8 ms·

AR pioneer warns that metaverse could make “reality disappear”

53 points by bonkerbits 5y ago

wyre 5y ago
I can’t help but draw a comparison between metaverse, and meta as is used describe an optimal play strategy in competitive games. In the latter, the meta is controlled by the company pushing out new content. In the former, I imagine the company formerly known as Facebook will have control over the metaverse in a similar way. The difference being one is an entertaining game and the other will have real effects on the real world.
specialist 5y ago
So more of the same. Lifecycle of medias is immutable. IIRC, the stages are something like pioneers, settlers, robber barons, wasteland, rediscovery by hipsters, etc.
seltzered_ 5y ago
Eh, I think of what Jaron Lanier said years ago about how VR is more ethical when it's time-limited and kinda clunky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRN_dZNJUM&t=1935s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRN_dZNJUM&t=1935s
gfodor 5y ago
Well we are getting a metaverse, just like we are getting a crypto economy. Our choices are around the form it takes, not if it will happen. If good people sit idly by, or dismiss it, we will get the worst versions of both.
silvi9 5y ago
"You have violated the terms of service and your account has been suspended. You no longer have access to Reality." You know you're going in the wrong direction as a species if a corporation can have control of your every interaction, and they can take that access away if they so wish. They do it today, why should it be any different when the metaverse exists?
- version_five 5y ago
  I think it's fine if a company can control what I do in their property, real or virtual. The issue (and I wouldn't say this usually) is government. There need to be updated monopoly laws so that that companies with defacto state-level control over what people do cannot exist or are treated as utilities that everyone had a right to. And government has to stop restricting people from doing stuff in real life, so that we're not pushed into on online dystopia. Importantly, this includes ready ways for everyone to go about their lives and interactions with government without a need for a smart phone, digital ID, or anything similar. Maybe if governments solve the monopoly problem this can be revisited.
  - oceanghost 5y ago
    I strongly disagree. How much of the world do you own that you get to "make the rules" for? If corporations are allowed to "make the rules" for property with impunity-- you will find yourself at their mercy for the vast majority of your life.
    - version_five 5y ago
      I'm confused by the strength of your disagreement. You're using a website that has rules about what you can do. Presumably you only let the people you want to into your house? Are you saying you don't agree with property rights? I suspect I'm misunderstanding.
      - dTal 5y ago
        There's a big difference between personal ownership and corporate ownership. There's a huge legal and ethical gap between your living room and a Wal-Mart parking lot.
        version_five 5y ago
        What is the difference? What are we disagreeing about here?
icedchai 5y ago
It feels like many of us are already living in a dystopian nightmare, even without the metaverse. Day-after-day of mentally draining video calls, constant slack notifications...
- 908087 5y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg is here to tell you: "We can still make it worse"
tylermauthe 5y ago
Dystopian maybe, but think of the great ROI.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The 21st century (so far) distilled down to a single sentence. Bravo.
silvi9 5y ago
I'm already inundated with endless popups, advertisements, surveys, and other requests when I browse the web on my mobile device. I don't want to have to do that for everyday living too.
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Hate sounding like an ad myself but the builtin adblocker on Brave is a lifesaver for cleaning up shitty mobile sites (ie, almost all of them). Not looking forward to have to whitelist the programs being side-loaded into my VR interface so I don't get giant modal popups blocking my entire universe.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    > modal popups How about modal NPC bystanders blocking your way, forcing you to notice some commercial signage. You will be a targeted individual in meta!
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  I look forward to my sketchy Billboard blocker that uses my spare neural electricity to mine Monero after its developer gets hacked.
- wollef 5y ago
  Firefox on Android has uBlock origin, works well for me.
  - Normille 5y ago
    So does Yandex Browser
mc32 5y ago
Somewhat ironic is that lots of people are looking forward to virtual worlds where they can explore without reality getting in the way. Slowly at first, in fits and starts, but likely people will get ensnared into it and like social media, find it difficult to live without. Then, the company, or whoever controls it will become pretty powerful not only in this synthetic realm but also in reality as the barrier from one to another is blurred.
BenoitEssiambre 5y ago
It's dystopian, but maybe inevitable? It might be the only way for economic growth and standard of livings (or some dystopian version of these standards) to continue increasing globally without the human ecological footprint becoming even more disastrous than it currently is. People's lives becoming more virtual may be a (sad) way to use a smaller amount of real world resources and stop trampling the planet.
klyrs 5y ago
If the people addicted to social media disappear behind VR headsets, that will be so nice.
- contravariant 5y ago
  I'm not convinced this is any different from the current situation where they bury themselves behind their phone screens.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
That trend had been going on for quite a while now. When you consider the amount of time people are spending on TV, gaming, movies and social networks it’s pretty clear that people are already spending a lot of time in virtual reality and prefer it that way. And I see that trend continuing. What’s scary is that if this reality is controlled by large companies with profit motives. They already manipulate us a lot all kinds of media.
- augustuspolius 5y ago
  I would argue that all your examples are mixed reality at best. I find VR tech incredible interesting but can’t spend more than 30 min in my Quest 2. When I use my other devices my reality - the real world - is still present both in the peripheral vision and in my mental awareness. Reading Kindle or browsing HN are not even close to VR, so we are yet to see whether VR tech will replace any existing tech interactions.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
It feels like different people have a different understanding what the Metaverse is[1]. Is it Microsoft Chat[2] but in 3D and VR and Zuck spying on you? Is it reality but with augmented data on top of it (I just gave the definition of AR)? We already have technology modifying reality, like how you can be in the middle of Mongolia and still be in constant contact with your friends in San Francisco. I've had friends meeting in real life and laughing about the funny post someone made on FB (when FB was still a thing...). [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the-metaverse-has-a-different-idea-of-what-it-is/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEqyQgWIe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEqyQgWIe4
atweiden 5y ago
Rosenberg contends AR will be practically impossible to live without [1], and that its most obvious use case is labeling persons in your environment — and labeling them in a way they have zero control over, and limited ability to opt out of. Rosenberg hints this may exacerbate interpersonal conflict, and that removing the shroud of anonymity from public spaces could make the metaverse difficult to escape from. [1]: https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-danger/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-...
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  I wonder if it will be common for people to don disguises in the future to escape this labeling?
rackjack 5y ago
Let's all love Lain.
- kleene_op 5y ago
  A metaverse managed by Lain, not Zuckerberg? One can only hope..
FridayoLeary 5y ago
Isn't that the whole point? We get somewhere to escape the real world and Big Company get their own world without existing regulation and oversight.
earleybird 5y ago
1996 is calling: https://www.crockford.com/living.html https://www.crockford.com/living.html
kgin 5y ago
This Japanese/Colombian short film on that theme from a few years ago has really stuck with me >HYPER-REALITY https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs
RappingBoomer 5y ago
we haven't seen this level of product hype since the Segway....remember that hypestorm?
entropea 5y ago
I play a concerning amount of VR Chat because it helped me greatly during COVID while I was single. It is an amazing experience, but I find it very dangerous for society in some ways. It has improved my mental health I think, but it's limiting my real world socialization so I don't know if it's that healthy. You can very easily replace your real life with it outside of work and bills, and get all of your social needs from it. As someone with crippling social anxiety, it removes something that triggers my social anxiety and I'm able to easily make friends. People are more open, identity just isn't a thing because everyone is anything they want to be, people are more open to being 'close' to other people and forming relationships with them. I've been comparing it to the early internet in the 90's and 2000's, especially since the entire game outside of the base code is something like 99% community created by artists with great creativity. I dance a lot in VR in EDM clubs which I have never done in real life. The other night I went to a real world concert and I danced for the first time in my life. I felt confident and knew other people didn't care, finally. People started talking to me, they were interested in me. I honestly didn't even know how to process it until the show was over, but it was definitely because of my gained confidence in VR. It's the bleeding edge of the metaverse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wUg9HCODU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wUg9HCODU
- haxiomic 5y ago
  You say it's limiting your real world socialization but given you're now comfortable dancing at concerts and making friends it sounds like overall it's been positive socially in a way that could have been harder to achieve without it It's interesting how much your experience echo's mine (I just jumped out of a VRC dance meet a moment ago) I can definitely see social VR eating more of the world in the long run however. I can't say for sure this is a bad thing, just different. I think it's something the next generations won't feel negative about in the same way, for them it'll just be the nature of the world
aaron695 5y ago
> Louis Rosenberg, a computer scientist and developer of the first functional AR system at the Air Force Research Laboratory He's either 80 or not born yet then.
ebanana 5y ago
yeah black mirror is a horror series about technology going in the wrong direction. it was entertainment, not a documentary
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Still less an instruction manual or idea sourcebook.

53 points by bonkerbits 5y ago

wyre 5y ago

I can’t help but draw a comparison between metaverse, and meta as is used describe an optimal play strategy in competitive games. In the latter, the meta is controlled by the company pushing out new content. In the former, I imagine the company formerly known as Facebook will have control over the metaverse in a similar way. The difference being one is an entertaining game and the other will have real effects on the real world.

specialist 5y ago

So more of the same. Lifecycle of medias is immutable. IIRC, the stages are something like pioneers, settlers, robber barons, wasteland, rediscovery by hipsters, etc.

seltzered_ 5y ago

Eh, I think of what Jaron Lanier said years ago about how VR is more ethical when it's time-limited and kinda clunky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRN_dZNJUM&t=1935s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDRN_dZNJUM&t=1935s

gfodor 5y ago

Well we are getting a metaverse, just like we are getting a crypto economy. Our choices are around the form it takes, not if it will happen. If good people sit idly by, or dismiss it, we will get the worst versions of both.

silvi9 5y ago

"You have violated the terms of service and your account has been suspended. You no longer have access to Reality." You know you're going in the wrong direction as a species if a corporation can have control of your every interaction, and they can take that access away if they so wish. They do it today, why should it be any different when the metaverse exists?

version_five 5y ago
I think it's fine if a company can control what I do in their property, real or virtual. The issue (and I wouldn't say this usually) is government. There need to be updated monopoly laws so that that companies with defacto state-level control over what people do cannot exist or are treated as utilities that everyone had a right to. And government has to stop restricting people from doing stuff in real life, so that we're not pushed into on online dystopia. Importantly, this includes ready ways for everyone to go about their lives and interactions with government without a need for a smart phone, digital ID, or anything similar. Maybe if governments solve the monopoly problem this can be revisited.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  I strongly disagree. How much of the world do you own that you get to "make the rules" for? If corporations are allowed to "make the rules" for property with impunity-- you will find yourself at their mercy for the vast majority of your life.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I'm confused by the strength of your disagreement. You're using a website that has rules about what you can do. Presumably you only let the people you want to into your house? Are you saying you don't agree with property rights? I suspect I'm misunderstanding.
    - dTal 5y ago
      There's a big difference between personal ownership and corporate ownership. There's a huge legal and ethical gap between your living room and a Wal-Mart parking lot.
      - version_five 5y ago
        What is the difference? What are we disagreeing about here?

icedchai 5y ago

It feels like many of us are already living in a dystopian nightmare, even without the metaverse. Day-after-day of mentally draining video calls, constant slack notifications...

908087 5y ago
Mark Zuckerberg is here to tell you: "We can still make it worse"

tylermauthe 5y ago

Dystopian maybe, but think of the great ROI.

ashtonkem 5y ago
The 21st century (so far) distilled down to a single sentence. Bravo.

silvi9 5y ago

I'm already inundated with endless popups, advertisements, surveys, and other requests when I browse the web on my mobile device. I don't want to have to do that for everyday living too.

reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Hate sounding like an ad myself but the builtin adblocker on Brave is a lifesaver for cleaning up shitty mobile sites (ie, almost all of them). Not looking forward to have to whitelist the programs being side-loaded into my VR interface so I don't get giant modal popups blocking my entire universe.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  > modal popups How about modal NPC bystanders blocking your way, forcing you to notice some commercial signage. You will be a targeted individual in meta!
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
I look forward to my sketchy Billboard blocker that uses my spare neural electricity to mine Monero after its developer gets hacked.
wollef 5y ago
Firefox on Android has uBlock origin, works well for me.
- Normille 5y ago
  So does Yandex Browser

mc32 5y ago

Somewhat ironic is that lots of people are looking forward to virtual worlds where they can explore without reality getting in the way. Slowly at first, in fits and starts, but likely people will get ensnared into it and like social media, find it difficult to live without. Then, the company, or whoever controls it will become pretty powerful not only in this synthetic realm but also in reality as the barrier from one to another is blurred.

BenoitEssiambre 5y ago

It's dystopian, but maybe inevitable? It might be the only way for economic growth and standard of livings (or some dystopian version of these standards) to continue increasing globally without the human ecological footprint becoming even more disastrous than it currently is. People's lives becoming more virtual may be a (sad) way to use a smaller amount of real world resources and stop trampling the planet.

klyrs 5y ago

If the people addicted to social media disappear behind VR headsets, that will be so nice.

contravariant 5y ago
I'm not convinced this is any different from the current situation where they bury themselves behind their phone screens.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

That trend had been going on for quite a while now. When you consider the amount of time people are spending on TV, gaming, movies and social networks it’s pretty clear that people are already spending a lot of time in virtual reality and prefer it that way. And I see that trend continuing. What’s scary is that if this reality is controlled by large companies with profit motives. They already manipulate us a lot all kinds of media.

augustuspolius 5y ago
I would argue that all your examples are mixed reality at best. I find VR tech incredible interesting but can’t spend more than 30 min in my Quest 2. When I use my other devices my reality - the real world - is still present both in the peripheral vision and in my mental awareness. Reading Kindle or browsing HN are not even close to VR, so we are yet to see whether VR tech will replace any existing tech interactions.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

It feels like different people have a different understanding what the Metaverse is[1]. Is it Microsoft Chat[2] but in 3D and VR and Zuck spying on you? Is it reality but with augmented data on top of it (I just gave the definition of AR)? We already have technology modifying reality, like how you can be in the middle of Mongolia and still be in constant contact with your friends in San Francisco. I've had friends meeting in real life and laughing about the funny post someone made on FB (when FB was still a thing...). [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the-metaverse-has-a-different-idea-of-what-it-is/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEqyQgWIe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEqyQgWIe4

atweiden 5y ago

Rosenberg contends AR will be practically impossible to live without [1], and that its most obvious use case is labeling persons in your environment — and labeling them in a way they have zero control over, and limited ability to opt out of. Rosenberg hints this may exacerbate interpersonal conflict, and that removing the shroud of anonymity from public spaces could make the metaverse difficult to escape from. [1]: https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-danger/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-...

UncleOxidant 5y ago
I wonder if it will be common for people to don disguises in the future to escape this labeling?

rackjack 5y ago

Let's all love Lain.

kleene_op 5y ago
A metaverse managed by Lain, not Zuckerberg? One can only hope..

FridayoLeary 5y ago

Isn't that the whole point? We get somewhere to escape the real world and Big Company get their own world without existing regulation and oversight.

earleybird 5y ago

1996 is calling: https://www.crockford.com/living.html https://www.crockford.com/living.html

kgin 5y ago

This Japanese/Colombian short film on that theme from a few years ago has really stuck with me >HYPER-REALITY https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs

RappingBoomer 5y ago

we haven't seen this level of product hype since the Segway....remember that hypestorm?

entropea 5y ago

I play a concerning amount of VR Chat because it helped me greatly during COVID while I was single. It is an amazing experience, but I find it very dangerous for society in some ways. It has improved my mental health I think, but it's limiting my real world socialization so I don't know if it's that healthy. You can very easily replace your real life with it outside of work and bills, and get all of your social needs from it. As someone with crippling social anxiety, it removes something that triggers my social anxiety and I'm able to easily make friends. People are more open, identity just isn't a thing because everyone is anything they want to be, people are more open to being 'close' to other people and forming relationships with them. I've been comparing it to the early internet in the 90's and 2000's, especially since the entire game outside of the base code is something like 99% community created by artists with great creativity. I dance a lot in VR in EDM clubs which I have never done in real life. The other night I went to a real world concert and I danced for the first time in my life. I felt confident and knew other people didn't care, finally. People started talking to me, they were interested in me. I honestly didn't even know how to process it until the show was over, but it was definitely because of my gained confidence in VR. It's the bleeding edge of the metaverse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wUg9HCODU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wUg9HCODU

haxiomic 5y ago
You say it's limiting your real world socialization but given you're now comfortable dancing at concerts and making friends it sounds like overall it's been positive socially in a way that could have been harder to achieve without it It's interesting how much your experience echo's mine (I just jumped out of a VRC dance meet a moment ago) I can definitely see social VR eating more of the world in the long run however. I can't say for sure this is a bad thing, just different. I think it's something the next generations won't feel negative about in the same way, for them it'll just be the nature of the world

aaron695 5y ago

> Louis Rosenberg, a computer scientist and developer of the first functional AR system at the Air Force Research Laboratory He's either 80 or not born yet then.

ebanana 5y ago

yeah black mirror is a horror series about technology going in the wrong direction. it was entertainment, not a documentary

tuatoru 5y ago
Still less an instruction manual or idea sourcebook.