The metaverse is certainly an alluring concept. But, it’s a warning, not a suggestion. Snowcrash is _not_ about how great the metaverse is.
That being said, of course the metaverse will happen and the boundaries between the physical and the digital will become thin. I only hope we can do it without losing track of what really matters.
Mathematicians have long lived in a useful non-physical reality. So have many artists and writers.
Certainly improving physical reality remains valuable, but the non-physical world will likely grow in real as well as ephemeral value at a higher rate.
From a purely functional angle, the physical world does not include many affordances that the digital world provides for our minds, ability to communicate, learn, discover, etc. Virtual worlds will adapt to our minds, being the ultimate mental tools. And our minds will co-adapt.
Where that goes, nobody knows. But along with AI its likely to be the story of this century.
A site like this is bound to have naive views of arts like this. But it's not correct.
Art lives within the world of physical reality - otherwise, we would not be able to perceive it. Art is the enhancement of some aspect to reality, not a departure from it.
> Certainly improving physical reality remains valuable, but the non-physical world will likely grow in real as well as ephemeral value at a higher rate.
Value requires purpose, so the question is: from what is each individual's purpose derived in the virtual world, where we can leave the physical behind? And is there a purpose to our physical being that we do harm by neglecting?
To me our physical world has much purpose, and the virtual world, in whatever form it takes, is only valuable to the extent it allows me to fulfill my purpose in the physical.
> Value only requires that somebody is willing to pay for it.
And they will only be willing to pay if they want or need to do something with it. Wants and needs require some purpose, some intention, to drive them.
The Simpsons gives the viewer a break for a short time, during which they can recharge. Or maybe it gives them a viewpoint with which to understand the world that they find useful. Or maybe the viewer has decided that life's purpose is to watch everything on tv.
I'm not asking anyone to stop anything, I only gave my own viewpoint that my purpose comes from the physical world. I have no problem with others finding theirs elsewhere.
> And it's already happening; nobody can stop it, no matter how many pearls you clutch.
Sure we can. It’s not an act of god. Nothing about technology is inevitable or emergent. If it happens, it will happen because people chose to make it so.
And there’s nothing binding us to that choice, even if it is “just a step further than what already exists”. We can choose something else.
Just like nobody was forced to buy a model T. Nobody was forced to plug their phone line into their computer. Nobody was forced to get a streaming box.
This is happening because people desire it on the margin. And the network effects will make it more attractive each time somebody adopts it.
The biggest value is in making physical space cheap if not entirely free. The people that will be served by this are the bulk of the population who can't afford to live or work in spaces that provide enough room to pursue their interests or ambitions. The fidelity of those spaces will start off fairly far away from reality but will steadily approach it over time.
With the right feedback and props almost any pursuit could be closely simulated. VR could transform practical education and training and make it so easily available that anyone wanting to learn any skill could progress through the most difficult and expensive stages of learning for essentially free and then go on to complete their training in real life if they so choose.
The ability to meet with people from anywhere on earth instantly with all the nuances of physical presence properly simulated would provide the equivalent network effects of living in a vibrant urban centre, again for practically no cost.
The benefits of really well executed VR are almost identical to the invention of a sci-fi teleporter and replicator. The places you could visit and activities you could perform would probably provide 80% of the value of the real thing. For people who can afford to do these things in real life it's a pale imitation but for those who can't it's revolutionary.
At this point the digital world is necessary to maintain efficiencies and progress that keep civilization running on the resources we have.
So it is necessary.
We could survive without it, in some sense, but not without a global catastrophe. Coordination, communication, efficient finance and logistics, etc. provide huge leverage on our physical resources.
Come on, do you expect me to believe that this sort of activity would occur in a Facebook branded world? You’d be lucky to get anything done the rest of your life. Political arguments with 3 meter tall taking porpoises would occupy any time left as you dodge walking ads.
Family? Don't want kids.
Relationships? Hard to make much new friends once you're past college age.
Altruistic service to people? For what? So they could continue to be productive workers that consume the same things you consume anyway?
I would encourage people to read Snowcrash. I first read it like 20 years ago and have re-read it several times. It's funny, it's readable, it's prophetic, it's wacky, it's thought provoking, there's a lot in a small package.
It's also not as described in that article, the author is shoehorning something written a while go to fit a currently popular narrative. I don't think Stephenson really does dystopian / utopian, right / wrong, moral / immoral. He constructs plausible settings where people roam and do as people do.
As a tangent, I hope this new hype results in a high production value adaptation of Snowcrash or one of his other works (seveneves!), Stephenson really deserves a higher place in our cultural pantheon.
> Stephenson really deserves a higher place in our cultural pantheon.
+1 (though I think his place is higher and more secure than this comment suggests. Or not!)
Stephenson's place in the sci-fi canon (if such a thing can be said to exist) was sealed when he wrote, first, _Snow Crash_ and, later, _Cryptonomicon_ (though I find the latter a tad overwrought).
With zero insight into the film industry's relationship to Stephenson's literary estate: Many of Stephenson's novels have trouble sticking their endings. _Snow Crash_ does not have this problem but _Cryptonomicon_ does. Same problem for _REAMDE_ which is very cinematic but takes a long way to wrapping its plotlines.
Extrapolating from that speculative line, if Stephenson refuses to give the film/TV industry artistic license with regard to screenplays of his novels, producers may be unwilling to move forward. That said, I thought Amazon was going to do a version of _Snow Crash_…
Taking a moment to sing Stephenson's praise names, _The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ is my favorite of his novels. Superb pacing, fascinating vision of technology, and strong sociocultural relevance. Plus, _The Diamond Age_ knocks the stuffing out its ending!
If you've not read it yet, what are you waiting for?
> _The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ is my favorite of his novels. Superb pacing, fascinating vision of technology, and strong sociocultural relevance. Plus, _The Diamond Age_ knocks the stuffing out its ending!
That makes two of us! I always doubted there were others, so welcome to the club :)
I tried to get my wife into it but failed because the intro to the book is very much not like rest. All the talk of implanting guns in the head made it seem like it was going to be action sci-fi. The intro to Snow Crash is also not like the rest, but it is so hilarious that I don't mind. I always assumed that his editor(s) didn't know what to do with it, but knew there was so much awesomeness that they just left it as-is.
Neal was taking questions during some book tour or another, and someone asked a question about Snow Crash while calling it “dystopian.” Neal kind of smiled and replied that he didn’t think it was a dystopia. He had some more to say, which I don’t recall and cannot find unfortunately.
Snow Crash has been optioned for one project or another for over 20 years. As of May 2020, HBO was adapting it to a TV series. Here’s hoping that’s still on track!
I would agree in some ways and disagree in some ways. Yes, the book imagines a richer world than OP's blunt characterization. But the book is also more frivolous and escapist than the OP's characterization. Dystopia has always been cool, offering readers consequence-free entry into a world where decisions matter more than in real life. Cyberpunk authors understand this well. The goal is to be real enough to suck in the reader, but not so real as to be a drag or buzz kill. So it's not surprising that Facebook would find cyberpunk a useful recruitment tool.
Looking towards the next 200 years, it seems likely that there's a lot more hardship and privation in humanity's future. Whether due to climate change or the need to colonize Mars or some asteroid or whatever. Tech that can help make immiserated conditions more tolerable may well be hugely valuable to humanity. In a manner analogous to Christianity's role during the long decline of Ancient Rome. This may well be the greatest boon of the internet, when future historians look back at this time.
Snow Crash is one of my most lent books. People either get it quickly or it just fizzles out for them. I feel like a lotta his work is like that too. You gotta wanna read 20 pages of Sumerian mythology and a sword fight on motorcycles in the same book.
A multiverse of interlinked metaverses would be more interesting. The dystopian Metaverse, OASIS, etc have been single corporation controlled services. It would be nicer to have a standard set of protocols and APIs for anyone to create and host their own piece of the metaverse, and link them all together like the web. I really wish Facebook would do it like that, instead of implementing some crappy generic walled garden 3D version of their Groups and Pages.
I think that is a bit like saying that the Google/Apple App Stores are too fragmented because they have so many different kinds of apps. Or that the web is too fragmented. The Metaverse is supposed to be a huge bazaar of different kind of services and content. Not just a single cathedral with similar nice looking rooms.
I of course agree about (b) and I think it's about whether Facebook sees their metaverse as the next generation VR platform or as just one VR experience.
Data Trash: Theory of Virtual Class (1994)[1] is an oldie but goodie, about how cyberspace is an un-equalizer, about how more and more are left behind. Publisher's Weekly review:
> They have anticipated the debris that will be left by the traffic of the information highway-and they can't ignore the roadkill. What follows is a survey exploring the consequences of technology on culture, economy, class and individuality. They hold that virtual reality will supplant reality itself, that use of information will reinforce extant caste systems, and that ultimately the information highway will not be so much a tool providing us with usable data but rather it will provide those who control it with data to use us. Their findings, while alternately compelling and repellent, are undermined as they single-handedly double the lexicon of technobabble.
The book is both deadly-serious but also self-indulgent, playful, not serious writing per se.
It's long been a part of why I think the web is better & more interesting than most tech projects: hypertext markup language is a medium, a somewhat legible one (alas considerbly less so with the advent of webapps & especially React). There's not presently a lot of hooks, reasons why regular folk would want to immerse themselves in it's technics, the stratification will continue, but I continue to think there are some not-fully-visible tidal forces that make the web potentially one day more compelling, as an interesting empowering useful primary & general interface to computing in general.
"They dropped the air ration today. I plugged in to feel the hum of the hive, but no one cared. They were engrossed in banality as always. Measuring the value of their existence in the relentless click of credits spent assuming images of artificiality. Dreaming themselves into a sleek and gleaming abstracted perfection - oblivious to the suffocated reality of their electric cage."
- me circa '89 with my head filled with Neuromancer and Mondo 2000
I like the reference to the book Snow Crash in which a metaverse environment gave people relief from a shitty world. This may be prescient: I think that the human race will servive the next 100 years (and if we don’t, I take comfort in believing that the Universe is teaming with life), but no-travel low-energy use ways to work and play with even more entertainment alternatives may be a necessity.
I worked on VR projects for SAIC and Disney about 25 years ago, and as much as I criticize Facebook over privacy issues, I like Mark Z’s vision here, in addition to Microsoft’s vision of shared virtual workspaces and AR augmentation. Being an Apple fanboy, I also anticipate their future products and systems in this space.
I have been joking/teasing family and friends for many years that governments would fade to black and corporations would rule all. I am 70 and retired so it feels like being naked no longer being associated with a large corporation (I may un-retire). I am channeling William Gibson here, but affiliations to corporations may become the new citizenship. Entrepreneurs will exist to service corporations with new tech and ideas but with little chance of forming mega-corporations themselves.
Just for a second (before I read carefully) I thought Disney and Science Applications International Corporation collaborated on a VR project 25 years ago.
My brain went “I’d like to turn to butter now but I buy it: misquoting Twain, “only fiction has to make sense, not reality” plus you know, DARPA is a big place, and imagineering could be useful…”
> Entrepreneurs will exist to service corporations with new tech and ideas but with little chance of forming mega-corporations themselves
Sir, I've been alive for lesser years than your experience but this is already happening. Vast majority of new products and services each day are just tools which function inside mega-corporation's products.
An entrepreneur without good network, funds are delegated to using API of a Big Tech product to build a product to solve some minor problem and eventually that feature would be rolled out natively crushing the product of that entrepreneur; Occasionally if there's good connections they'll get acquired.
You've professed that you're Apple fanboy, I appreciate your honesty but Apple hasn't hidden the fact that they are trying to crush Spotify at every chance they get in favor of Apple Music. If a startup like Spotify which has all the support it can get from being cash rich has to put up with this, What chance does someone from a village have to compete with valley?
It's not just new-age entrepreneurs, Look at News Media many who have survived for over hundred years even under colonizing forces are now at the mercy of Facebook, Google, Apple and many of them have already perished.
Virtual reality may be our only way out of a climate/energy/resource crisis. If experiences can be simulated, and people can stay inside 8 foot hovels eating gruel while virtual reality makes it feel like Versailles and filet mignon, we could reduce resource consumption dramatically.
Why would it need to be 8 foot hovels? If you don't need to live in a dense urban area to get access to work, education, entertainment, novelty, social life, etc. etc. then humanity could spread out into more livable towns and cities or even villages and hamlets. Most of our transportation needs would be obviated reducing or eliminating the need for road centric planning. So much of our current urban plight is due to the fact that we need to be physically present, if we remove that burden with VR for all applicable pursuits we can go back to human scale life and keep all the benefits of high density living.
I would recommend anyone interested in this topic read ‘Dawn of the New Everything’ by Jaron Lanier, which is really quite honest about both the positives and negatives of VR. Having only recently had a chance to try it out, I feel like it’s really just another medium (a rather intense and currently flawed one I find), like other interactive media, with potential for expression, utility, unique communication and imagination, but also for disconnection from reality/escapism, addiction, dystopia, tracking, control etc. A lot of pronouncements in this article and the Wired one feel as overblown and one-sided as the hype is on the other side of the fence…
There are perfectly good use cases for VR/AR whereby we could save on travel/pollution by telepresence collaboration, help people with eg. disabilities, perform remote work in hostile environments, offer therapeutic treatments, experiment with identity etc. or just as another form of daft escapism or art (and a potentially more active one than some at that). Nothing stops people from using it for short periods and then enjoying rich and fulfilling real lives, in the same way that you’ve got couch potatoes vs. people who just enjoy the escapism of occasionally watching a couple of tv shows/playing games etc. …I do find FB’s closed/sign-in etc. subsidised uber-tracking thang is worrying though…
VR in fact kinda forces you into only using it for short periods. You get tired much more quickly when moving with motion controls vs. sitting with a keyboard/controller :D
VR goggles are too anti-social on the local scale. Have kids? Dog? Spouse? Hard to see they will accept that you shield yourself off completely for long periods of time. You won't even see them coming when they start to grow tired... This is a fundamental flaw.
Then the metaverse... What is the usecase? Why is it fun or why is it useful? It might be cool for a while, but so are lots of other MMOs out there...
I can only speak for myself. I used to play Second Life when I was a teenager. A lot. What it was is less of a game. There was no grinding, no objective, and more of a chat room with a built in 3d modeler and scripting language. Everyone I played with grew up either ended up as a programmer or a 3d modeler of some stripe.
And I see the same sorta energy in people playing VR chat today.
What I think you miss as the usecase here is people who aren't quite happy with their identity, or are and choose a different more extreme representation. The difference between being yourself and being a fox for example.
Plenty of people in the world today are lonely, and online connection is what fills the void. They don't have kids, dogs, or spouses. They're a sixteen year old in the middle of nowhere, or a socially anxious programmer living in a shoe box.
Been there and done that. Ended up as a game dev with zero social skills when it came to relationships. I was deeply unhappy about that situation.
It wasn't until years later I (somehow) managed to form a relationship with someone - who is now my wife and mother of my child - that I'm far, far happier. From my experience, VR and Second Life et al are not the answer. Getting out there and experiencing life reaps far more benefits.
> aren't quite happy with their identity,
I found the best thing to do is find like-minded people IRL.
I've been in parks and restaurants and seen whole families all on their phones. Last weekend I walked my dog around the park path, and was literally the _only_ person there who was not walking with their phone held in front of them.
The Black Mirror / Surrogates dystopia is already here, and most people can't get enough of it.
In many ways we've already been in a metaverse for a hundred year now. The popularization of Hollywood, celebrities, and the stock market are fine exemplars of its manifestation (a la Baudrillard).
Perhaps it's only natural. As a soceity, we are always seeking to lower the cost of obtaining stimuli and qualia. Things got complicated as we improved our living condition (making the shift from hunter-gathering to farming, and in the modern time migrating from rural to urban for job opportunities and access to facilities and infrastructure like universities, indie music scene, etc)
The complexity of a modern life makes it more difficult/costly to experience authentic human connection for the city dwellers (e.g. vs tribes who are still hunter-gathers). We also lost our connections with the terrains and plants.
As a coping mechanism most people look for cheaper alternatives to obtain stimuli and qualia. It's sad but there is very little we can do about that.
For the minority of us who realized this is a problem, I believe the only way out is to acheive hyper-intelligence (e.g. by becoming an expert in a field and taking psychedelics) so you can be the master of your physiology and mind, while still be able to get complex work done and be resourceful and affluent.
> For the minority of us who realized this is a problem, I believe the only way out is to take lots of psychedlices, become hyper-intelligent, and be mindful of every moment in life.
That’s your belief sure but I can identify at least one other way out: return to a less “modern” lifestyle.
But then it gets harder/costlier to access opporunities, facilities (eg health care) and infrastructures, as well as social and monetray capitals and (economical and politcal) power.
The article sees the dystopia of the Metaverse in its real world implications (poverty, escapism) and so on, and uses Ready Player One as an example, but I think the more fundamental observation about that book and the corporate Metaverse is what Derrida called Hauntology, or what Mark Fisher later described as the inability of being able to imagine new futures.
What's noteworthy about RPO isn't the poverty, it's the fact that everything in the Metaverse, and the book itself, is just a repetition of the same nostalgic elements over and over. There is no actual future in the RPO Oasis, just past, in the same way Hollywood (mentioned in another comment) and video game studios increasingly keep re-publishing the same franchises over and over.
So the real threat coming from the Metaverse might not be the poverty or degrading infrastructure which is a sort of obvious one, but the erosion of our capacity to produce any sort of genuine novelty or imagine alternative worlds. Ironically enough, the Metaverse which is supposed to be a sort of wellspring of new ideas is more like a haunted house where you end up trapped like some kind of half-abandoned MMO where people, half-dead, run through the same stories over and over.
Important to point out that Fisher saw this inability to produce any futures as a feature of our political, cultural and economic system (i.e. 'neoliberalism' overused term nowadays) and not just a particular technology.
Humans already live in a collective hallucination known as social reality. It’s a distinct overlay, distinct from our physical contextual realities and the phenomena we derive our physical laws from etc. overlay of what? Don’t ask. Variously explained as wiggles or turtles all the way down, or so I was told.
I just wanted to point out that we flap our gums or thumbs a lot and ping concepts in each other’s minds via language, but speaking about stuff is not the same as the stuff itself.
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadThat being said, of course the metaverse will happen and the boundaries between the physical and the digital will become thin. I only hope we can do it without losing track of what really matters.
Which is what?
Mathematicians have long lived in a useful non-physical reality. So have many artists and writers.
Certainly improving physical reality remains valuable, but the non-physical world will likely grow in real as well as ephemeral value at a higher rate.
From a purely functional angle, the physical world does not include many affordances that the digital world provides for our minds, ability to communicate, learn, discover, etc. Virtual worlds will adapt to our minds, being the ultimate mental tools. And our minds will co-adapt.
Where that goes, nobody knows. But along with AI its likely to be the story of this century.
A site like this is bound to have naive views of arts like this. But it's not correct.
Art lives within the world of physical reality - otherwise, we would not be able to perceive it. Art is the enhancement of some aspect to reality, not a departure from it.
Value requires purpose, so the question is: from what is each individual's purpose derived in the virtual world, where we can leave the physical behind? And is there a purpose to our physical being that we do harm by neglecting?
To me our physical world has much purpose, and the virtual world, in whatever form it takes, is only valuable to the extent it allows me to fulfill my purpose in the physical.
What purpose does The Simpsons fulfill in the physical world?
This is just a step further than what already exists. And it's already happening; nobody can stop it, no matter how many pearls you clutch.
And they will only be willing to pay if they want or need to do something with it. Wants and needs require some purpose, some intention, to drive them.
The Simpsons gives the viewer a break for a short time, during which they can recharge. Or maybe it gives them a viewpoint with which to understand the world that they find useful. Or maybe the viewer has decided that life's purpose is to watch everything on tv.
I'm not asking anyone to stop anything, I only gave my own viewpoint that my purpose comes from the physical world. I have no problem with others finding theirs elsewhere.
Sure we can. It’s not an act of god. Nothing about technology is inevitable or emergent. If it happens, it will happen because people chose to make it so.
And there’s nothing binding us to that choice, even if it is “just a step further than what already exists”. We can choose something else.
Just like nobody was forced to buy a model T. Nobody was forced to plug their phone line into their computer. Nobody was forced to get a streaming box.
This is happening because people desire it on the margin. And the network effects will make it more attractive each time somebody adopts it.
With the right feedback and props almost any pursuit could be closely simulated. VR could transform practical education and training and make it so easily available that anyone wanting to learn any skill could progress through the most difficult and expensive stages of learning for essentially free and then go on to complete their training in real life if they so choose.
The ability to meet with people from anywhere on earth instantly with all the nuances of physical presence properly simulated would provide the equivalent network effects of living in a vibrant urban centre, again for practically no cost.
The benefits of really well executed VR are almost identical to the invention of a sci-fi teleporter and replicator. The places you could visit and activities you could perform would probably provide 80% of the value of the real thing. For people who can afford to do these things in real life it's a pale imitation but for those who can't it's revolutionary.
Except it does provide many things that are necessary (e.g. food, clean water) whereas the digital world is not necessary for anything, really.
So it is necessary.
We could survive without it, in some sense, but not without a global catastrophe. Coordination, communication, efficient finance and logistics, etc. provide huge leverage on our physical resources.
My view of Facebook is just as dim as yours.
It's also not as described in that article, the author is shoehorning something written a while go to fit a currently popular narrative. I don't think Stephenson really does dystopian / utopian, right / wrong, moral / immoral. He constructs plausible settings where people roam and do as people do.
As a tangent, I hope this new hype results in a high production value adaptation of Snowcrash or one of his other works (seveneves!), Stephenson really deserves a higher place in our cultural pantheon.
+1 (though I think his place is higher and more secure than this comment suggests. Or not!)
Stephenson's place in the sci-fi canon (if such a thing can be said to exist) was sealed when he wrote, first, _Snow Crash_ and, later, _Cryptonomicon_ (though I find the latter a tad overwrought).
With zero insight into the film industry's relationship to Stephenson's literary estate: Many of Stephenson's novels have trouble sticking their endings. _Snow Crash_ does not have this problem but _Cryptonomicon_ does. Same problem for _REAMDE_ which is very cinematic but takes a long way to wrapping its plotlines.
Extrapolating from that speculative line, if Stephenson refuses to give the film/TV industry artistic license with regard to screenplays of his novels, producers may be unwilling to move forward. That said, I thought Amazon was going to do a version of _Snow Crash_…
Taking a moment to sing Stephenson's praise names, _The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ is my favorite of his novels. Superb pacing, fascinating vision of technology, and strong sociocultural relevance. Plus, _The Diamond Age_ knocks the stuffing out its ending!
If you've not read it yet, what are you waiting for?
That makes two of us! I always doubted there were others, so welcome to the club :)
I tried to get my wife into it but failed because the intro to the book is very much not like rest. All the talk of implanting guns in the head made it seem like it was going to be action sci-fi. The intro to Snow Crash is also not like the rest, but it is so hilarious that I don't mind. I always assumed that his editor(s) didn't know what to do with it, but knew there was so much awesomeness that they just left it as-is.
Snow Crash has been optioned for one project or another for over 20 years. As of May 2020, HBO was adapting it to a TV series. Here’s hoping that’s still on track!
https://www.cbr.com/snow-crash-hbo-max-adaptation-dream-cybe...
Looking towards the next 200 years, it seems likely that there's a lot more hardship and privation in humanity's future. Whether due to climate change or the need to colonize Mars or some asteroid or whatever. Tech that can help make immiserated conditions more tolerable may well be hugely valuable to humanity. In a manner analogous to Christianity's role during the long decline of Ancient Rome. This may well be the greatest boon of the internet, when future historians look back at this time.
b) Facebook is going to do what's best for them. :/
I of course agree about (b) and I think it's about whether Facebook sees their metaverse as the next generation VR platform or as just one VR experience.
The book is both deadly-serious but also self-indulgent, playful, not serious writing per se.
It's long been a part of why I think the web is better & more interesting than most tech projects: hypertext markup language is a medium, a somewhat legible one (alas considerbly less so with the advent of webapps & especially React). There's not presently a lot of hooks, reasons why regular folk would want to immerse themselves in it's technics, the stratification will continue, but I continue to think there are some not-fully-visible tidal forces that make the web potentially one day more compelling, as an interesting empowering useful primary & general interface to computing in general.
[1] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312122119
- me circa '89 with my head filled with Neuromancer and Mondo 2000
Hello Rio, btw.
I worked on VR projects for SAIC and Disney about 25 years ago, and as much as I criticize Facebook over privacy issues, I like Mark Z’s vision here, in addition to Microsoft’s vision of shared virtual workspaces and AR augmentation. Being an Apple fanboy, I also anticipate their future products and systems in this space.
I have been joking/teasing family and friends for many years that governments would fade to black and corporations would rule all. I am 70 and retired so it feels like being naked no longer being associated with a large corporation (I may un-retire). I am channeling William Gibson here, but affiliations to corporations may become the new citizenship. Entrepreneurs will exist to service corporations with new tech and ideas but with little chance of forming mega-corporations themselves.
My brain went “I’d like to turn to butter now but I buy it: misquoting Twain, “only fiction has to make sense, not reality” plus you know, DARPA is a big place, and imagineering could be useful…”
Sir, I've been alive for lesser years than your experience but this is already happening. Vast majority of new products and services each day are just tools which function inside mega-corporation's products.
An entrepreneur without good network, funds are delegated to using API of a Big Tech product to build a product to solve some minor problem and eventually that feature would be rolled out natively crushing the product of that entrepreneur; Occasionally if there's good connections they'll get acquired.
You've professed that you're Apple fanboy, I appreciate your honesty but Apple hasn't hidden the fact that they are trying to crush Spotify at every chance they get in favor of Apple Music. If a startup like Spotify which has all the support it can get from being cash rich has to put up with this, What chance does someone from a village have to compete with valley?
It's not just new-age entrepreneurs, Look at News Media many who have survived for over hundred years even under colonizing forces are now at the mercy of Facebook, Google, Apple and many of them have already perished.
VR goggles are too anti-social on the local scale. Have kids? Dog? Spouse? Hard to see they will accept that you shield yourself off completely for long periods of time. You won't even see them coming when they start to grow tired... This is a fundamental flaw.
Then the metaverse... What is the usecase? Why is it fun or why is it useful? It might be cool for a while, but so are lots of other MMOs out there...
And I see the same sorta energy in people playing VR chat today.
What I think you miss as the usecase here is people who aren't quite happy with their identity, or are and choose a different more extreme representation. The difference between being yourself and being a fox for example.
Plenty of people in the world today are lonely, and online connection is what fills the void. They don't have kids, dogs, or spouses. They're a sixteen year old in the middle of nowhere, or a socially anxious programmer living in a shoe box.
It wasn't until years later I (somehow) managed to form a relationship with someone - who is now my wife and mother of my child - that I'm far, far happier. From my experience, VR and Second Life et al are not the answer. Getting out there and experiencing life reaps far more benefits.
> aren't quite happy with their identity,
I found the best thing to do is find like-minded people IRL.
The Black Mirror / Surrogates dystopia is already here, and most people can't get enough of it.
Perhaps it's only natural. As a soceity, we are always seeking to lower the cost of obtaining stimuli and qualia. Things got complicated as we improved our living condition (making the shift from hunter-gathering to farming, and in the modern time migrating from rural to urban for job opportunities and access to facilities and infrastructure like universities, indie music scene, etc)
The complexity of a modern life makes it more difficult/costly to experience authentic human connection for the city dwellers (e.g. vs tribes who are still hunter-gathers). We also lost our connections with the terrains and plants.
As a coping mechanism most people look for cheaper alternatives to obtain stimuli and qualia. It's sad but there is very little we can do about that.
For the minority of us who realized this is a problem, I believe the only way out is to acheive hyper-intelligence (e.g. by becoming an expert in a field and taking psychedelics) so you can be the master of your physiology and mind, while still be able to get complex work done and be resourceful and affluent.
[edit: elaboration]
That’s your belief sure but I can identify at least one other way out: return to a less “modern” lifestyle.
But then it gets harder/costlier to access opporunities, facilities (eg health care) and infrastructures, as well as social and monetray capitals and (economical and politcal) power.
What's noteworthy about RPO isn't the poverty, it's the fact that everything in the Metaverse, and the book itself, is just a repetition of the same nostalgic elements over and over. There is no actual future in the RPO Oasis, just past, in the same way Hollywood (mentioned in another comment) and video game studios increasingly keep re-publishing the same franchises over and over.
So the real threat coming from the Metaverse might not be the poverty or degrading infrastructure which is a sort of obvious one, but the erosion of our capacity to produce any sort of genuine novelty or imagine alternative worlds. Ironically enough, the Metaverse which is supposed to be a sort of wellspring of new ideas is more like a haunted house where you end up trapped like some kind of half-abandoned MMO where people, half-dead, run through the same stories over and over.
Important to point out that Fisher saw this inability to produce any futures as a feature of our political, cultural and economic system (i.e. 'neoliberalism' overused term nowadays) and not just a particular technology.