15 ms·

We need technology that is less immersive, not more

• kamaradclimber 3y ago
  Many of the most talented artists of our time don’t do any art — they work in advertising. I think the original quote is: The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads (source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/) which is very close to article’s paraphrase
  • photonthug 3y ago
    I wonder if the original author knew they were also paraphrasing, riffing on Ginsberg's "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". Glad to see quoteinvestigator mention that context
  • amadeuspagel 3y ago
    Ads have existed long before clicks on and the most talented artists have worked on them long before the most talented programmers thought about making people click on them.
    • baliex 3y ago
      That's true and doesn't detract from it being a waste of talent
    • abdullahkhalids 3y ago
      The unsaid context of the quote is that programming is among the most lucrative fields (top 3 large employment fields), and most of the money is programming field comes from ads, which is why the best programmers are working on ads. Artists at ad agencies probably never broke even top twenty jobs by salary.
      • whartung 3y ago
        Is that true though? Are most people working at Google working on Ad tech, or on the services that the ad tech helps pay for? Now, to be clear, I don't consider GMail "ad tech", even though it is ad supported. I don't see anything wrong with someone like Google want to drive traffic through services that are monetized through advertising. Nor Facebook for that matter. I will complain about lock in, dark patterns, and other nefarious things. But you can have good ad supported services without necessarily having all of the bad things. Those just bump your margin and revenue. So, if you feel that the "good" programmers are working on ad tech and analysis, while the "less good" are working on, say, GMail proper, I'd be curious in how that conclusion was drawn. How many people here work on ad tech directly? (vs, some dual use technology that can be used for ad tech.) I know a lot of people, tangentially, indirectly, "6 degrees of separation" kind of thing, and I don't know any of them being directly involved in ad tech. None of the "lead geeks" I'm familiar with are in the field. The closest it got was a friend of mine who worked on Farmville in its heyday, and that's more a dark pattern addiction game than ad tech.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • com2kid 3y ago
      > Ads have existed long before clicks Not really. Advertising is pretty new, modern advertising with targeting market segments didn't exist until around the start of the 20th century[1]. The first ad supported media was in 1838[2]. Behavioral ads targeting individual user's are super new, though I'd argue TikTok and gacha games are orders of magnitude better at using behavioral manipulation than advertisers are. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Barratt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Barratt [2]https://qprintgroup.com.au/history-of-print-advertising/ https://qprintgroup.com.au/history-of-print-advertising/
  • monkeynotes 3y ago
    If they are doing advertising then they are art directors, not artists. The most talented artists make art, it's not something they have a choice in. They will suffer poverty to make their art. Talent isn't in the execution in art, it's in the ideas, and tapestry of the artist's life. > The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads This is also not true, because those minds aren't intelligent enough to see the folly of their attention. The best minds see past this and do the work they are driven to do, similar to artists.
    • pimlottc 3y ago
      Let’s not over romanticize the starving artist. There are plenty of creative people who could create good, worthy art if they had the means and support to pursue it fully. It’s not a moral failing to have a need to make a living, especially if others are relying on you.
      • monkeynotes 3y ago
        The article literally said "the most talented". The top talent artists are certainly making art, and it is a fact they are driven to do it more than anything else. That's the attitude that makes them "the most talented". I am not romanticising it, it's just how it is. > It’s not a moral failing to have a need to make a living, especially if others are relying on you. Exactly. People make choices in what they do, it has nothing to do with talent being taken out of the market, it's always been this way. There have always been more profitable things to do than making art.
    • bena 3y ago
      You do know you can do what you like outside of work, right? You have a hyper-idealized version of what is and is not art. And execution definitely forms part of the talent. We should know that just as well. We all know "the idea guy", the guy who has all the "right" ideas, but just can't seem to actually do the thing required to bring the idea to life. And that's because most ideas are just half-formed thoughts. I'm almost on the other end of the spectrum. It's mostly about execution and the idea actually means very little. The idea of "what if you couldn't make new memories" is the central struggle in two very different movies. In Memento, it's used to tell a detective noir story where we're told who the killer is in the first scene. In 50 First Dates, it's used to give Adam Sandler a hurdle to plowing Drew Barrymore. And you can find joy in the doing itself. You can make good commercial art. It is possible. There is craft there. And where there is craft, there is art.
  • nonameiguess 3y ago
    I don't know what the original actually was, but around post-9/11 derivatives finance boom, physicists and electrical engineers started lamenting that all the smartest people of the current generation were wasting all that brainpower on relatively zero-sum arms races between hedge funds trying to win trades against each other. The one about making people click ads grew out of that after the GFC when software salaries started to boom like finance had earlier in the decade. I'm sure there was something else earlier that diverted intelligent, talented people into socially unproductive pursuits because it paid better. I recall when I was in college there being huge dilemmas among all the students studying geology whether they should sell out and go work in oil and gas exploration.
    • aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > I'm sure there was something else earlier that diverted intelligent, talented people into socially unproductive pursuits because it paid better. The problem is in my experience (for quite some smart people) not "which job pays so much better (and thus facing a potential dilemma about selling out)", but rather about actually finding a job. The job market does not like very smart people, but rather self-promoters and sycophant: I know quite some really smart people (with a focus on people having degrees in mathematics and physics (often comparable to PhD or post doctoral experience)) who had quite some difficulties actually finding a job in industry, and thus rather had to take the job positions that they could get.
      • sureglymop 3y ago
        I've heard a similar thing said about drivers. Those who drive more respectfully and thoughtfully end up in more crashes because the rest is less respectful of them in traffic (and of them crashing). It's an anecdote I just heard from a friend. Maybe there's something similar in the job market where smart people are more self aware that they may take someone elses spot and more respectful and less good self promoters. Because the other set of people don't even think about that they end up getting the spots.
  • noqc 3y ago
    Well, the first is talking about artists, and the second is referring to programmers.
  • johnchristopher 3y ago
    > Many of the most talented artists of our time don’t do any art — they work in advertising. > I think the original quote is: > The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads No, it's a paraphrase of a quote attributed to Banksy and it's specifically about graphic arts, not CS or psychology. > The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people. - Banksy First time I heard it was in a conversation about how the best students from directing/film making (or was it 3d artists ?) ended up making ads for cars rather than video installations and I am pretty sure it was before 2010. The sentiment is the same though but I cannot ever let pass an occasion to throw in my favourite quote: "when all you have is a hammer...".
    • mellosouls 3y ago
      No, it's a paraphrase of a quote attributed to Banksy and it's specifically about graphic arts, not CS or psychology. Nope, the most famous form is Ginsberg; I don't know if he lifted it from somewhere too. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked - Howl (EDIT: the grandparent link actually points that out)
      • johnchristopher 3y ago
        > Nope, the most famous form is Ginsberg; I don't know if he lifted it from somewhere too. No, they appeared in very different contexts and Ginsberg goes in a different direction (1955, drugs, jazz, etc.): > I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, [..] while Banksy deals with the then current state of arts and marketing (~2000/2010?). Also, it's not explained in the article how Ginsberg and Hammerbacher ideas relate except for an "en-pasasnt" quote from the person originally inquiring the quote investigator opinion, so the grandparent link doesn't actually point anything out. edit: to summarize: that quote is taken out of context even if it seems to fit
  • throwaway4aday 3y ago
    You could really say this about anything, the only moral to the story is that people have to work to pay the bills and the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that needs doing. I believe this has been true throughout human history. The greatest artists and thinkers throughout history have earned their keep by providing services to the wealthy or teaching paying students (also often wealthy). There are upsides, the artists get to eat but they also have all the benefits of being connected to their employer/patron including time spent practicing their craft. If they were to quit and focus on pure art then they would likely earn far, far less and possibly spend less time making any kind of art commercial or not. It reminds me of this survey that made the front page not long ago about author's that contained this illuminating paragraph: > While 80% of respondents considered themselves to be professional authors, only 35% said they were full-time authors while 53% said they were part-time authors (with the balance being one-book authors or undecided). The primary writing occupation of part-time authors outside of publishing books was professor/academic (8.5%), followed by book illustrator/author (4.2%), editor (2.9%), poet (2.4%), journalist (2%), teacher (2%), and entrepreneur (1.5%). So even people who consider themselves professional authors are unable to work at it full time. It makes sense, there's only so much one person can produce and it's quite difficult to find an audience willing to pay for what you make. This likely holds true across all professions i.e. you have to do the work that they want done and not the work that you want to do. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/93301-author-incomes-post-small-gains.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...
    • em-bee 3y ago
      the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that needs doing no, the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that someone wants to get done to make a profit. the stuff that actually needs doing is the stuff that would be a benefit for our society.
      • nostrademons 3y ago
        "Profit" is just the difference between what people are willing to pay for a service and the full cost of what it takes to provide that service (which itself is defined as how much the different suppliers could be making doing other stuff). Business owners are rewarded for shifting resources away from activities that consumers don't value highly (as evidenced by their willingness to pay for them) to ones that they do. If you feel that businesses are focusing on the wrong things, spend your money differently.
  • anonzzzies 3y ago
    The moral of the story is that a lot of humanity is just working for cash instead of anything useful, interesting, etc for humanity and even themselves. The basic needs and sometimes a bit beyond, still, quite worthless on any scale beyond your few m^2. Depressing, but it seems not improve with us all being better off.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  I haven't played a video game that was better or more immersive than Tarzan. I hypothesize that artists, like Burroughs, could have more success than they are having today.
  • jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
    My favorite video game is Tetris, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it was produced by a society that placed consumer choice low on its list of priorities.
• omikun 3y ago
  I don’t think making less immersive games is some how more important than more immersive ones. The more important problems aren’t gated by lack of talent but lack of money and or political will. Throwing talent at it (if you could) doesn’t magically add money or political will to solve them.
  • filiph 3y ago
    I agree that it's not just about talent. That said, having more talented people interested in a field often has the effect of bringing money and political will.
    • coldtea 3y ago
      Hah, wrote my comment directly after reading the parent and then read yours, which says basically the exact same thing!
  • coldtea 3y ago
    Μoney and political will comes from interest. And talent goes where the interest is too.
• uoaei 3y ago
  Bait and switch. Headline is about technology, but the article is about "entertainment". It is a position of privilege to take that technology should be considered primarily as a consumer product.
• monkeynotes 3y ago
  Let's wind this back to the days when people thought reading books was an indulgent waste of time. The best artists are writing trivial drivel for women to read. The best minds are finding new ways to sell books. It's a stupid heuristical argument.
  • filiph 3y ago
    It looks like you're countering with the "it's always been the case" argument. I use it often myself, but I think it's good to realize when it's stretched too far. Yes, I'm sure there were some people in the past who said that reading books is an indulgent waste of time. I'm sure you could find articles in old newspapers. That in itself doesn't mean that working on a VR headset technology is as meaningful as working on a more sustainable energy source or developing software for cancer research, does it? Just because you find a similarity with something that happened in the past doesn't mean you can just abandon all critical thought.
    • yamazakiwi 3y ago
      I'm not disagreeing, but I believe it is a better use of ones time to prioritize things that spark personal significance rather than attempting to quantify/compare meaningfulness universally. I would never listen to someone who proposes reallocating high-level talent resources as an important and solvable problem where the solution is, tell those people their passions are a waste of time. I also don't believe this person understands the talent market as they quote the "Many of the most talented artists of our time work in advertising," nonsense. Yes their are smart people working in advertising, but it's no deeper than that. There are other spaces and industries that have more brilliant minds. The truth is, you don't know with certainty if working on VR technology is more meaningful or not.
    • monkeynotes 3y ago
      > I think it's good to realize when it's stretched too far. Who is the arbiter of when it's stretched too far? I am working with the data we have to make an empirical expectation. Speculation is fine, but if we are going to make an effort to ground it in reality I feel like prior art is as the best bet we can make. > Just because you find a similarity with something that happened in the past doesn't mean you can just abandon all critical thought. I think I am actually applying critical thought. I am challenging a narrative that doesn't seem to have a precedent and looking at examples from the past that were similar unprecedented technological changes. This seems to be a reasonable approach to set reasonable expectations. Of course I could be wrong, but I feel like at least my pitch is based on some historic data. FYI the book reading this wasn't just an aside in a newspaper, it was a cultural concern shared by many. https://timeline.com/what-technology-are-we-addicted-to-this-time-f0f7860f2fab https://timeline.com/what-technology-are-we-addicted-to-this...
• andybak 3y ago
  I rather missed the point where he explains why immersive games are bad. There's some hand-wavey bit about "[they] don’t teach them anything valuable about the real world, and don’t relax them at all" but that appears to be it. The first bit is beside the point and the second hugely debatable. Similar criticisms could equally be levelled at engaging with any creative output - reading, listening to music etc. And I love being out in nature but it's not teaching me much. His other point seems to be "talented engineers could be doing something more important" which is slightly more valid but then everyone who isn't saving starving babies could probably be doing something more important.
  • gukov 3y ago
    > I rather missed the point where he explains why immersive games are bad. I think it's the fact that so many resources go into the final few percent of making games 100% realistic whereas there are other, more important issues that get largely ignored.
  • filiph 3y ago
    > I rather missed the point where he explains why immersive games are bad. The article's title isn't "immersive games are bad".
  • ghusto 3y ago
    Anything is more important than making entertainment. It’s literally the first thing to be sacrificed in times of crisis.
    • andybak 3y ago
      The orchestra at the siege of Leningrad and the theatre troupes in WW2 camps beg to differ.
• adolph 3y ago
  There is a balance between immersive and ambient. A large number of people are working on the latter in terms of smart home devices, advanced driver assistance systems and fitbit-like quantified self devices, to name a couple of sectors. Maybe a challenge for ambient technology is that its nature is non-engaging. If it were engaging, it would be immersive and not ambient.
  • haswell 3y ago
    I don't think ambient and immersive are mutually exclusive. Ambient tech just widens the potential space in which someone can become immersed. Before ambient tech, I primarily interacted with my computers. With ambient tech, I interact with my computers and the environment in which those computers exist. Now, I'm one with my apartment. A thought leads to spoken words which lead to direct control of the devices around me.
• incrudible 3y ago
  By the end, it reads more like a virtuous justfication why his game graphics are so basic. I also do not buy the core argument. The game industry tends to ask for more and pay less exactly because people romanticize it. That is not to say the most talented engineers do not end up hired to produce bullshit, just that it probably is not games. Lastly, the desire for faster and more realistic graphics is what commoditized massively parallel computer architectures. Keep chasing those FPS, the future of humanity depends on it!
• haswell 3y ago
  While sitting with my iPad typing the other morning, something about the experience struck me in a way that it never had before. I've been typing since the early 90s, and can type around 120WPM without looking or thinking about it, and it hit me that in a very real sense, the iPad (and other computing devices) are already an extension of me. I've invested the time to integrate this hardware into my brain via the keyboard interface, and once typing is automatic, the friction between brain and machine is very low. I can transmit information from brain to computer and back relatively quickly. The thing about immersive tech is that we're already immersed in tech. The next generation of VR/AR promises to immerse us even more, but I think it's interesting to consider the idea that we're already immersed and don't always realize it. When you start to look at the space around you as an extension of you (and I think there are good reasons to look at it this way - your immediate surroundings are in effect a projection/construct formulated by your brain, and the actions you take within that space modulate your average conscious experience), and when you start to look at the computing devices around you as part of that extension of you, it starts to raise really interesting questions like: If I could implant a chip in my brain, and if people could control my brain with that chip, I would probably never allow it. But when that chip is outside of my brain in a device I keep in my pocket, why am I more willing to allow other entities to feed me stimuli? I tend to agree with the broader idea that we need to be less immersed in tech, if for no other reason to reduce this kind of external control mechanism we've all hooked ourselves in to. And I don't think immersion is limited to the obvious developments like that next generation VR/AR headset. Immersion is already extremely high.
  • filiph 3y ago
    I didn't want to bore the reader with various definitions of immersion but you're raising a very good point. Apart from the "immersion for entertainment" that I'm mostly talking about, there's also the "flow" and the "tech as augmentation". I have obviously no problem with people being more productive through technology. What I have issue with is the (unwitting) funneling of the world's talent and resources into tech that makes us immersed in non-existent worlds just for the sake of entertainment.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I have a different take than the author. I don't have an issue at all with directed activities being deeply immersive - games most specifically. That is, I like the idea of putting on a headset for a half hour and playing a game, then doing something else. What I think is much more destructive is when "immersion" just looks like "constant distraction", i.e. the idea that we'll wear these immersive devices all the time so we can be bombarded with "helpful" notifications and, oh look, in-context advertising! That is, when I want to relax I want to relax, and I don't think something holodeck-like is bad for that. But when I want to focus I want to focus, and strapping a headset onto my face for extended periods is not going to help that situation in any way.
  • filiph 3y ago
    I agree with you. One part of the article that I cut for brevity but maybe I should have included talks about the kind of immersion that is created by bright colorful moving pictures on a mobile screen. A lot of talent and resources is thrown at the goal of keeping people glued to their phones (TikTok, Candy Crush, etc.). "Engagement" is a form of immersion.
    • CharlesW 3y ago
      > One part of the article that I cut for brevity but maybe I should have included… I think that would be valuable and might deserve its own follow-up article. To me, immersion in the context of creation or play strikes me as a completely different animal than immersion in the context of passive consumption.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • ElevenLathe 3y ago
    There are a few (TNG and Voyager for sure, maybe DS9 too) Star Trek stories that deal a bit with holodeck addiction ("holo-addiction"), and I think something at that level of immersion would absolutely cause lots of people to completely withdraw from society, especially if (real world) society is bleak (Ready Player One deals with this aspect of it). I already know 30-something childless adults who spend effectively every non-working moment in some virtual world -- these people are effectively already holo-addicted. It will only get worse if these environments are more able to block out reality. To me the sad thing about my friends in this situation is that they usually aren't in some swashbuckling fantasy epic starring them, but grinding Runescape/WoW/Eve/etc., performing the same repetitive actions over and over, with the occasional burst of actually interesting interaction or story. They've replaced the real-world grind with a synthetic grind, but they are still grinding! At least its cheaper than a sports gambling addiction, and probably marginally less health-destroying than a drinking habit.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  What if I tell you everything around us is actually technology, we just dont understand it enough so we call it natural?
  • thfuran 3y ago
    What if I tell you everything around us is actually magic, we just understand some of it well enough to call it technology?
    • m3kw9 3y ago
      Same thing. A lot of stuff we don’t understand is like magic. Think old days, show someone an AR head set and they’d think is magic. Look closely at DNA, it’s marvel of technology but miniaturized but occurs naturally. None the less looks and acts like advanced tech
• crowcroft 3y ago
  I used to work for a small business accounting software company. We used to talk about reducing the amount of time people use the product. Doing accounting is NOT what small business owners should be spending time on, and our goal was to reduce the amount of time spent. As the company got bigger, we started selling adjacent software, and suddenly time spent in the 'ecosystem' became an important factor for increasing revenue per user and the rest is history. Especially in the B2B space with sales reps, it's hard to sell people on things they don't have to do.
  • safety1st 3y ago
    The average American adult now spends 8.5 hours consuming digital media every day, including games. Most of it is probably consumed for entertainment purposes (news, social media etc. - social media's share averages to around 2.5 hours per day). Have we considered that maybe we're just spending too much time on entertainment? As opposed to doing things that actually make us better, like studying, practicing a skill or exercising.
    • digging 3y ago
      > Have we considered that maybe we're just spending too much time on entertainment? No, I doubt it, unless you have some data that the advent of digital entertainment has changed our entertainment habits. (I think it's a separate question when it comes to social media + smartphones, which work very very hard to steal our attention.) People don't work all day long. Before we had digital media, people entertained themselves with social visits, theater, drinking, reading, meditation... basically all the things we still do outside of digital entertainment.
  • hn72774 3y ago
    This is a good insight. "First pass yield" was a metric I liked in the accounting and payments space. How many transactions went through without requiring a manual touch.
• Jumptadel 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Nah.
• svennidal 3y ago
  I couldn’t disagree more. Been playing Gran Turismo 7 in PSVR2 with a steering wheel and pedals, the last few days. Why aren’t more games this immersive?
• billy99k 3y ago
  I disagree. There are lots of learning that can be done with VR that can't be done with traditional applications that haven't been invented yet. I exclusively workout using the Meta 2 (I don't play any other games on it) and it works really well.
• javajosh 3y ago
  The feedback loop building a simulation will always be OOM faster and cheaper than building the real thing. The barrier-to-entry for entering the loop becomes personal aptitude, not capital, and yet the EV is enormous. That is why our "best minds" are working in software, not hardware, not computer games.
• rpigab 3y ago
  "Less immersive so you don't get hooked and you can choose when to play and when to not play", that's exactly how I market my terminal UI Klondike Solitaire to my friends. You can't even play it on mobile, needs a keyboard! No fireworks when you win, nothing, well it's a work in progress. Shameless plug: https://rpigab.gitlab.io/solitaire-cli/ https://rpigab.gitlab.io/solitaire-cli/
• massysett 3y ago
  "I hope you’ll agree that humanity has a variety of important engineering problems to solve, and nicer-looking graphics is quite low on that list." I used to sneer at the social value of entertainment. Then covid lockdowns hit. I spent a lot of time playing Factorio. When professional sports resumed playing (in empty stadiums, with fake crowd noise on the broadcasts) I was happy to sit on the couch after work and watch baseball. Without that entertainment, there is no way I would have been able to trudge to my computer and work from home day after day, when the only thing I could leave my house for was an occasional walk and a frightful trip to the grocery store. So even if the brain surgeon is not using those "nicer-looking graphics" to improve brain surgery (which could very well happen), the brain surgeon might just be looking at "nicer-looking graphics" to unwind after a day of brain surgery, which gets her ready for another day of brain surgery. Entertainment has value.
  • ozr 3y ago
    Even beyond entertainment, interacting with things that are aesthetically pleasing is fundamentally good for individuals and society.
  • Solvency 3y ago
    It's such a neckbeardy sentiment. I could also drive the "functional" car that Homer designed in The Simpsons, but my psyche wouldn't survive a week.
  • Dalewyn 3y ago
    More people need to appreciate that video games have been at the core of what drives computing technologies forward.
  • madsbuch 3y ago
    While I think most people understand this sentiment, the root issue here was the lock-down – Yes, if you imprison a whole nation it is good to have some sedation. You could say that a lot of people wouldn't have gone through lock-downs without alcohol and porn either. That does not make it more admirable. I agree in the sentiment that we have more important issues than providing ever more entertainment – we had no issues spending our time 50 years ago; Without immersive technologies. Instead of translating the extra resources technology have given to more entertainment, we could have translated it into more free time. I would happily have less consoles, VR, and games and instead have a nation-wide 30 hour workweek (I need my friends not to work either).
• EGreg 3y ago
  This! And the more immersive the technology is, the more the back-end should be open-sourced and put under the control of a free market of hosting companies and maintainers, that end-users and communities can pay. Right now we have: People <=> Big Tech Server Farms What we should have is: People <=> Communities <=> Hosting and Service Providers <=> Developers <=> Conferences, Certifications The second kind of ecosystem can liberate people. Would you rather spend your years hooked up to Neuralink owned by Elon, or have a say in what you experience and mitigate the power dynamics? Would you rather spend 9 hours a day in a metaverse owned by Zuck+Facebook (oh sorry, Meta), Elon+Twitter (oh sorry, X), Bezos+Amazon, Page+Google (oh sorry, Alphabet) or would you rather at least have your own Minecraft server? Or better yet, have an open platform that anyone can fork and build on, like Linux, Wordpress or Ethereum? Technical overview: https://qbix.com/ecosystem https://qbix.com/ecosystem Layperson overview: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
• culebron21 3y ago
  Same thing regarding the utilities -- we need home electricity switcheable with a key/knob, not browsing it for a minute in a smartphone (yes, with phone full of running apps, and network hickups, it may take a minute). And we need public transit usable without any smartphone, not to make people look for the buses on a smartphone map (try pushing a stroller with a kid on a cold winter day and search for buses in an app).
• swayvil 3y ago
  Getting sucked into a dream-world/story/abstraction is a feature, not a bug. It's an attention-conservation strategy. Looking at an abstraction takes less precious attention than looking at reality. And abstractions are so malleable, so useful. You can do it with a page of text. You can do it with no technological augmentation at all, just thinking. It's so easy and useful that it's become a habit. The border between dream and reality is so blurred now that we've forgotten that there's a difference. Maybe this is what the Buddhists call "Samsara".
• em-bee 3y ago
  as others have already suggested, i think the contrast of immersion vs no immersion is not really the issue (only as much as immersion helps people get addicted to games). the focus on entertainment and making a profit vs doing something to advance society is. immersive games are fine. games aren't failing to teach anything or help you relax because they are immersive. they are not teaching anything because they don't have a good story that would teach something, and they don't let you relax because specific game elements are putting you under stress. to give two examples: i play elite dangerous. i can travel through space with a VR headset and i trade items between various space stations. very immersive and quite relaxing, until pirates come along and want to steal my cargo. that's stressful. and i wish i could turn that off. likewise i may play some puzzle game, that is not immersive at all, and that could be relaxing if the gamedesigner hadn't added a timer that forces me to complete the puzzle in a certain time. that's stressful. so i don't think immersion has any impact here, other than immersive games are just more attractive. both are a waste of time however if they are not educational or relaxing. but now this issue of entertainment vs advancing society is a problem of the whole entertainment industry. very little content produced is entertaining as well as teaching something. and so for me the question is not about how immersive the games are but how educational. i believe it is quite possible to create fully immersive but educational games. looking back at elite dangerous again, for example, the universe in that game is modeled after our actual galaxy. where possible, stars are named by their actual astronomical names, and their looks are designed after what we know about them and i can take a star system in the game and look up its name on eg wikipedia and learn real facts about it. compare that to eve online where the universe is completely fictional. in elite dangerous i can fly around and get a sense of the relative distances of say alpha centauri vs the north pole star or of the position of our solar system vs the rest of the galaxy. (assuming that it is all accurate) immersive and educational and relaxing (as long as i can avoid pirates)
• hopa 3y ago
  I feel like you only see articles like this written by game developers. Something about making video games for a living makes you question the value of what you’re creating.
  • robot_no_421 3y ago
    The longer I remain a software engineer the more I hate relying on computers. Maybe the people closest to the technology are the ones to first realize how superficial and downright damaging these innovations actually are.
    • skydhash 3y ago
      Computers are nice. The issue lies with the kind of software that are being developed. I have a Kobo device that I put koreader on and it's miles better than the default one because it's actually let you read books how you want to read them. Most of the apps I have focus on being the tools for the use cases I have them for (which is why they are still installed) instead on trying to get in my way every now and then. I love nice visuals and other UX niceties, but I like usefulness more than anything. Some days, I'm really close getting back to my Arch installation. I'd prefer the glitches and do patches instead of suffering another enshitification.
    • partomniscient 3y ago
      I'm kind of with you. In line with the article, its more the application of computers that's the problem - instead of making the world a better place, its a more distracting place. Is it really worth it shuffling digitized crap around at high speeds if the outcome is a worse human experience because we're only applying it to the low hanging fruit and therefore creating a slippery slope for ourselves...? The irony is that escaping into a simpler VR world with less distractions can help you deal with this, but I don't think its the right move. I'm also reminded of Lee Felensteins quote from Steven Levy's Hacker's book. "You're doing all that for the computer!? What are you doing for the people!?"
  • jayd16 3y ago
    Everyone has 'but is any of it worthwhile?' moments. You're going to focus that question towards what's around you.
• williamcotton 3y ago
  When I write poetry, song lyrics, or music, I am fully immersed. The difference between video games and art is that I create the environment that I am immersed within. Sure, like English or any other language, I’ve inherited the cultural context for my artistic endeavors, but that context is a basic requirement for any sort of immersive activity.
  • slater- 3y ago
    This is an important distinction that I agree with. Glancing at your username I think I maybe know you through some mutual sf friends. The Page called they want a lot of their fernet back
    • williamcotton 3y ago
      Well, considering I’ve drank my fair share of fernet at The Page, I’d say you’re probably correct! Maybe we both know Kevin? Dan? Yani? (sp?) Big Ben? Anyways, say hello from me to whomever we know in common!
      • slater- 3y ago
        All the above! I lived with Kevin. Hope things are good with you dude.
• Animats 3y ago
  After reading the article, I was expecting his game to be something like Tetris or some 8-bit retro thing. It's not, though. Full immersion is entertainment, consuming your full attention. Like a movie theater or a stage play. That's OK, but not full time. Light immersion is walking around with your nose in your phone for most of your waking hours. That may be worse.
• calamari4065 3y ago
  I wonder if the author realizes that there are eight billion humans. They can't all work on the same thing. And the majority of people who are not engineers and who just work regular mindless jobs need entertainment. Also we've had entertainment since the dawn of time. People don't just go home and stare at the wall for sixteen hours before going back to work. Almost none are going home from work to solve humanity's Real Problems(tm). Entertainment holds significant value to everyone plus or minus a few percent. But really the author has a critique of capitalism and doesn't want to admit it. The complaint is that art is a product you're expected to pay for and consume, and individual artists almost can't even exist without spending all their time advertising. Imagine how much art would be produced if artists weren't forced to choose between making art and paying rent. All in all, the author is yelling at clouds because other people have values he disagrees with and refuses to understand
  • tyfighter 3y ago
    Of course they realize that, because that's not what the article is about. The problem being described is that the distribution of talent/intelligence across the problems civilization is facing is uneven. The author's perspective is that individual interests and pay/profit incentives bias the distribution towards fun boom/bust industries (e.g. video games/VR/entertainment), and more critical industries may be losing out on this talent as a result. These are problems that capitalism can't naturally solve, because not every problem needing to be solved can be crafted into profit driven market. More than a "critique of capitalism", the author has noticed his industry is filling up with engineers/competition.
• verisimi 3y ago
  My opinion is that the last 40 to 50 years, have been all about entertainment, as a tool of control. Are cars better, planes, houses....? Only marginally. I don't even want sensors to tell me my car has this or that issue, lol. But we have phones, the internet, TV programming on demand, YT, tiktok, games, VR, flat screens, etc etc. it's all about content and the delivery of that content. Basically all development has been in entertainment while every other industry has pretty much stood still, or devolved (eg food quality).
• 1-6 3y ago
  After reading the book the Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, technology looks to both immersive and not immersive (but ambient). People can choose their tool of choice but most people will not voluntarily do that because of convenience.
• tqi 3y ago
  Why is working on art good, but working on entertainment a waste of time?
• campground 3y ago
  One compelling theory for why we have not encountered intelligent life is that any sufficiently advanced civilization will eventually stop exploring the universe and immerse themselves entirely in virtual reality, to the point that they harness the total output of their star for computation, and disappear. Relativity means that the Star Trek vision of a galaxy spanning society is probably an incoherent fantasy. Why pursue expensive, dangerous, and disappointing adventures in the real world when you can conjure any conceivable reality with perfect verisimilitude?
  • com2kid 3y ago
    An even darker take, if some renegade member of an advanced alien race does decide to spend a lot of resources on exploring the universe, and gains the means to do so, the other members of their species may very well plug them into a simulation while they are sleeping and make them think they are exploring the cosmos. Unless a species is completely post scarcity, there is a strong ethical argument to be made that this is the correct thing to do, versus spending a lot of resources on "mere exploration",
  • arminiusreturns 3y ago
    Working on my own kind of metaverse I've grappled with this issue, and that is why I hope to use it to improve physical space endeavors as opposed to replacing them. This really started for me in two places: the newer one was when I pitched to the department of education for a grant program a software I called Meta-Education Environment for Simulation and Gaming (MEESG), aimed particularly at assisting in training of high-risk vocations (such as high voltage-systems repair)... but after I thought about it, I realized that the earlier inspiration was the VBS simulation I trained in the military and how I noticed the benefits directly (later leading to many hours of Arma2/Arma3 playtime, the civilian version of VBS). So the main fight I see in the future is those who think (similar to the article) all this immersion effort is vapid and superficial. I don't think it is, and for more than just training, but also for rapid iteration in a simulated physical space that doesn't waste actual physical resources until a better product is developed. Ergo, I feel there is hidden value in the virtual space yet untapped in the wider market for combining fun and relaxation with teaching valuable things about the real world. Just for example, I have been adding my local flora/fauna and edibility properties and medicial properties to one of my gameworlds recently, which could help me accelerate my learning of that particular real world thing but also make the gameworld more fun and interactive.
• jayd16 3y ago
  It's not an XOR. Tech and social ideas and humanity in general advances because people dabble with it in the low risk entertainment space.
• theodpHN 3y ago
  Really? Windows Phone Ad (2010): "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-X0p-79SjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-X0p-79SjY
• ranprieur 3y ago
  Photorealism does not equal immersion. Immersion happens in the mind, not the eyes. The games I've been most immersed in were made in the 90s, when the graphics were not as good but the gameplay was better.
  • chrisjc 3y ago
    Absolutely! I remember playing Quake 3 and whatnot back in the day. As I became immersed in the game, keyboard/mouse/1024 would eventually disappear (figuratively). Strangely enough, I feel like there is more friction for me to play video games of this era (and i don't) despite the advancements in and availability of technology to interact with said games. Perhaps the friction I feel has more to do with the bombardment of content (ads, microtransaction, social-media, etc) that gets in the way of and distracts from actual game play. Then again, maybe I'm just getting old. Perhaps this is what the author is trying to get at? If we could immerse ourselves in a similar way when we were using "primitive" games and hardware and therefore were subjected to all the temptation and risk, then what is different or relevant? The quantity of those immersed and additional layer of (arguable harmful) content?
  • kgwxd 3y ago
    I don't know if I've ever been more immersed in a game than Cataclysm Dark Days ahead, in ASCII mode. I usually die pretty early but, one time, I survived over a year. Built a huge base, a maxed out RV, explored all the lore I could find, and I was basically indestructible in standard combat. I ended up dying while driving really fast down a road I'd driven hundreds of times before, it was supposed to be clear. A big floating, laser-shooting eyeball hit my my RV. That's was over 5 years ago and I can still "remember" that world, the crazy things that happened in it, and all the scary monsters I fought, as they existed in my imagination at the time, prompted only by ASCII characters and short description of what they were supposed to represent. I guess it's like reading a good book, but I'm in control of the story. There's obviously other ascii based games similar to CDDA, but there's so much detail in the mechanics, so much you can do to affect yourself and the world in a meaningful way, and open-ended lore to spark the imagination, that it ends up being way more immersive than similar games. The game has tile sets you can use instead of ASCII, but I find they put my imagination into cartoon mode, which isn't as deep an experience for me.
• sullivantrevor 3y ago
  it is easy to agree with this. however, the problem is most people just don't care and/or are lazy to do something more meaningful. and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
• Nav_Panel 3y ago
  Reminds me of: > A very common practice in videogames is to make your game visually immersive—that is to say, to visually portray the game’s elements in such a way that makes the player, to some extent, feel like they’re “really there.” The most obvious way this is employed is via a firstperson point-of-view camera, as seen in titles like Counter-Strike or Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In these titles—especially in the highly fantasy-simulation-dependent Skyrim—part of the idea is to “immerse” the player in the world. > The problem is, this isn’t where “immersion” really comes from. Ever notice how people get incredibly immersed in a great novel? What could be further away from the literal, realistic portrayal of reality that Skyrim brings than a set of glyphs in black and white printed on dead trees? And yet novels routinely engage people to the point where they are completely and utterly immersed. > The myth is that immersion comes from visual/auditory messages, but the problem is the human mind wanders quickly. We’re curious and inquisitive and while a picture-perfect image might in fact immerse us for a moment, if there isn’t an engaging system there for us to keep us immersed, we’ll quickly snap out of it and remember that we’re just tinkering with some computer program. > The thing that engages people in interactive systems is actually quality interaction—for games, this means interesting, difficult and meaningful decisions as frequently as possible. Quote from Keith Burgun's "Clockwork Game Design"
  • filiph 3y ago
    I think that quote confuses intellectual immersion with sensory immersion. Those are separate things. Yes, you can be immersed in a chess game or a good book or a PacMan game, but it's not the same as having a VR headset on?
• ta2112 3y ago
  Browsing the public library one day in the aughts, I came across Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan. Having been raised on the Disney version of Tarzan, I thought, "Ho! I should read this here original of the classic children's story!" So I checked it out, and I was shocked and surprised to encounter the most racist novel I have ever read. There is a reason almost no one reads the original Tarzan. It is not subtle about being Jim Crow, pro-colonialism pulp porn. I'm pretty sure Disney would prefer everybody forget that Burroughs existed, and that their animated and live action mega hits sprung out of the focus group imagining of a childhood bear necessities Jungle dream. So yeah, Burroughs is a rough reference to lead with.
• egypturnash 3y ago
  it is hilarious how the opening sentences written by this person refer to "Edgar Rice Borroughs", while pasted quotes and images refer to "Edgar Rice Burroughs". The latter spelling is the correct one.
• htk 3y ago
  <rant> There's always someone complaining about good things being too good and people lose on the rest because of it. What about letting people have some personal responsibility? Instead of complaining about games being too immersive, doom scrolling being too addictive etc, how about reminding people to make conscious decisions on how they spend their time and attention? We're living in the era of external responsibility, every problem one has is caused by someone else. </rant>
  • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    I think you realize how tone deaf you come off when you ignore the fact that social media and gaming companies have spent the past two decades hiring the greatest minds in psychology and engineering to hack minds and get them addicted to their products, but yeah, the problem is totally a lack of bootstraps.
• lukeschlather 3y ago
  It's funny to read this headline as a general statement. I work for Strivr (https://www.strivr.com/ https://www.strivr.com/), and we make immersive training. And the same forces that make immersive games more enthralling make immersive trainings significantly more powerful as learning experiences. So I don't know, there's definitely such a thing as immersive experiences that are harmful, but I think for educational purposes more immersive experiences are strictly better than less immersive ones. (Provided that you want to learn as fast as possible and you want to focus on learning.) Now, immersive experiences are also more expensive (especially to get right) than less immersive ones, so cost is a factor but I think we definitely want more immersive education.
• carabiner 3y ago
  Zuck is spending his time farming in Hawaii to raise his own beef. Even he doesn't want to live in the Metaverse.
• UltimateEdge 3y ago
  I agree with the sentiment that "the gaming industry has hijacked human play". The author justifies the development of his own game by the fact that "it looks like a CAD program", but I don't think that this makes the game any less immersive. Having seen a few of his dev-logs [0], I think that his goal of a 'systemic game' (if I remembered that phrase correctly) has the potential to be just as immersive. Games with impressive graphics but no gameplay aren't known for being particularly big drains of human attention. As another example, take the comments on the recent thread about the browser game generals.io [1]. One might say that 'it looks like a spreadsheet with conditional formatting', but it doesn't make it any less addictive, according to the commenters. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=civUb-w1CFU https://youtube.com/watch?v=civUb-w1CFU [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38752385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38752385
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  We have it, it's all the apps that are bad, frustrating, and they don't get used.
• snakeyjake 3y ago
  It is impossible to predict what effects technological developments will have. Claiming that effort in one field is "wasted" or "misallocated" is the height of hubris. I make satellites that are being used to scan the earth to determine the impacts of climate change, quantify coastal erosion, monitor foliage coverage and crop health, locate buried ancient ruins, predict the weather, and create high-resolution 3d maps of urban areas. The production of these spacecraft is very low volume, and therefore very expensive. Research into new lithography techniques for longer-lasting battery-powered consumer devices led to low-power electronics that allow the spacecraft I make to have greater processing power for a given energy budget. Advancements in more powerful graphics chips for gaming have led to affordable (and yes, despite what you think they are affordable) GPUs used to process and rasterize the data the satellites I build gather. Unreal Engine is used to build tools needed visualize the results. The low-profile RF connectors that we use were invented for the specific purpose of shoving Bluetooth and Wi-Fi into thin consumer devices like laptops and tablets and they save us (noticeable and significant) weight. I can't predict what will happen but I think I can predict what will not happen and given the size of the market I work in I assert that there is an exact and precise 0.0% chance that the resources needed to develop the technology I rely on every day would have been allocated in service of my market. It is too small. Instead they were handed to me on a silver platter by the consumer electronics market. People playing smartphone games-- and militaries trying to destroy each other have directly led to what I do being possible. >but I had to admit to myself at one point that, long-term, playing video games for any extended period makes me physically miserable and dumber. I do not play video games, at least nothing newer than SNES games, but I know people who do and that sounds like a personal problem.
• alpaca128 3y ago
  > There are new opportunities in things like e-Ink or transparent screens or IoT that can help people re-focus on the real world around them yet still reap the benefits of technology. This assumption that only games with nice graphics are immersive enough to somehow be a problem is just wrong. Before I had gaming hardware I wasted the exact same amount of time by re-reading books and comics, and it was quite immersive. AAA graphics are not the problem. > humanity has a variety of important engineering problems to solve, and nicer-looking graphics is quite low on that list. That sounds an awful lot like the good old "why do we build space rockets when people are starving".
  • filiph 3y ago
    > Before I had gaming hardware I wasted the exact same amount of time by re-reading books and comics, and it was quite immersive. If so, you are in the minority. For most people, it is easier and more natural to put down a book and go do something else, than it is to quit a video game. Media consumption metrics seem to corroborate this. > That sounds an awful lot like the good old "why do we build space rockets when people are starving". If you want to simplify the article this way, sure, but then it's "why do we build ever-more immersive entertainment when we could build space rockets or try to address starvation". I think there's a difference. (And of course, even then we're losing all nuance of the actual article, but I guess there's no way around that.)
• sirsinsalot 3y ago
  The Remarkable 2 has changed my life. Simple e-ink reader and note taker. No apps. No distraction. Amazing battery life. Easy to write on. Switch off. Do more.
• gfiorav 3y ago
  If the humane.ai pin had been released by Apple, it would've been the next best thing. The VR headset is just lazy.
• proton_dw 3y ago
  [dead]
• trealira 3y ago
  > The gaming industry has hijacked human play. Instead of an evolutionary learning and relaxation tool, it’s so immersive now that people get sucked into spending hundreds of hours playing games that don’t teach them anything valuable about the real world, and don’t relax them at all. I’m a gamer, and I of course enjoy immersing myself in a good AAA video game, but I had to admit to myself at one point that, long-term, playing video games for any extended period makes me physically miserable and dumber. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with having played a game for 200 hours. Before video games, we had toys like Lego, Lincoln Logs, board games, etc. that children (and even some adults) spent just as long playing. Video game addiction seems like what he's worrying about, but addiction doesn't require immersion. People get addicted to Tetris, and it's not because Tetris provides an immersive experience.
• graffix 3y ago
  My current job is in robotic space exploration, on a renderer in which to immerse a robot in a virtual world. This is just play in-silico, relying heavily on immersive technology developed for video games. In evolutionary terms, play's function is to learn in preparation for real events, which appears to work out on the technological frontier too.
• mlom 3y ago
  i don't want to look at virtual worlds while this one keeps getting uglier, louder, and stupider. i don't care about computers anymore. i hate them and wish they never existed. unless they are all destroyed i will never have a moment of aloneness or privacy again. i resent every moment i ever spent playing a computer game. i hate these images of fake worlds meant to make us ignore the death of the world around us. we are going to reduce the earth to a single shining black rock running bitcoin and second life. whatever promise i perceived in technology has either been betrayed or never existed. the scale of the betrayal, the constant surveillance, the hateful and invasive advertising, just the pure spite, greed, and malice present in every aspect of every aspect of the logistical chain... i want it all gone, or else i want us to use it to destroy absolutely everything. because what we have created is so hideous that only the capacity to destroy itself can justify its existence.