think of. But it only works, because there's a variety to it: if there was just one artist, projecting her specific mediality onto innumerable works of art, art and arts in general were quite boring. And here comes the problem: By mashing up all media in a more general one, by generalising them in the frame of a super-projection, the Metaverse also puts an end to media, as an immeasurable plurality and variety of specific projections. The Metaverse is just boring, because it is the same Metaverse, always. It may be a capitalist's dream, but it's also the consumer's thermal death of interest.
• deleted 5y ago
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• ToJans 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm bullish on 3d interaction because I own company related to this, so my opinion might be a bit colored. What surprised me the most is how fake and forced the conversations and interactions looked. It reminded me of those first blue screen effects you see in these old movies from the sixties. I would assume that Facebook/metaverse spent an enormous budget on it, but nevertheless the outcome still looks creepy. In my opinion we have mostly figured out how to avoid the uncanny valley for rendering, so I'd guess improving conversations and interactions are up next. Until the techniques are on par with what we need, I'd heavily avoid trying to model a real world representation in a virtual world. (Think about the early Pixar movies: instead of trying to create the most realistic world possible, they embraced their current constraints and turned them into a feature that made their movies instantly recognizable.) This being said, I see one big use case for AR/VR adaptation during the next decade: digital twins with simplified, tailored representations for development, marketing, education and operational purposes, as well as amusement. My best guess and personal bet is on this space. And even though we've had VR and more recently AR getting more accessible to the consumers, it's still at least 5 years too soon for mass adaptation; most people still consider it a novelty. In my experience interactive 3d will emerge next in the mass-market. Up until now I had the best conversion ratios by having a conventional 2d GUI/wizard and some very conceptually simple 3d drag and drop to create simplified 3d representations of products one could buy (think sheds, carports, verandas etc). First consumers will have to get familiar with 3d annotations, before we can make them interactive as well... So yes, I see a future for (some version of) the metaverse, but the implementation they showed right now was a bit meh, because they tried to model it just like the real world, and the techniques to do so properly still aren't there yet...
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Nice title, although he refutes himself with the correct assertion that we already live in the metaverse, the internet itself is another reality, and people curating their profile and likes are already curating an avatar. I mean just look at us > We've been playing games and chatting for decades! What do we truly have to gain by trying to merge all entertainment into one giant Ivan Ooze of content? There are some uses for which gaming will be important commercially going forward, as things turn remote. gaming mechanics are going to be useful with: - remote work, where the 3d representation gives occasionally a sense of immersion with the team, permanence/continuity, and a graphical sense of "where is everyone" - remote education, where kids will be lured by avatars and follow interactive demonstrations of things, making it a lot more engaging. VR is not needed for any of this, but a bit of gaming environment and mechanics are the natural evolution of texting.
• hliyan 5y ago
  What we need to counter this insane trend toward unnecessary graphical representations, is to double down on a plain-text knowledge graph version of the Internet. Something that is completely devoid of formatting, with only semantic markup (hyperlinks, emphasis etc). Something that is composed of small, single-purpose units of text smaller than current "documents" or pages. Something that can be fetched, composed and rendered entirely based on the client application's requirements (yes, I'm familiar with Xanadu).
• ladyanita22 5y ago
  I'm gonna give a not so popular opinion: Facebook may have a future beyond social media, or at least beyond what we know as social media. Back when Google was absolutely not this huge, they were a company whose main products were a search engine, a web mail client (which wasn't even the most popular), and a video content provider. They had to fight against powerful and big Microsoft, who controlled all the spectrum of computing (back in 2007, even IIS was popular) in a closed and proprietary manner, who applied the rules of EEE as a means of survival and who made sure nobody ate its cake. But then, Google built a platform based on open source software that was beyond what anybody had to offer back then (except for the iPhone, which was better but restricted to Apple), and now we know how the story goes (Alphabet has significantly higher revenue than Microsoft, and controls the web, the majority of phone devices and is gaining substantial market share in Microsoft's territory, the PC). However, there's a platform nobody has conquered yet, because it's inmature: AR. This is an opportunity for Facebook (Meta). They know about social (Google doesn't that much, and for sure the rage nowadays is social interaction with the people, there you see Twitch's success), and they know about AR and VR. I can't say they've any significant advantage over Google, but I believe they can be competitive. Recent news is they're working on a Microkernel-based OS (I think it's been managed by a top Windows NT co-developer, so serious people that know their stuff), with a small footprint to conquer AR, as the current software simply doesn't cut it. We don't know its status vs. Google's Fuchsia, which is the other contender, but if they can pull it off, it's a substantial improvement and a solid foundation for the future. The idea is to repeat Android's road to success: open but controlled ecosystem that many OEMs can take advantage of. I'm all in for that, and I hope it's either them or Fuchsia the ones that get us to the future (because I honestly don't believe Linux will be). Of course, I'd say Fuchsia seems much more ready, and they're not ready at all. Plus, they're working on a smartwatch. Let's see how it is, because Google has tried for long, but they simply are not competitive vs. Apple. Facebook could do something different. Again, it's not my intention to bash Linux, or to say I like Facebook. I absolutely hate FB's social practices, but they know how to engage people, how to do social, and their work on Open Source, crypto, the internet as a whole and VR/AR is absolutely splendid, and for that, they deserve credit.
• toastal 5y ago
  > bullshit because tech moguls missed the part where cyberpunk is dystopian This blog "missed the part" too. I hate how this site has no <noscript> warning for a JS-required blog entry and then also wants you to connect to Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Syndication, and Taboola. Facebook deserves all the criticism and then some, but if behind the scenes you're selling out your readers, you're not much better IMO. Outline wants to "empower readers" and their ToS page doesn't even work (https://www.outline.com/terms.html https://www.outline.com/terms.html).
• nedsma 5y ago
  The most important thing in the metaverse will be figuring out ways to make payment methods readily available. An army of analysts is working on this problem right now. Things that are expected to be fun or novel in the metaverse are just proxies to payment methods. Facebook is building a 3D version of Amazon.
• nootropicat 5y ago
  Alternative title: Old man yells at metaverse. The year is 2030. A 5 year old Timmy is bored and demands attention from his mother, currently hooked in VR doing her remote job. She excuses herself for a moment, straps Timmy into a special harness and puts his VR goggles on. Timmy is now in a virtual playground with other kids his age. All his movements, especially facial expressions, are reproduced in virtual reality. There's an option to use an automatically generated avatar that sort-of reproduces how Timmy looks, but he can also look like a cartoon character. His mother is happy - she doesn't have to drive him to a kindergarten and he stops impacting her work. There are early brain implants that greatly expand immersion, but they are so expensive they are limited to multimillionaire nerds. 2040. Overwhelming majority of kids in developed nations attend virtual schools in VR. Brain implants got better and cheaper, allowing full virtual body control. They are now within financial reach of the upper 20%, not just a tiny financial elite. They start to be required in professional settings as they greatly increase efficiency, with companies sometimes funding them for their employers on a payment plan. 2050. An entire generation now greatly prefers communication in VR to real world interactions and self-identifies more with whatever they chose as their avatars rather than with their real body. Their friend networks are global - quite possibly they don't have any friends within 100km. They spend overwhelming majority of their waking time in metaverse. Brain implants are ubiquitous in people below 40, with most expensive versions allowing a full dive experience. Most of physical work happens in metaverse, with workers controlling humanoid robots remotely. It's not perfect yet - but it's getting there. --- Compared to the growth of 2d internet, metaverse is now in early 90s. There's no need to buy a vr kit right now - but once facial expressions tracking arrives it's time do it, otherwise you risk permanently losing touch with the zeitgeist.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • charcircuit 5y ago
    >but once facial expressions tracking arrives it's time do it NeosVR already supports facial tracking with HTC's face tracker.
• impulser_ 5y ago
  This is sounds just like when Apple released the first iPhone and a lot of critics wrote articles about how we don't need the iPhone because we already had are Blackberries that could do the same thing and was cheaper. Now look at the iPhone today, literally one of the most popular devices in history. A lot of similar vibes today as there was around the release of the first iPhone. If I had to bet, I would be betting on Mark even if I don't like Facebook or their other products.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • FooHentai 5y ago
    A key difference is the iPhone massively reduced the friction of mobile access to Internet services; that's the secret sauce which gained it huge adoption with the general public - Many commentators did not perceive this up front, and also missed that the market potential was far larger than just mobile business productivity - So iPhone took the casual private use mass market by storm while BES continued to dominate professional productivity for a while until they fell behind on hardware (e.g. the disaster that was the Storm). Contrast that with the metaverse concept - Until some killer solution comes along that drops the friction for joe public to access it, it'll languish as a niche activity for people willing to dedicate a room and endure a bulky headset. Just as Internet surfing did through the 90s when it really required owning a desktop PC and having some corner of your house dedicated to the beast. Right now that looks like bulky VR headsets, poor resolution, and being locked off from the world around you while you're in the other place. There are a lot of parallels there to 90s internet access I think, and how that opened up with mobile devices that you could whip out of (and return to) your pocket moment to moment. Early attempts to break down this barrier were Google glass, and Microsoft's foray a few years back into augmented reality. To an extent Starline as well. If/when someone cracks it and comes up with a solution that greatly reduces the friction to slip from real world into metaverse, they'll clean house. Until then, I suspect folks comparing it to the failure of 3dtv adoption are closer to the mark.
    • drvdevd 5y ago
• d13 5y ago
  Active Worlds, 1995 - present: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds
• tomcooks 5y ago
  Yes we had SecondLife in the past, but the billions of new internet users that came online with the second Eternal September caused by internet connected phones don't know about it. Expect to see the same pattern being followed to the letter (virtual estate bids, token currencies, furries, character skins being sold at a surf prices, politicians and pop culture personalities trying to jump on the bandwagon, etc.), but with two big differences: it's not going to be a "thing that outcasts do", and it's going to be run by a company that wants your work to happen in the same place (as opposed to second Life which by definition was a way to promote escapism from real life); Facebook execs understood well that it's critical to make business believe it's ok to have meetings and business development running on their advertisement platform, to the point there's a whole chapter of the official keynote about this aspect. > ll just be a natural extension of the gig economy, some poor soul being paid .00000000001 bitcoin an hour to virtually dress up like a carnival barker and shout about the latest horrible news out of Syria on some virtual street corner. It's not going to be real people but scripted animations, Meta is a way to automate marketing so that even influencers are redundant (after ads and companies with their ads budget). Enjoy the second pre crash bubble and brace yourself for another 2008.
• wruza 5y ago
  This thread feels like 1860's consilium on what future will look like 500 years later. The shape of the metaverse will be formed by a new generation, not by older guys (and not by fortnite addicts who play by the rules of the former) who know nothing better than drive a fancy “car” on the “road”, as if roads or a concept of physical movement or the euclidean rule would still be there for common use and not for museums. Virtual worlds up to date, like second life, were mostly just stupid copies of “real life”, which was designed after some physical limitations, or fantasy worlds of parallel earth-likes with a limited magic. If the only limitation of metaverse is Code and Content, and if that would be much easier to create, then in a blink of an eye it will turn into something absolutely inconceivable to mercedes benz drivers. What really is bullshit, is lack of imagination in people and a shitload of thought inertia. Personally, it feels like the article author has never ever been in the internet, confining themselves at a small circle of “social” networks bs. Those will live in an exact copy of their current environment, paying to bigcorps with their work hours to achieve “expensive” toys, to impress similar narrow-minded guys. I’ve seen second life at its peak, and this is exactly what they were doing there.
  • poetaster 5y ago
    I write poems. I write music. I write code. I build books. I play songs. I compiled this client.
  • verve_rat 5y ago
    Without the "concept of physical movement" how will "food" get to your "house"?
    • wruza 5y ago
      Are we "talking" about 2040 or 2140?
      • Jasper_ 5y ago
        I'm not going to be alive in 2140 but I'd bet we won't have broken the laws of thermodynamics by either 2040 or 2140.
• steveharman 5y ago
  For anyone after a TLDR, from the article itself: "The metaverse is bullshit because no one can actually explain why it's better."
• rvz 5y ago
  Right it is 'bullshit' then and unfortunately Zuckerberg is going to put his money where his mouth is and build it anyway and partnering with anyone else who hates Apple and Google's 30% taxes. So what are you going to do about it? Keep talking about them or do something to challenge it? They know it is bullshit and it is dystopian but they are going to build it regardless. If it is not challenged, we are going to keep talking about how they won for another decade. Every day when Meta is talked about and their services are used, Zuckerberg keeps winning. There is no amount of fines, scandals, privacy violations or confessions that can try to stop them.
• stretchwithme 5y ago
  It's not the Holodeck.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    And won't be for long long time. Which I believe is one of the key points to understand. Ofc, we have nice fiction with fully immersive VR. But in general we are far away from it. And on other hand tools we have to interact in VR are quite lacking compared to usual ones. Not to say there isn't some specific very nice use cases. But in general VR-controls are likely always be a compromise or purpose build one. For example for most work at least in office, keyboard is pretty damm useful thing. And I don't think there is any good solution to replace it.
• epa 5y ago
  I love when people make absolute statements then get owned 10 years later
• daniel_iversen 5y ago
  Read three quarters of the article and can’t finish it. I disagree with most things the author says. Just because something is crappy, silly, not quite technically possible right now, or all of the above, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen - in fact that’s how most of every days tech or big system starts!! (Remember how online communication was in the beginning online? Or playing tiny low resolution shockwave videos?). “The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet” - no, the internet (whose standards are still evolving btw!) is the platform, not the utility! Much like the wheels and an engine is not the car! The cultural changes in society to adapt to tech has accelerated and to say things like “ fictional virtual realities seem great on the page but would be hell to actually live in 12 hours a day” you’d have to forget how quickly we went from playing games in person to online, to shopping in person to online - hell even communicating in person to communicating so much online! The “metaverse” (as the name we call this upcoming second reality) will happen whether we like it or not! And for some marginalised or persecuted or impoverished groups that reality might even be a lot better than what they have in the real world today (and that’s what scares the hell out of me)
• dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Second Life is the future! Yay!
• gerash 5y ago
  I tried an app on Oculus Quest where you'd simply park a car in a parking spot. The graphics weren't great but it was immersive. The part that made me slightly dizzy was lack of proprioception during turns. I suspect some brain implant is needed to transmit what all the human senses other than auditory and visual need for the brain to put the full picture together
• TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  This may be the best sentence I've read in roughly a decade: "But Tim Sweeney and Mark Zuckerberg don't see themselves as pizza mob bosses." Also reminded of Laurie Anderson: "Heaven is exactly like where you are right now. But much, much better." In the same way Capitalism is based on the Protestant Work Ethic (see: Max Weber) the Metaverse is based on a kind of evangelical eschatology, where the imperfections of the real world will be transcended by techno-utopianism. Something is always being transcended in these fantasies. But unfortunately this turns into denial of reality and refusal to engage with it in an adult way. "Let's all live in a shared delusion where the physical world doesn't matter." t's almost literally la la land.
• deleted 5y ago
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• kingkawn 5y ago
  Got us all talkin about zuck not in the context of dismantling civilization, they win no matter what here
• onion2k 5y ago
  A metaverse where people can do imaginative, creative things together sounds brilliant. I want that in my life. I would pay a lot to be a part of that. Something akin to real life but with fewer limits where I can hang out with people anywhere around the world, and chat, work, and have fun with people ... sign me up. A metaverse run by Facebook where their algorithm recommends content to me based on controversial things that make me angry really doesn't appeal though. If Facebook's Metaverse is anything like Facebook I don't want to join. Metaverse cannot be free (as in money). For it to work users must be able to pay for it, and for that payment to give them the tools to control how they experience it for themselves. If it's free like Facebook it will die.
• pron 5y ago
  Plus, the fact that Facebook did this without any cool product launch, with a logo that was clearly designed by the same twelve-year-old who picked the name, without the technology to even start, and, oh yeah, in the midst of a major scandal, shows that they, too, consider it bullshit. Or a security blanket for Zuckerberg, who thinks work isn't fun anymore.
• trickbird 5y ago
  Nothing beats the graphics resolution, zero latency, 3D raytracing capabilities and super-sensitive and responsive tactile actors/sensors of ...real life.
• avaer 5y ago
  As a developer who has worked on building the best version of the metaverse for 10 years, I find this article extremely offensive, and I also agree with it. The wave of hype around the tech has honestly been surprising to me. Me and my friends have been trying to build and encourage VR, crypto, and foss communities to build out an open metaverse _precisely because_ the threat is that the metaverse turns into a bullshit narrative co-oped by whoever controls distribution. Which would be a very sad thing not only because it's a slippery slope to even more loss of agency for people, but because the metaverse we envision is the best shit ever and it would be a tragedy if it didn't exist. And now here we are talking about Meta, the worst possible interpretation of the metaverse we have been warning would come. There's an entirely different narrative I wish people would write about: how NFTs have let my artist friends quit their jobs and follow their passions, how people are finally understanding how money actually works with crypto, how the NFT/metaverse surge spawns the most genuinely entertaining creator-owned content on the internet, if you're inducted. Others (like me) are having the time of their lives making dank ass open source user-owned games and experiences we've always wanted to exist using dream stacks on the web, with the support of an audience that respects us for what we do, and no middle men like Meta. It's a dream to see it coming together. And it's surreal that after 10 years of work we got well funded, because we'd be doing it for 10 more years for free regardless. Yet despite a decades long track record of refusing to take user's money until we deliver a dank ass metaverse experience, we still often get called "crypto scammers". And now because of articles like this, our work is "bullshit". It is honestly a little offensive. I'm still angry so I'll address the points in the article as they annoy me. > The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet I agree, it's basically the web. That's why I called my company Webaverse. It's a sick stack. > The metaverse is bullshit because tech moguls missed the part where cyberpunk is dystopian I suspect many people with opinions on Snow Crash haven't read Snow Crash, because the metaverse/street in that book is pretty sweet. It's run by the ACM, hacking and liberty are respected. I wish facebook was building the metaverse but they are not. > The metaverse is bullshit because its promised cross-compatibility doesn't actually work Today I heard there is an awesome avatar release being announced on Monday. We are already testing the avatars in our client software to make sure they animate great, so we can meet the deadline in 2 days. If you don't think it works you're probably looking in the wrong corner of the internet. > The metaverse is bullshit because no one can actually explain why it's better It's a sick ass game, that in addition to being extremely fun, is open source and can teach people to liberate themselves from companies like Meta that want to own them. The metaverse is better than the alternative: Meta. If any of this surprises you to hear, please do your own research before you paint the metaverse with Zuckerberg's brush. It's what he wants.
• kerng 5y ago
  These discussions remind me if 1995 when Microsoft tried to create it's own version of the Internet - luckily that failed, we still got Windiws and IE though. Lol I'd imagine it will be similar with Facebooks strategy
• nudpiedo 5y ago
  I think you are taking the attempt too much seriously. The metaverse is nothing else than one of humanity’s oldest dreams: be God and create a world. It goes all together with other humanity dreams like fly, eternal youth, read other’s minds, immortality, travel beyond the sky, trespass all frontiers/circumvent the world, telepathy, life without work or pain, etc. They -have- to try, specially because they successfully achieved other large goals in their previous enterprises and now they feel they have to defeat new boundaries.
• beezischillin 5y ago
  Has anyone ever done any studies on the effects of long, daily exposure of the eyes to a vr headset’s optics and screen to the human eye?
• giords 5y ago
  From a superficial look, I hope that Meta fails and that it does it badly. We're already living in a walled garden whenever we use the web, I'd hate that reality became like that as well. It already is with restaurant chains and Amazon killing local venues' diversity. Meta would make it even worse.
• streamofdigits 5y ago
  How much time did they actually buy with the meta-shtick?
• zalequin 5y ago
  This is going to age like fine milk; polemics based on subjective aesthetics always do, no matter how tightly wrapped they are in rationalizations.
• dandanua 5y ago
  With Zuck's values and principles, the Metaverse will be a prototype of AI controlled virtual ghetto.
• patkai 5y ago
  The Metaverse is not bullshit. It is a brilliant tool to replace reality, control it and tax it. And it _will_ happen, the only question is who will implement it.
• zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  This is it. This is the Dropbox comment everyone will laugh at in 10 years except its a post. Meanwhile PC Gamer is probably laughing all the way to the bank, they don’t care if its right or its wrong, it’s masterful clickbait provocative enough to get a ton of views and comments.
• mkl95 5y ago
  The Hypermedia API-driven internet is the Metaverse. And it's not happening anytime soon.
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The Hypermedia API-driven internet is the Metaverse. I thought that was just the World Wide Web. > And it's not happening anytime soon. It’s...what?
    • mkl95 5y ago
      It used to. But we haven't gone full circle yet, these days the internet is full of overly opinionated clients that consume dumb APIs.
• hooby 5y ago
  There are a few quite interesting arguments hidden in that article, that are genuinely worth taking a closer look at. I feel though, that the needlessly aggressive tone does do those arguments a disservice, by burying them under a ton of very loaded rhetoric. This writer is obviously more concerned with creating a stir, and riling up people - rather than actually making a point.
• osobo 5y ago
  I'm kinda disappointed how Hacker News derailed into a mob mentality towards the metaverse concept because big evil Facebook touched it. I, for one, celebrate the new age beyond text and (sometimes moving) pictures and can't wait to move into (shared) experiences. I've seen this internet since 1989: I'm ready for something radically new. I don't care if it's Facebook running point. Sure, I'd rather have it be a cool start-up, but they are all chasing their tails to become unicorns these days. I was there when Second Life peaked and the potential of experience-based communication (instead of just information based) is incredible. I can't wait for Facebook to raise the bar on that, like they did with VR.
• fhd2 5y ago
  As much as TFA reflects how I think, it reminds me of how I thought about Dropbox - I never had a need for it because for reasonably technical people, it was always trivial to set this kind of thing up using ancient technology. I suppose similar to SSID, the Metaverse is a marketing plot to bring what's already happening (for decades!) in some circles to a wider audience. And marketing being a complex problem, I believe it's largely up to chance whether it succeeds in the long run or not.
• Bombthecat 5y ago
  I dont think its bullshit. Facebook./ meta can pull through, just by the pure power of money.
• moksly 5y ago
  I think that the author and a lot of you discussing here are forgetting that in large parts of the world, Facebook is the internet.
• throwwaaway 5y ago
  The Metaverse is our generation's "opium for the masses" - it's not trying to be a context for democratic, open or free information exchange. It's trying to be a means of selling artificially scarce resources (bits) to a placid populace who deeply enjoys the experience. How can Meta (and other Metaverse advertising companies) not be seen as an evil organization in context of the dystopian Cyberpunk futures it is so heavily influenced by?
• njacobs5074 5y ago
  Always imagined that these places would have more in common with Westworld where we (the product) are there for the pleasure of the rich. This is just the latest installment of MZ's (literal) self-enrichment. OP have mentioned that people like him don't get it - they're the villain in these narratives - I can only but agree.
• thom 5y ago
  I think it’s sad that all this needs to be given one exciting label when it’s actually multiple trends that aren’t even necessarily related. One, it is inevitable that our concept of identity will continue to change. How people opt in and out of a persistent identity/persona/brand, and how that interacts with community standards, seems a key concern for the future. This can happen just as much in textual media as anywhere else. Two, 3D worlds. Most tools we have today are more efficient ways of interacting than being embodied in a space. 3D games on 2D screens are fun but I see no need to somehow standardise and share these, and I certainly don’t want to move any of my day to day interactions into them. Three, VR and augmented reality. The headsets are just bad. I don’t want to wear one at home, let alone at work or on a bus. AR apps are all janky demos on tiny screens. But it won’t always be like this, eventually let’s assume you have near perfect fidelity in a HUD on some nice sunglasses. That’ll be fun when it happens but it’s more than a decade off so I don’t know why people are making any bets on this stuff now. Four, AI. When I finally have my cool sunglasses, I will immediately realise that the UI is dreadful. At that point, we better hope that AI and personal assistants have moved on or it’s all going to be for nothing. We will need subvocalisation tech to make these palatable for use at work or in public. If AI is good enough to service these interfaces, however, I strongly suspect the nature of work and life will be radically different anyway. Having a cadre of intelligent agents out there in cyberspace representing my interests? That’s cool, but also makes me think the actual metaverse is going to be optimised for machines not humans. We’re not going to be able to keep up. Of these, the flashy 3D avatar stuff seems to be what people focus on and yes, does seem a trivially stupid idea. But despite my cynicism, I can’t discount the rest, beyond the fact that it all seems very far off.
• wildpeaks 5y ago
  The web already teaches to think beyond the limits of physical reality. Take learning for example: compared to regular books, the web lets you instantly link between topics, pause and explore related resources, go back where you paused, rewind with newfound knowledge, explore multiple paths at once. New abilities to interact is meant to fundamentally transform data in the same way the web added links, not merely put lipstick on existing pigs. Instead, marketing execs (whose real goal is merely to sell more ads) want to recreate the boring experience of being stuck in an auditorium because this is what the aesthetic of "learning" looks like to them and they can't imagine learning differently. A key difference is choice: you opt-in to look at something, you choose to pause and explore a topic further, you're not passively being marketed at like people who leave the tv on all day in the background. It's so frustrating that there are so many exciting wonderful advances being done in all kinds of domains and they get overshadowed by the marketing gimmicks.
• emilsedgh 5y ago
  Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's App is not monetizable. * Oculus is not becoming the next PS4/Xbox like they hoped. Facebook is usually being compared to the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon. It's nothing compared to them. It's not even gonna be able to do a Microsoft/IBM pivot as it has no monetizable developer ecosystem. I personally think they should've acquired TikTok last year when TikTok was looking to be acquired by Microsoft. They probably would've extended their survival for another 10-ish years (lifecycle of a social media)
  • schleck8 5y ago
    > What's App is not monetizable It is, they talked about introducing ads to the status tab before. I agree on the rest though
    • jillesvangurp 5y ago
      The second they turn that on, Signal and Telegram will get an even larger influx of users than they got last year when the FB lawyers tried to weasel in some language enabling that and some other features in the Whatsapp terms of use. I still have not agreed to the terms of use since I continue to be able to opt out and am amused by FB basically chickening out requiring their users to actually agree. The normal course of action would be to eventually block access to the app. That hasn't happened. So, they could turn on ads but then they'd have to get me to agree to that first or risk losing me. They really want to do that but at the same time they are afraid of what will happen. In the same way they chickened out of their blockchain plans by simply not talking about it anymore. The Meta announcements featured a large absence of any of that. Which basically means they are probably giving up on the whole notion. I'm guessing Meta might turn out to be more of the same. FB is struggling to come up with things that actually work. A lot of their efforts just fizzle out. Facebook bots kind of never happened. Payments are dead in the water. They threw out the baby with the bathwater when they had an actual gaming platform with gamers on facebook and shutdown the platform in favor of a glorified ad platform. Actually a good plan for them would be to rewind fifteen years of bad decision making. Of course that would require getting rid of the chief decision maker.
• clqmay 5y ago
  Moving (a growing subset of) people into The Matrix is the end goal of the global elites. The agenda is to automate everything and reduce the need for humans. How can you reduce humans and keep the existing ones pacified? - Promote LGBTQIA+ to reduce overpopulation. - Give the remaining useless (from the POV of the techno fascists) humans virtual reality toys and a tiny basic income. They'll become fat, lethargic and won't reproduce as well. - For the tasks that cannot be automated, import poor immigrants who will work in agriculture.
  • schleck8 5y ago
    People being happy with their sexuality and adopting instead of reproducing sounds like the best way to combat overpopulation, it tackles three issues in one go
• Zenst 5y ago
  So we have the worst of social media making a push to create "Second Life" part 2. Which from many accounts, was just as toxic a playground. But they really do seem to want to push replacing the web with VR and a VR environment they have complete control, and the only open aspect being you can play by their whimsical rules. With that, am I allowed to call the FB metaverse - Trump Towers 2.0?
• agumonkey 5y ago
  sociologically I wonder how much of the new generation wants this full blown alternate reality, ar/vr and the likes
• Gys 5y ago
  Bullshit or not, it seems to involve high tech gear and THE company able to make a hardware/software combination that people will actually buy is Apple…
• thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  The bit about the pizza mafia being a bad thing made me chuckle.
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• digitcatphd 5y ago
  Same naysayers with Bitcoin, AI, and everything else.
• ThePowerOfDirge 5y ago
  >Even when we get brain computer interfaces, I don't want to live in the embodied internet, because tactile sensation is a huge part of how we experience the world, and clicking a mouse feels better than making a finger gun in empty air. This man is a moron.
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  The US and EU opposed Diem (formerly Libra), so now there's this virtual world where it can be legal.
• k__ 5y ago
  I'm looking into crypto for two months now. I think it really has potential. I don't think, XR will be an integral part of it for some time. Tokens (FT and NFT) that help us to distrubute and handle value in a transparent and decentralized matter are the USP here. The rest is just extras on top.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Back in the 90s we had the "metaverse" in the form of MUDs and MOOs. And they were text. I spent a lot of time in MOOs (LambdaMOO et al and various others) as a participant and a programmer and an advocate of them and a contributor to new servers, etc. And they were glorious and compelling, but maybe too compelling for some people. But they were buried by the web. They wouldn't have scaled out anyways, but we were working on that. But they were mostly lost in time. Ego-capitalists like Zuckerberg want to pilfer from that history and make something they control. The interesting parts of the Internet have been buried by things like Facebook which has offered a dumbed-down walled-in Internet where your uncle can act out his own virtual reality fantasy of ranting about Obama at the thanksgiving table all year long to an imaginary bottomless audience. Sigh. I personally won't let VR goggles into my house. I'd like my teenagers to grow up without them.
• jlnthws 5y ago
  Metaverse seems backwards because it’s adding skeuomorphism back to social networks.
• civilized 5y ago
  I firmly believe the metaverse is NFT-tier bullshit, but we should collectively recognize that whatever it is probably won't be for us HNers. We already don't understand why anyone would use Facebook. It's hard for us to intuit the likely future of products that are made for people who are not like us. I was walking around the park a couple days ago, nursing a bit of neck pain, and I realized what I personally want. I want a Google Glass type side screen where I can develop software and analyze data with my brain while walking around the park. If the brain thing isn't in the cards, I'll put on motion-sensing gloves and use a virtual keyboard/trackpad. That seems a lot easier than a fully immersive metaverse. So metaverse guys, let me know when you've got that one.
• dada78641 5y ago
  What really baffles me is how handwavey proponents of the Metaverse are being about the technical challenges, and I'm glad the article brings this up. It's pretty much unfathomable that you could build a standard that would allow for the kind of seamless interoperability that's being promised. You'd either end up with an outrageously complicated standard that's completely impractical to make use of, or you force people into a very stringent set of artificial limitations. That's assuming you are capable of tackling the unknown technical challenge that lies ahead, which is entirely in uncharted territory since no one has ever been stupid enough to try this. Someone was telling me earlier about how in the Metaverse you could, for example, get a character skin for Fortnite and then use that in Roblox too. When I hear that the alarm bells start ringing. Even if we assume that this just works, and all issues related to implementation magically don't exist, Roblox looks absolutely nothing like Fortnite and any skin carried over from there will look totally out of place. Actually, what if you have an avatar from a more adult oriented game and use it in a kids' game like Roblox? Is there gonna be a standard for what's acceptable that we should assume every vendor will follow to the letter? But no worry, I'm told, this Metaverse annoucement just means they're going to start researching these problems and working on them from an architecture and standards viewpoint, and so the answers will eventually present itself. So, basically, this amounts to a promise to commit resources to an R&D project of unknown scope and duration to ROI, with largely uncrystallized use cases and exclusively commercial entities as arbiter of how the standards will look and lots of investor cash, all just so we can do things we can basically already do better with conventional technology at a significantly lower CO2 expenditure. It's really nothing more than a giant investor cash sink that's going to keep a lot of people busy for decades and then fizzle out. Years later people might ask why the hell we ever fell for this nonsense, but we didn't: this is just how capitalism works now.
• Tangokat 5y ago
  The internet was text. Then came pictures. Then came video. Then came live streaming. Is it really so far fetched to think that the next phase is 3d? It makes sense to me. I don't think we have any idea how it's going to turn out though. Certainly the 30+ people here do not understand why teens buy Fortnite hats or have fun in Roblox. The lines between the "real" world and the digital world are blurring and will continue to merge as technology increasingly allows for more and more compelling digital experiences.
  • beeboop 5y ago
    The difference is that 3D requires new, specialized hardware and a higher level of physical dexterity. All the previous iterations all work fine on a monitor.
• mox111 5y ago
  I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for themselves, the fact that it is a total game-changer for work and play. The thing with this space is, enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media and working on realising its potential, that it will inevitably end up producing value that can’t be ignored. Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities will always win out against individuals who only see impossibilities. Whenever I see a failure to appreciate the potential of new media, I’m reminded of this conversation between Jeremy Paxman (British journalist) and David Bowie when they were talking about the internet back in the 90s. https://youtu.be/LaHcOs7mhfU?t=297 https://youtu.be/LaHcOs7mhfU?t=297 “The internet… it’s just a tool though isn’t it” ?
  • lordloki 5y ago
    Even the 13-25 year old males who are excited about this will tire of VR quickly. VR is comparable to 3-D movies and televisions, exciting the first few times you try it but once the novelty fades you just don't care enough about it.
    • mox111 5y ago
      Sounds like you're speaking from experience here, so it's not for me to tell you you're wrong to feel that way. But from my POV, we've started using VR for work meetings/social gatherings (we're a remote company, myself in Spain, the majority in SF), and we've been able to achieve a level of rapport with each-other that's just not possible via a webcam. We will definitely continue to use it.
      • qorrect 5y ago
        I got the impression he has not used it ( or at least not the latest iteration ). I believe it's a game changer, it definitely holds my attention I even use it for exercise.
      • machiaweliczny 5y ago
        What tools are you using?
• ruffrey 5y ago
  > John Carmack called metaverse development as it exists today "a honeypot trap for architecture astronauts," aka "programmers or designers who want to only look at things from the very highest levels."
• stevespang 5y ago
  . . . . every tech billionaire (so far, Zuckerberg) on the planet slobber all over themselves as they declare the metaverse—the next phase of human culture!! . . . The absolute gleeful, cackling, deep-in-my-bones certainty that it's all complete bullshit.
• tarkin2 5y ago
  "Imagine the awfulness of facebook, but now imagine it in AR." - The metaverse.
• tailspin2019 5y ago
  > The absurdity of it makes me want to scream, or maybe die, or maybe just spoon out the part of my brain that knows what an NFT is. Funniest thing I’ve read all week.
• tailspin2019 5y ago
  The Facebook presentation struck me as a vision that’s about 20-30 years out of date, just with “better” graphics. There didn’t seem to be anything new in there and it feels detached from any reality - even a reality in which we might find ourselves in 10-20 years. I’m generally bullish on VR/AR in the long term. But this is not it. What also frustrates me with these types of presentations is how misleading they are about the current and near-future state of technology. Much of the general public will be totally misled by what was “demonstrated” here. Particularly once it’s been processed through the bullshit-adding filters of various news outlets who will further degrade the signal to the point where it’s almost entirely noise. Normal people can’t easily distinguish between utterly fabricated pre-rendered nonsense which has a very low chance of coming into reality in their lifetime, and what’s actually realistically possible in the near-term future (5-10 years). Microsoft did this with their Hololens presentation years ago. You look at the visuals being presented and you may as well be watching an episode of Star Trek. (But even that was anchored more to reality than this). Having said that, the scripted dialogue, forced hand gestures and weird facial expressions throughout did get me wondering whether they are actually further forward than we thought, and the entire thing was presented not by humans but by a rough draft of some AI-driven avatars, which look almost real but where they haven’t sufficiently nailed the “acts like a convincing human” feature just yet.
  • 2sk21 5y ago
    I agree. Metaverse of 2021 reminds me so much of the "information superhighway" of the 1990s.
    • Philadelphia 5y ago
      It reminds me of the Bubble Yum Gum VR exhibit that traveled across malls in the mid 90’s Edit: Found an article about it. Actually in 1993-4 https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1993-06-19-9306190850-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1993-06-19-93061...
      • tailspin2019 5y ago
• ftwynn 5y ago
  I'm always surprised that people don't cite the economic and physical limits for the metaverse more often. Light only moves so fast through cables. Average ping time between New York and LA is in the high 60's, and that's assuming a wired connection. I think often about the old talk [1] Web Design - The First 100 Years, that talks about why planes never went supersonic. The alternatives were good enough, and the costs rose exponentially for linear (or sib-linear) gains. Transmitting information across the wire is an obvious win on value. Transmitting experience seems like a whole different order of magnitude that might just not be worth it. [1] https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
  • polio 5y ago
    If people are avatars, then the amount of information exchanged in a conversation between them is the streaming audio and vectors describing the position of the avatar's bodies; I feel like this would be less bandwidth than is required for video chat, although the expectation of low latency will likely be greater due to the immersion.
• binbag 5y ago
  This article nails it. Particularly the part where the author reminds us that Gibson's cyberspace and Stephenson's metaverse were both DYStopias run by and for massive evil corporations. It's like they are trying to make that awful future a reality.
  • 2sk21 5y ago
    Indeed! I wonder why more people don't see the equivalence between L. Bob Rife and Zuckerberg.
• qorrect 5y ago
  One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that successful projects like the internet, the original Oculus, Email, IRC ... these were not created by huge companies with huge budgets, they were projects of passion usually at most 5 people.
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    > One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that successful projects like the internet [...] were not created by huge companies with huge budgets The US defense establishment is to huge companies with huge budgets what those companies are to garage projects with 5 people. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but the direction of the relationship is correct.
• notindexed 5y ago
  ngmi
• verisimi 5y ago
  "Why don't the tech billionaires chasing after sci-fi metaverses get that these fictional virtual realities seem great on the page but would be hell to actually live in 12 hours a day? I truly do not know, but I think it may have something to do with their refusal to admit that they are the baddies." They are the baddies. Let's not forget WEF's aims that we "will own nothing and be happy" by 2030. My impression is that this is the way they aim to achieve this. They'll have us hooked up to something or other, and harvest our 'free cycles' in our wetware to decrypt encrypted thoughtcrimes. Lol :)
  • verisimi 5y ago
    This is to say, that the baddie's intent is not to sell us on this vision. Rather they are attempting to provide us with a consolation prize that we accept as if we wanted it. Because they plan to make real reality so unbearable we will want an escape!
• notSupplied 5y ago
  The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games. Works of creative authorship operate because the author can establish clear walls, then reinvent the rules of that world. Games are cool because they each are separate universes. They are closures. Metaverse billionaires who want to break the boundaries between games by connecting all game economies are simply trying to rake all games. They’re trying trans-dimensional conquerors like the Combine.
  • zulban 5y ago
    > The whole point of games is that each game invents its own rules, unaffected by the real world, including the rules of other games. Simple features like Steam achievements are clear and simple counter examples.
    • notSupplied 5y ago
      Steam allows achievements in one game to affect another game?
• aogaili 5y ago
  The most disturbing and dystopian announcement humanity ever witnessed. While the eastern wisdom suggests that we sit down, clear our heads, and connect with our bodies, here we are at the opposite extreme where your senses are completely immersed in an environment managed by a company that did everything to maximize profit and increase addiction. Human body exists in the physical world, not in a second life. They need to thrive in that world not into some "metaverse". People already glued to their phones, next, they are completely helpless, connected to a headset in a fantasy world, dysfunctional in the real one. Beside what exactly is this adding to people's life? internet is already connecting people thoughts and ideas, perhaps the effort they put to see each other in real life is worth it. No thank you. And that is not a vision I would like to pass for the coming generation either.
• takanori 5y ago
  My metaverse is work. Every morning I get up go to my office and spend 8 hours jumping from zoom call to zoom call from my gcal.
  • NetOpWibby 5y ago
    Radical dude, you’re surfing the M E T A V E R S E. …sorry.
    • takanori 5y ago
      Lol. I wasn’t implying it was cool or revolutionary. Just pointing out that all day every day I’m meeting with people who I’ll probably never meet in real life to complete tasks work.
      • NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Sounds like a modern-day metaverse to me. I started a new job March 2020. I've yet to step foot into an office, or even get a badge for crying out loud...almost two years later. That's my life.
• axby 5y ago
  Can someone explain why NFTs have anything to do with the metaverse? I heard about browsers easily supporting cryptocurrencies as an important step to it, that kind of makes sense. But do any average people buy NFTs for any reason besides being tricked into it as an (extremely dubious would be putting it politely) "investment"?
  • axby 5y ago
    TL;DR: my best guess (based on not much reading about this) is that perhaps they pitch NFTs as an inter-company form of people paying twitch to send messages to everyone watching the stream? Specifically, beyond all the delusion of the metaverse as discussed in the article... are these people seriously pitching that average (or even top 1%) people will create content, and people will pay not to view the content, but just to be listed in the blockchain database that says that they own that content? That sounded crazy to me before I wrote it, but I just realized: apparently Twitch (the video game streaming site) makes quite a bit of money from people paying just to send a message to all the other people watching the same stream. I don't understand this and haven't been able to get into Twitch, but maybe that's what they mean. Still though, it seems dishonest to call that buying an "NFT". At that point you're bidding on being seen by all the other people watching the stream, not just to be listed as the "owner" of some digital content. Then again, devil's advocate, people used to say that the internet had no applications for regular people. All it would take for NFTs to become important is for everyone to agree that they are important, and for some reason choose to read the stuff written by whoever buys the NFTs. That seems crazy to me now, but I suppose it's not too far off from paying to send messages in a twitch stream. Maybe if all the companies agree to integrate viewing the NFT purchases with viewing the stream, then it would work? People also voluntarily read comments, so maybe NFTs would simply be the way of having an HN/reddit style comment tree on twitch streams, substituting karma for cryptocurrencies. This gives me very unsettling vibes, but maybe the world would be a better place if you needed to pay 10 cents to make a comment, and if the content producer received that money for creating popular and engaging content. (Ugh, new dystopian idea: someone being able to make a living by posting articles that start flame wars)
• deleted 5y ago
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• 0235005 5y ago
  It is a good idea (the metaverse) but you can not take this shift seariously because they are trying to reflect the bad press of the whistleblowers of the last weeks.
• NaN1352 5y ago
  The scariest part about people like Mark Zuckerberg is they actually believe their own drivel. I believe much of it comes down to left brain hemisphere dominance, as would suggest Mc Gilchrist’s "The Divided Brain". These people are ungrounded, and most concerning is they are less capable of empathy (a scientific fact outlined in the book I mentioned). It really does not bode well for society that these people have so much power and money, as it’s not just them, but millions of people around the world slowly getting out of touch themselves through using apps and services created from this "left hemisphere dominant" attention to the world.
• rajacombinator 5y ago
  Another take is that it’s an obvious thin veil to distract and deflect from their real business of selling ads on legacy platforms, much like Alphabet.
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  The metaverse might be bullshit but billionaires are essentially betting that life for the average person is going to be so dismal that an increasing number will completely disconnect from society and live their lives virtually. It's dystopian but it's the future many are predicting.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > It's dystopian but it's the future many are predicting. Not only predicting but apparently hoping for and trying to bring about. Trying to bring about a dystopia: Yup, they're the baddies all right.
• mdale 5y ago
  Watch a kid play rec room in VR and then explain how that pandemic home schooling would have made so much more sense if it worked the same way as the game building classes in Rec room work. Observe the huge jump in fidelity of VRchat or rec room vs second life or Roblox. Listen to how a kid describes the rec room versions of "squid games" without ever seeing the show on Netflix. Metaverse is coming. Agree it driven by many distinct holistic experiences; but roblox v2 in a world like Rec Room puts the ball pretty far down the court in the groundwork for a platform of many experiences in one. There will be aggregators that improve transactions, social networks, communication, ease of app building, distribution and discovery vs operating in discreet silos. I see this meta name change as Facebook conditioning investors to rationalization of the huge amount of money it will spend buy companies that show early momentum in this direction.
  • kibwen 5y ago
    > Metaverse is coming. No, VR is coming. The metaverse, as reiterated by the author and self-evidently obvious to anyone who has thought about it, has been here since the 90s, and is the internet. What Facebook is trying to do here is to impose a propietary interoperability gatekeeper layer on top of certain aspects of a VR-enabled internet. But the things they're offering are things that nobody is asking for. They will eventually quietly walk their ambitions back and content themselves with selling good VR headsets with some minimally-attractive Facebook integration.
• poetaster 5y ago
  I don't get the fuss. I've been living in the metaverse since Kurt Schwitters. DaDa!
• fdye 5y ago
  So philosophy of the 'Metaverse' aside. As a developer the thing that sort of resonated in the demos I've seen was the displays on the 'walls' of your rooms. I haven't really tried VR in its modern incarnation yet. However, my day-to-day developer life consists of two monitors (Macbook, and larger display above), within those are a half dozen virtual desktops, and within those are several terminals, vscode usually remote debugging, and various database clients, chrome (with a million tabs), etc. So the killer-app for me would be an awesome interface to N 'virtual desktops', along with some amazing eye-tracking/hotkeys to lock desktops to my PoV, split to side-by-side, 4x4, etc. Bonus points if I can experience my work environment the same in a coffee shop, work trips, etc. I often find myself working on just my Macbook's monitor and spend 30%+ of my time just switching between views on different virtual desktops. The goggles for me now look to clunky to easily use in a coffee shop, although if portable and running off my laptop then perhaps would be fine for working on the road in a hotel room. Bonus Bonus points if there is an easy way to share views among team mates. I work for a fully remote company and we regularly pair program via Zoom. This generally means one of us 'drives' displaying one of their monitors and switching back and forth between desktops, etc. We've gotten pretty good at it, but there is still the occasional game of telephone where the person(s) not driving are trying to get you to focus on something and the description is just not clicking. Zoom's assume input control is kind of clunky, so we usually spend a few minutes talking until it clicks and the 'driver' realizes what is being asked of them, etc. Often shouting out a line number of some code that looks suspicious is used, but occasionally it goes by fast and your telling the 'driver' to back track, etc. An experience where another individual can piggyback on your view, or take selective control of specific 'virtual desktops' or clone them to adjust the view or try something out would be ideal. Probably, just a clean switch of control from 'driver' to 'observer' would be enough to still count as a killer-app. Final thoughts; I described my workflow which is probably somewhat similar to many other developers and remote teams. However, I can imagine other types of jobs that would enjoy multiple 'virtual desktops' without having to purchase physical monitors. Financial types come to mind as well, but really any field where you have to synthesize multiple streams of input a la multiple monitors.
• drummer 5y ago
  >For the next decade we'll all be asking ourselves if the whole world's gone mad at least once a week. Been doing that every hour since march 2020.
• blunte 5y ago
  As Roger Waters so succinctly wrote (and sang): … this species has used itself to death.
• parasubvert 5y ago
  I wouldn’t conflate the excitement for VR/AR with crypto. To me, the metaverse is a web browser for VR. But rather than a flat screen with text and images, it’s a 3D environment where open objects can coexist. Kids today play Minecraft or Roblox etc for hours while simultaneously watching a twitch or youtube stream with their friends and video or text chatting about it. Sometimes they just have an open vid connection just for the “pseudo connectedness” of having someone feel next to you while doing something independently. All of this bodes well for more integrated experiences. We need - as with the early web- for engineers to push this stuff to be open. Because it won’t really take off until it’s open, we are currently in the “AOL” vs “compuserve” phase.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I agree basically with the article entirely. People in this thread seem to be focusing on VR and AR and immersive interaction and they're missing the point. The article is not a rebuke on these things, lots of people would love to jack into quake and run around like real life, or engage in some virtual activity while their nether regions tingle. What's being rebuked is this idea that people will walk down a street from one website to another and sit around a fake room drinking a beer with their buddies with dildos strapped to their foreheads and hundred gallon cowboy hats on. This idea that all online interaction is better when immersive is absurd if you think about it. VR games are cool, but the metaverse isn't VR games, it's VR YouTube ads and VR SMS and it's not going to catch on because it's lame.
• bufordtwain 5y ago
  Not so sure it's bullshit. Why live in the real world if you can somehow live in an online 3D world that's better? It's going to happen eventually and everyone will be wearing goggles all day, just like they are on their phones all day now. Whoever controls that online world (worlds?) will make a lot of money.
• tracyhenry 5y ago
  The amount of snub and ignorance from people who might have never put on a VR headset is insane. Can we put aside who owns the Metaverse, and just talk about whether it's something valuable to a wider audience than a large portion of HN who can just live with text only? Quoting someone in this thread: "Metaverse is bullshit" is going to be the Dropbox comment [1] in 10 years! And why did the Dropbox comment existed? It's because people on HN think if something doesn't fit their needs, it's then useless everywhere. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  • arctics 5y ago
    All I care about is that VR is usable right now, I watch movies and you know what every week, not interested in gaming much. Also, please stop comparing VR to crypto, apples and oranges.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• xtat 5y ago
  > Tech companies are now spending billions of dollars straining against that basic fact: For most of what we do online, sitting at a monitor and typing is going to be the most practical interface for a very long time. This seems incredibly short-sighted.
• dools 5y ago
  Spot on. I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. I would also hazard a guess that the future of screens is not more immersive screens but fewer screens at all. Voice control is a more important innovation than VR goggles.
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    > I don’t get how anyone who saw future dystopian sci fi in the 80s doesn’t understand that it’s all the result of increased privatisation. In what sense has there been increased privatization since the 1980s? Note that I'm not contradicting you, I'm just asking how you are measuring this. Note that Government spending has gone up. Since the 1980s, we've massively subsidized and increased regulation over healthcare (ACA, medicare expansion), housing (Federal Agencies have come to dominate lending market), education (massive infusions of loan guarantees and aids, micro-management of universities with Title 9), and employment (significant increase in licensing requirements as well as employment regulation).
    • dools 5y ago
      I think the primary distinction is between government expenditure on private production and government production. While in many cases governments still pay for things, they're not running them. The idea of course being that a profit motive improves efficiency, but of course it is competition that does so and in almost all cases government purchasing of private production suffers from the principal-agent problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem I think my favourite source of information on the political side of privatisation (rather than the economic side) is this lecture series from Professor Shapiro at Yale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg
      • rsj_hn 5y ago
        If you are focusing on government production, then how would you measure that? Well, one thing I can think of is BEA gross output by industry tables. It only goes back to 1997 https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isuri=1&categories=gdpxind https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=150&step=2&isur... But in 1997, government output (both state and local) as a share of GDP was was 12.8%, and in 2019 (skipping the covid stuff) it was 12.4%. A decline of 0.4% -- it doesn't seem really relevant as an explanatory variable, does it? Or are you measuring government production in some other way?
• khuss 5y ago
  The author lacks the understanding of the primary differentiator of Metaverse, which is presence. There are a lot of opportunities to achieve the feeling of "being there" with somebody. We don't know if Metaverse would be achieved but it is a pessimistic view to be content with the current state.
• whatevrrjsa 5y ago
  Once again hacker news fails to see innovate value while acting like final sayers of the future. There is immense potential in virtual reality.
• sssssssssssssa1 5y ago
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• pazimzadeh 5y ago
  > The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet On the other hand, every day is day zero. AR/VR is not going away. Don't you want be able to identify a leaf by looking at it? Night vision?
• monkzero 5y ago
  Stories existed in books but movies made it to be an immersive experience. Similarly internet exists on on phone but metaverse will make it better
• lajarre 5y ago
  The author seems to be falling for a kind of a fallacy. First, I can’t believe the author can call the metaverse bs because it would be nonexistent or would soon die: it is already nascent and seems to be growing by the mere fact people (some of them influential) are pushing for it, as he points out himself. Consequently, we are left with an ethical viewpoint: internet of text has more virtues than vr or blockchain, games are more creative (thus, beautiful?) if closed worlds, etc. Allow me to call is the “down to earth” viewpoint. I should also mention the calling out on private interests driving the metaverse developments, but allow me to stay concise. I can definitely relate to it, but, in some sense, this criticism sounds like a lack of respect for future humans who might feel like this metaverse thing is actually improving their lives. It’s a bit like criticizing a religion in front of a believer: that’s rude and often not conclusive. At that point or the discourse (as a better conclusion to the article), I’d be more interested by reading some ideas to concretely promote a different vision for the future of the internet and games. What else can we suggest, as programmers, designers, … that could be convincing to people to follow the “down to earth” path?