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> I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the

by gdulli 4y ago

> I'd hoped the virtual world would start out and be built organically by people because it was fun, useful and anyone could make a little money, just like the early internet. The early internet having been so organically developed for fun and utility happened because money wasn't yet involved/in charge. At this point could there ever again emerge any major new technology that wasn't either developed by a huge corporation or quickly acquired by a huge corporation? Will we ever see a scenario again where such an important technology is allowed decades to emerge while it's ignored by industry for being too academic, too early, too much for nerds? Today, even Wordle couldn't stay independent. How could anyone build a multiverse popular enough to have a network effect but not get invaded by spam, money, predation?

boxmonster 4y ago
The early internet was funded and created by the US government and DNS was run by them too. Then open standards committees were created to make sure everyone spoke the same tech language. No one owns the internet. There's no reason this can't be recreated.
- gdulli 4y ago
  There was an innocence that hadn't yet been lost then. We didn't have to worry about security, toxicity, and money in the early hobbyist/enthusiast internet of the 90s. We were able to let it be "built organically by people because it was fun". The reason not everything was a mall was because it wasn't yet mainstream and there was a years-long head start before monetizing it at scale was solved. Today, the monetization (and other predatory) patterns already exist and will be ported over to any metaverse from the start. Any metaverse will resemble Facebook or something equivalent. Discoverability will resemble Google or something equivalent. Community interaction will resemble Reddit or something equivalent. I don't see how this would be avoided.
  - boxmonster 4y ago
    Sure it can. Give me some way to build a virtual location on my desktop machine - virtual server vs. web server - and then design a protocol that lets people visit it, plus a discovery service that let's people find it. The discovery service could warn people if my site was harmful, like Google does now with web sites.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    There was all the same things we have now. But back then, being toxic was acceptable and when it went too far, admins came down with a ban hammer. Unlike back then, those banned people wouldn’t run away to some other place and cry out about how unfair the world is, especially that place they just got banned from. Mostly because there wasn’t “another place.” The “innocence” wasn’t as innocent as you remember. The only reason it wasn’t monetized was because global payment systems weren’t really a thing yet. People sold things online anyway, it was just riskier than it is today. Today you can absolve your risk in a 2,5% + €0.30 flat rate, thanks to those trail-blazers of yesteryear. Then people fixed bugs, and saw their sales decline. So they unfixed those bugs and consumers called them “dark patterns.” Some people started doing it on purpose, after hearing about fixing those bugs and what they did to sales. Back then wasn’t so great. VR won’t be so great either. At least until we figure out how to spend more than a few hours in it, comfortably. Then it might get better.
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
If the weird, unmonetized, organic virtual world existed now, there would be correlation between it being unmonetized, organic, and weird, and us not knowing about it.

by gdulli 4y ago

boxmonster 4y ago

The early internet was funded and created by the US government and DNS was run by them too. Then open standards committees were created to make sure everyone spoke the same tech language. No one owns the internet. There's no reason this can't be recreated.

gdulli 4y ago
There was an innocence that hadn't yet been lost then. We didn't have to worry about security, toxicity, and money in the early hobbyist/enthusiast internet of the 90s. We were able to let it be "built organically by people because it was fun". The reason not everything was a mall was because it wasn't yet mainstream and there was a years-long head start before monetizing it at scale was solved. Today, the monetization (and other predatory) patterns already exist and will be ported over to any metaverse from the start. Any metaverse will resemble Facebook or something equivalent. Discoverability will resemble Google or something equivalent. Community interaction will resemble Reddit or something equivalent. I don't see how this would be avoided.
- boxmonster 4y ago
  Sure it can. Give me some way to build a virtual location on my desktop machine - virtual server vs. web server - and then design a protocol that lets people visit it, plus a discovery service that let's people find it. The discovery service could warn people if my site was harmful, like Google does now with web sites.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  There was all the same things we have now. But back then, being toxic was acceptable and when it went too far, admins came down with a ban hammer. Unlike back then, those banned people wouldn’t run away to some other place and cry out about how unfair the world is, especially that place they just got banned from. Mostly because there wasn’t “another place.” The “innocence” wasn’t as innocent as you remember. The only reason it wasn’t monetized was because global payment systems weren’t really a thing yet. People sold things online anyway, it was just riskier than it is today. Today you can absolve your risk in a 2,5% + €0.30 flat rate, thanks to those trail-blazers of yesteryear. Then people fixed bugs, and saw their sales decline. So they unfixed those bugs and consumers called them “dark patterns.” Some people started doing it on purpose, after hearing about fixing those bugs and what they did to sales. Back then wasn’t so great. VR won’t be so great either. At least until we figure out how to spend more than a few hours in it, comfortably. Then it might get better.

QuadmasterXLII 4y ago

If the weird, unmonetized, organic virtual world existed now, there would be correlation between it being unmonetized, organic, and weird, and us not knowing about it.