Something like "The Meta Company" seems like the most likely bet here. Zuckerberg already owns meta.org through the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, and meta.com was updated yesterday to redirect to that same site.
Definitely has potential. Whatever it is, I'm very certain it will be a short, common dictionary word, that will poison its general meaning forever, like how Tesla is not Nikola anymore.
I seriously doubt it will poison the word. When you hear the word alphabet, do you think of Google? These companies are too deeply ingrained in the public consciousness to meaningfully change their name. It's a legal thing, nothing more.
Thankfully, context clues let us sort these things out in the vast majority of cases, but there is some small cognitive load there. I do think alphabet being called that poisons the word, in that it creates opportunity for ambiguity. It's another wrinkle in an already messy language that's mutating and forking on multiple fronts. No cap, I'm finna stop alphabet-wannabes yoinkin muh words, it's annoying.
The interesting thing with that is “facebook” comes across as simple and human-like, despite there being a lot of complexity behind it.
Meta is the opposite of this. It sounds robotic, abstract and lacks an emotive trigger. While this is more fitting for the company, it drops the perception-curtain that “facebook” hides behind.
My reaction to Alphabet was, "If you wanted to look like supervillains who planned to own everything in the world from A to Z... that would be how you'd do it. Was that intentional? I don't understand what else they might have intended."
I didn't have that initial reaction, I thought alphabet, because their company Google, needs to dissect a lot of language, the basic building blocks of which is the alphabet.
Not sure why you are downvoted, this is straight out of Larry Page’s letter to the public about the restructuring.
> We liked the name Alphabet because it means a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search! We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark), which we strive for! I should add that we are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products—the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands.
Completely off-topic, but in the face of all this corporatism, I still love the fact that the period at the end of the sentence, "Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things. Alphabet will also include our X lab, which incubates new efforts like Wing, our drone delivery effort." is a link to http://hooli.xyz
As this reorg was Ruth’s Noogler project, she came from the investment banking world where seeking alpha is the name of the game…so making bets to yield alpha is pretty much what the company does.
You know I had the domain metafirm.co and someone purchased it from me on the Sedo marketplace after a year of being on the market on Monday. Wondering if you are right.
We are a brand new company now, and want to help the people affected by our former ultra-addictive products so we are proud of introducing you our new and improved social net for women: Meta-donna
And, earlier, Atari, Activision, Accolade, Acclaim, and Absolute Entertainment (https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Problem_with_Licensed_Game... ); and the Russian accounting software juggernaut 1C... It’s an old tradition, somewhat forgotten after the decline of phonebooks.
Oh so it's just like when they had internet.org with their dishonest Free Basics program; a URL that would imply something not belonging to a company so naturally the company buys it to raise importance/awareness of itself
If the larger company name is "The Meta Org" or "Meta Organization" or such, then .org would grammatically fit well with the name.
The tld splitup of ".com is commercial, .org is non-profits, .co.uk is british websites, .io is indian ocean websites" is pretty much out the window. Only a subset of those still are used consistently, such as ".gov is government-affiliated" and a few ccTLDs like ".cn", ".jp", and ".co.uk" being pretty consistent. Some of them have enforced restrictions (like some european ccTLDs require you to have an address in the country), but many of them don't.
.com, .net, and .org are the wild west and might as well mean nothing.
The metaverse stuff is really, really embarrassing. Second Life has existed for 20 years and it's a fun novelty. Adding advertising and branded content and making it cost more because of high end hardware requirements and making it slower and more difficult to interface with because it's VR/AR instead of using existing interfaces is not an improvement; just like adding branded content and sticking it in the skeletal husk of a bad shooter game for 12 year olds wasn't an improvement when Epic did it. All the CEOs who buy into this metaverse shit keep talking about the universe of possibilities, but the only possibility they're pursuing is building a Times Square Wal-Mart.
Even crazier, most of them approvingly point to the execrable "Ready Player One" as an example of a vision to deliver on. No, I'm sorry, a horny 15 year old shaving his body hair so he can be more aerodynamic in VR while engaging in extended self-congratulatory monologues about what a Nice Guy he is for not being repulsed by his "Rubenesque" girlfriend while he recites lines from Ghostbusters in a series of completely incoherent "memba this???" vignettes, is not a vision for the future.
It's a bummer because I think there probably are legitimate uses of VR/AR telepresence as the next frontier of video calling, which would seem to be right in line with Facebook's stated mission of connecting the world.
But no, we'll get an exceedingly shitty videogame instead. Can't wait for them to power it all by NFTs.
> just like adding branded content and sticking it in the skeletal husk of a bad shooter game for 12 year olds wasn't an improvement when Epic did it.
The reductive ‘Fortnite is for kids’ dismissal reminds me of the angry reaction by a particular cohort to the first cel-shaded Zelda game on the Gamecube. They dreamed of ‘realistic’ graphics targeted toward serious gamers and even claimed they were betrayed by WIP footage that teased their dream.
Fortnite is a game with an incredibly high skill ceiling around its building mechanic. I watched Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell (who is currently a 40-year-old and one of the earliest professional gamers) struggle in deep concentration on trying to incrementally improve his building speed and technique. I know many adults who play and enjoy the game, and they seem to enjoy the branded tie-ins. They are mature enough for their ego to be unaffected by the game’s cartoon art style, chosen instead of a gritty Call of Duty realism. It has solid mechanics and the content has been highly polished, even when not tied in to branded content.
Even so, I’m still not clear how that connects to Ready Player One being a dull and cynical exploitation of nostalgia shoutouts/callbacks.
If you have 20 minutes, this video[1] presents a good critique without mentioning aesthetics. It's especially notable how central the shop is to the whole experience.
I personally found Fortnite to be a huge slog to play - with tons of downtime compared even to games like CS: GO, let alone old-school arena shooters like Q3. The only thing that kept me coming back is the season pass reward tracks and daily missions.
> I personally found Fortnite to be a huge slog to play
I think that applies to the entire battle royale genre. Unless you're good, it's 20+ minutes of downtime (between waiting for the map to set, load, and for you to complete your jump and start finding opponents) for at minimum a few seconds of gameplay with an opponent.
It really pains me how so few people play arena shooters any more. They are brilliant, and you can get into (and stay in!) the thick of the action for the entire time you are logged on, save for the match ending and a new map loading.
I play Apex Legends and I like that it's up to you for the kind of gaming experience you want. A buddy and I have played cautious slow looting gameplay, only 3rd partying near the end and have won many times.
Sometimes we drop hot and fight as soon as possible. This is vastly less successful but makes for shorter, faster, more intense games.
It helps that matchmaking and loading is generally quick so there isn't much "fluff" downtime.
Fortnite has this same element. Drop immediately off the bus into an area with lots of loot and you'll have instant action until you either die, or kill off every opponent in the area. Sure the movement in Apex Legends is faster and "feels" better to me, but the speed and complexity are actually cons for me as I don't have significant hours to invest whereas in Fortnite I can easily jump in once a week and compete.
You might enjoy the recently re-released and currently available "Late Game Arena" mode which you can start within 1 or 2 minutes and be back in the lobby for another round 1 or 2 minutes later.
It starts you off the bus with a random but complete load out in a small circle with up to 60 (instead of 100) players.
I think one major cause of the decline of arena shooters is those who are very good can expect to never die versus new players, causing a very high Dropout rate. In Battle Royales like Fortnite where a player will eventually get the drop on a better player thanks to the element of surprise, picking off two players already fighting, or better gear.
Titanfall 2 is a somewhat recent example of a way to balance around this, with the more fun to use guns (Kraber, Cold War, Mozambique) but less effective than a hitscan bullet hose like the CAR. This video is a good example of what I mean, giving good players something to do other than racking up kills with meta weapons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5szruNvGT5c
Double Action: Boogaloo, an action movie themed source mod, takes this a step further with score being earned based largely on the weapon being used, which makes running around punching people more effective than say sitting in a corner with a powerful weapon.
one major cause of the decline of arena shooters is those who are very good can expect to never die versus new players, causing a very high Dropout rate
I remember there was an interesting twist on this when, IIRC, Fortnite changed its matching algorithm to more likely place better players together with each other.
A bunch of those players were frustrate-to-outraged over the change. The reason that at least some gave? They were losing too much, and sometimes they don't want all the high adrenaline & stress of competitive matches and just want to relax and have it easy. (Yes, I know there have been more issues and complaints about the details of SBMM in Fortnite, this is just one of them)
It struck me as a uniquely selfish view, as though the entire ecosystem should be structured to their own enjoyment rather than that of typical players. Like if Gary Kasporov wanted to play in the local High School chess leagues and threw a fit when he was told he couldn't.
It's a videogame. It should be structured for enjoyment. If you're not enjoying it, why are you spending your time playing?
There's a whole problem around "people want to beat other actual humans", but in 1:1 competitive games, the average winrate is tautologically always 50%. In Battle Royale, the average winrate is more like 5% - But it's unevenly distributed, so some players are getting 20-30% winrates while others are getting 1%. The game is fun enough to play that people are willing to take 1% winrates, but at some level you want to win - That's where the real fun is. If you never win, the game is not fun. If you win occasionally, against skilled opponents, it feels like a great victory. If you win often, it's relaxing.
(There exist some exceptions to "average winrate" - Asymetric games can have a per-player average winrate above 1, though can just as easily drop below - Dead By Daylight, for example, lists 1.5B "escapes" to 1.8B "sacrifices"[1] - Did the survivor "win" when they escaped? or did the killer "win" when they killed a player? It might make more sense to view it as a set of 1:1s, since each survivor might escape individually, at which case we're back to square 1)
Creating ways for multiple players to win in one given match seems like it could be a way to balance out this issue. For example my team winning, top scoring, having the highest number of kills, the highest KD, scoring the most meta-XP or completing an achievement could all be different win conditions for different players. For example in Team Fortress 2 my team could lose and I could be bottom of the scoreboard and still feel like I won after getting a couple market gardener kills.
Yes, you're right that it's selfish, but that's also fundamental to competition. Winners take the glory that losers don't get. People enjoy winning more than hard work. So do groups of people: sports teams, governments, LLCs, etc.
Gamers often abuse the matchmaking systems to get this result themselves. They make "smurf" accounts in the competitive games they like, underrated for their skill level either from being new accounts or by intentional losing, because it let's them bully less skilled players and avoid being bullied themselves.
I believe there was similar complaints over SBMM in CoD Cold War. I'm mildly sympathetic to the view as playing players of different skill levels can be fun in some some situations, like learning tricks from better players or having a underdog comeback against a better team. Not quite the same highs or lows, if that makes sense. Some implementations seem more like they wind up targeting a 50/50 win rate, resulting in games that seem like the system expects them to be a loss. Overwatch felt closer to this for me.
Overall I think the best solution is probably the old fashioned dedicated server, where people can find a group with a roughly similar playstyle and skill level, but still enough variety to not be overly same-ey per game. I have fond memories of going up against and cursing better server regulars, and then having it flipped around when on their team.
I like the movement in Titanfall 2 a lot. It feels like an evolution of the wall-jumping in UT2k4.
I definitely believe that there's a high dropout rate for areas shooters. My experience was dying a lot until I got better - kind of like Dark Souls for multiplayer. But I'm still surprised that they're not popular anymore given how well single player Dark Souls sells.
Idunno I feel like most of the arena games did a decent job of holding your hand and providing a single player campaign that is good enough to level up skills with a bit. Also back in the day there were a lot more LAN parties, and with the dominance of server browsers it was easier to get into a community that was at a suitable skill level.
But that does mirror my experience with newer games... the matchmaker usually isn't very good and I'm always put into games with players greatly better than me until I git gud.
In Dark Souls, other than a couple bosses which require playing reasonably well the whole way through, most enemies only have a couple gimmicks. You die to that gimmick once, go recover your souls, and then beat the enemy. There's a concrete sense of progress. Humans more likely have a pretty big bag of tricks, or just better fundamentals and map knowledge. I mean over the course of a game in an arena shooter, you'd probably just get incrementally better, right? It is unlikely that the top scorer of the leaderboard only had a couple gimmicks that you have to figure out and then win, haha.
> one major cause of the decline of arena shooters is those who are very good can expect to never die versus new players
Keeping track of MMR/ELO and trying to match players against others of similar skill is online matchmaking 100 (not even 101). What reason could a game possibly have to not implement it, except for possibly "lack of resources" (e.g. someone's indie project)?
It's probably worth tracking and considering as a metric for matchmaking, but a couple potential downsides could be lowering the player pool where other parameters like latency have to be expanded, it having the potential for reverse boosting/smurfing in order to grantee stomping worse players, and at least some people not finding it enjoyable depending on implementation/complaining about "forced" 50:50 winrates.[1][2] Not to say it's necessarily worse than the alternative, but there's at least some discontent with at least some of the implementations.
Overwatch for example doesn't seem to try and fill in say 6 players of a range of 2500-2600 ELO, but will pull something like 2 higher ELO player and 4 low ELO players, partially due to there only being so many higher than average players to matchmake.[3] "Good" players get "bad" players to bring down their winrate and "bad" players get "good" players to bring theirs up. This miss-match might contribute to why some people become so toxic, especially when having fun relies on your teammates so heavily and everyone wants to be the DPS.
Also personally I enjoy playing against better players (within reason) in order to improve my own gameplay via imitation.
Splitgate is a recently popular free to play arena shooter which is basically a Halo knockoff but with the addition of portals like in the game Portal. It's worth checking out.
a recent example of an absolutely great release which flopped hard, diabotical by 2GD and company. Q3 physics with some twists, very limited downtime, as hardcore as it gets, unfortunately no players...
If you want action, drop into an area dense with players (city areas are good, as they have lots of loot). Then, you're either very good and somewhat lucky, or you'll die straight off.
Engaging with others early is recommended for top-tier Fortnite players for building your combat skills.
Everything you are saying about the skill ceiling in Fortnite, I completely agree from watching as well as playing the game over the years.
Another point is that Creative mode in Fortnite is thought to soon allow full Unreal Engine Blueprints and open modding.
The "mode selection" screen recently was turned into Netflix or Hulu like "tiles" with the majority of the tiles being Creative maps made by the community.
Fortnite is making a pretty strong "metaverse" play with Creative and the recently released by Epic Games "Imposters" mode shows that you will soon be able to play nearly any game "in Fortnite".
Yeah, and it's actually a pretty terrible attitude to have if you're into gaming because a large segment of the population thinks all video games are for 12 year olds.
> Fortnite is a game with an incredibly high skill ceiling around its building mechanic. I watched Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell (who is currently a 40-year-old and one of the earliest professional gamers) struggle in deep concentration on trying to incrementally improve his building speed and technique.
When I think of the slogan "Fortnite is for kids" it rings true precisely for this reason. In my "old age" I simply can't keep up with the input rate/reaction time of high-level players.
I think what's even worse about Ready Player One is that everyone seems so bogged down in the minutia of the book of a poorly written 15 year old being in infatuated with a young woman without an eating disorder, they miss the whole distopian aspect of a world run by monopolistic corporations and corrupt governments powerless to stop them.
Doesn't matter. Monopolistic corporations are one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (alongside the climate, income inequality, and social justice) so we must be constantly reminded of them.
That LGBTQ/BIPOC/etc. are oppressed must be fronted as a theme in media, just like the climate, income disparities, and huge corporations controlling everything.
For clarity, which of the following are you saying is a horseman / precondition for dystopia:
A) Social injustices and systematic oppression of marginalized groups.
B) The cultural and media emphasis on these injustices in attempt to dismantle systematic oppression.
I think others are confused whether you are decrying social justice (aka the issues and methods pursued by SJWs and modern progressives) or social injustice (abuses and inequalities in society).
The problem here is the unyielding reality that power corrupts. This is true if this power comes in the form of Government, or Corporations.
Society today has self feeding feedback loop that is going to continue to grow where in government regulations are used to phase out small companies in favor of larger companies, as those companies become corrupt or at best at odds with the population, the population demands they be more heavily regulated which then leads to more power and more corruption in both government and corporations.
The only real solution to this is less powerful more distributed government, but people largely fail recognize this reality instead focusing on "electing the right" people or party.
Power Corrupts, the only way to end corruption is to deny it power.
Government is less powerful nowadays than it has ever been since WW2. I don't think this helped in anything to reduce power of corporations, quite the contrary. Moreover, it is not government that control corporations/rich people, it is the opposite. The fight should be against the source of power, not against their powerless representatives.
>>Government is less powerful nowadays than it has ever been since WW2.
I absolutely disagree with this. Under what metric and what government are you referring to.
US Federal Government has continually and unabatedly has increased and centralized its power since at least the Great Depression, Taking power from local and State governments transferring it to the Federal Government.
Under no metric can one say government in the US is less powerful today.
>The fight should be against the source of power, not against their powerless representatives.
The Source of government power is it monopoly on the initiation of violence, last I check it was only government with the legal power to steal, plunder, arrest, jail, and even kill people that disobey.
Government is more weak now because people have become very distrustful of it (reasonable given Vietnam and the events since). Because of that, the government has a lot less teeth nowadays to implement policies.
I know people talk about things like abortion and vaccine mandates and these issues are extremely important, but IMO they are extremely small scale topics that are more related to current cultural norms than long term policies.
We’re not dealing with the cultural issues of the 1960s these days. What we deal with are the 100 year old bridges, infrastructure projects, processes and programs that previous generations built. To me, these issues are much more important than anything else because they require investment now and yet their returns don’t realize until much later.
Yet our corporate tax rate is the lowest in a very long time and corporate tax evasion is huge, yet the government hasn’t had the support they need to do much about it. At the same time, people are (understandably) hugely distrustful of politicians, but all that does long term is hamper the policy making that we need now to set the stage for our grandchildren.
I think people vehemently taking pride and fighting over a lot of the current issues now is so short sighted.
I see the fundamental issue here. You are looking at from a perspective of what the government should be doing for you, where I do not believe the government should do anything for me.
I look at from what the government is or can do to me, what freedoms they take from me, you mention vaccine mandates and call it a "small issue". However from my perspective it is a HUGE issue, mandates to me are a complete intrusion into my body autonomy, if I loose that I cease being a free individual.
I look at things like the War on Drugs, War on Gun Rights, War on Terror, and 1000's laws that attempt end runs around the constitution and individual rights as an extreme expansion of government power
Where you look at crumbling bridges, a service I do not believe should be in the purview of the federal government at all in the first place, as seen a weakened government.
Roads at best should be a Local and State government issue not Federal Government. The fact that the federal government as taken over that function is an example of Expansion of government power.
> Roads at best should be a Local and State government issue not Federal Government. The fact that the federal government as taken over that function is an example of Expansion of government power.
But that still means the issue is insufficient government strength, though right? Simply at the local and state level rather than the federal level. Perhaps you can reframe it then as a power misallocation, but it still means some government is not powerful enough to get things done.
Nationwide roads are not bad. There are some states that are worse than others for the roads. Most of the big stories however have been about Interstate system bridges which are funded by mostly an 18.4c per gallon tax on gas and a commercial tax on diesel for trucks.
The federal government massively under funds the federal highway system.
That said, Road maintenance is not a government power issue. Road Construction might be if they need to seize land.
The calling out of roads is a red herring, Road account for a infinitesimal part of the budget, even the so called "build back better" plan has very very very little money in it for roads and bridges (about 3% of the spending)
To focus on that as an example of government being weak is ridiculous and completely miss understands the role and scope of government in the lives of everyday people.
If the government privatized all the roads would people that support this argument then claim we are in an stateless society because the government no longer builds the roads...
We can agree that the government is terrible at maintaining roads, however I do not view that as an example of government weakening, it is an example of government incompetence. Incompetence is universal and all encompassing for all government programs
Leaving aside the discussion on infrastructure, you say that vaccine mandates are a "HUGE issue" and use that as evidence for expansion of government power. How about conscription? I would argue forcing people to join an armed conflict is a much bigger transgression on your freedom than a vaccine mandate, would you not? And conscription has not been used by the government since Vietnam.
> Roads at best should be a Local and State government issue not Federal Government. The fact that the federal government as taken over that function is an example of Expansion of government power.
Why? Local government can just as much restrict your individual freedoms (and arguably do) as federal government. I for example very much prefer a federal government building bridges than a local government that tells me what color my house can be or when I can or can't put out christmas decoration.
I think both you and the OP are correct in some way. I would argue, the government has expanded their power (the primary example being surveillance capabilities), on the other hand I also agree with the previous poster, government seems to have much less power to act against large corporations.
I think both you and and the OP are correct on. I think we have seen governments expand
>>How about conscription? I would argue forcing people to join an armed conflict is a much bigger transgression on your freedom than a vaccine mandate, would you not?
First and foremost just because government has not used its power of conscription does not mean it has relinquished said power, in fact it has also expanded that power recently where by Women will not be required to sign up for the daft, aka selective service. Failure to do so has many penalties attached to it.
So this also fails the test on if government is weaker today then since WWII.
Further still even if the selective service was abolished I am not sure that eliminates the idea of conscription given that most of the military is made up of men and women who "choose" that path in life based on economic conditions impart created by governments monetary manipulation beginning in the 1970's [1]
>>Local government can just as much restrict your individual freedoms (and arguably do) as federal government.
While this is true, it is much much much easier to escape oppressive or non-functional local governments than it is to escape federal governments. This is why unpopular laws are often attempted at the federal level because if done at a local or state level people and businesses will just move to a new state or city to escape them, we see this all the time.
So I completely acknowledge that a local government could become just as if not more authoritarian as the federal government but that would still be preferred over a totalitarian nation state. It is far easier to move from California to Texas than it is to move from the US to Europe, or Europe to the US.
I am pro-vaccination, but agree that vaccine mandates, anti-abortion laws, and other mandates that interfere with bodily autonomy are a violation of fundamental human rights.
On the other hand, most of the ensuing consequences are not a violation of rights, but rather a natural result of any choice that puts others at risk.
Those who are anti-vax for any preventable, deadly disease choose their individual freedom over their community's safety. Such is their right. In turn, it is the right of the community to protect itself against the risk these people introduce.
Anyone may drive their car without a seatbelt on your property, but if they wish to use public roads, they must sacrifice a little bit of individual freedom and wear one.
I can see some logic behind wanting roads to be Local and State responsibilities. It would increase the freedom of individual taxpayers. This might result in a net increase in freedom, despite all the inevitable tolls, unstandardized roadways, and stymied arguments between states over who must pay to restore that crumbling interstate bridge. The economic burden would lift off of the taxpayer's shoulders and fall back on the business or person who uses the roads the most, especially those businesses which have profited from being able to cross state lines efficiently –not something most local folks care to encourage through a federal subsidy anyways. Perhaps the framers of the constitution went too far when they suggested that Congress should be able to tax to, "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...to regulate commerce among the several states...to establish post offices and post roads." Most people don't need packages to go straight to their house anyways!
The same goes for public schools, better referred to as the only school a poor person can afford to attend. Communities should be allowed
But one thing is for sure. If public schools exist as the only option for most of their students, two things are true. First, they cannot stop attendees from being smokers or anti-vaxxers out in the world. Second, they absolutely must restrict these individuals from introducing deadly risks into the classroom.
This is best solved at the State and Local level, but in some cases.
These should never be penalties and restrictions against refusal, but instead protections for the community against the resultant risk. It is for the State and Local government to decide how much they accommodate risk-promoting individuals. For example, many schools are providing separate instruction for anti-vaxxers. Good for those emburdened taxpayers, deciding to help the selfish among them!
>>Those who are anti-vax for any preventable, deadly disease choose their individual freedom over their community's safety. Such is their right. In turn, it is the right of the community to protect itself against the risk these people introduce.
False. Vaccination protects you the individual from being infected, thus eliminating the risk the unvaccinated poses to you. Which in turn eliminates your ethical right to impose conditions upon them..
>>Anyone may drive their car without a seatbelt on your property, but if they wish to use public roads, they must sacrifice a little bit of individual freedom and wear one.
This is like wise a TERRIBLE argument, if you support individual liberty (which clearly you do not) then you would understand that my not wearing a seat belt poses no risk to your safety, as such you have no ethical right to impose such a mandate on me.
My insurance company may as part of a private contract I enter into them voluntary but not the government on behalf of "society"
Government is neither my parent nor my master.
In reality the Seat belt mandated was an example of regulatory capture by the insurance companies, it to protect insurance profits not public safety
>>The same goes for public schools, better referred to as the only school a poor person can afford to attend. Communities should be allowed
I take it then you are in favor of School Choice, where each parent is given a voucher for X dollars they can redeem at the school of their choice.
> False. Vaccination protects you the individual from being infected, thus eliminating the risk the unvaccinated poses to you.
False. Vaccinations reduce your ability to catch specific diseases and reduce the probability of enduring symptoms at full strength.
The risks the unvaccinated impose are not eliminated, and the unvaccinated in larger numbers will continue to impose a threat against the people that can't get vaccinated for medical reasons or are immunocompromised.
And you believe both of those are justifications for violating an persons Body Automomy, their human rights not to have medical treatments done to them with out their consent?
That seems to be a very Authoritarian respone, and one that has lead to very dark places through out human history, that is not a power I willing to give to any government
The corner stone of modern medicine is "informed Consent" the keyword there is Consent. You just want to toss away Consent because of (IMO) irrational fear.
The vaccination provides me with adequate protection, I do not need to impose a medical treatment on someone against their will, it is sad that others feel they need to.
> Under what metric and what government are you referring to.
In the metric that matters: who bought the US government. Current US government is bought by corporate interests and does absolutely nothing that goes against big corporate power. This indicates that government is subjugated to the capitalist oligarchy, and the crimes it commits are allowed or supported by the same capitalist oligarchy.
When you concentrate so much power in one place, everyone who craves power will go after it, so its subjugation was inevitable. That's one of the reasons why centralization is bad - and this is completely orthogonal to capitalism and other economic modes. Strong centralized government without capitalism gets you authoritarian (if you're lucky) or totalitarian (if you're not) socialism.
So we have come full circle, and you are basically restating my original thesis.
Government created corporations, corporations are not a free market invention. With out government there can be no corporations as they are simply a fictitious legal entity created by government for the purposes of liability protections, and investment
You seem to have this impression that Corporations hate regulation, this is false, I mean hell Amazon, Facebook, even Google has BEGGED for regulations at various points because the know it kills competition in the market.
But yes, keep blaming capitalism for problems created by government, I am sure more government will solve those problems....
Well, if a "free" market cannot create corporations, then what can it really do? You're talking about a fantasy created by your head, not about a free market.
The argument is that limited liability is something which can only come from a government and not a free market—not companies in general. To a small degree this is probably true, but you can get very close through ordinary contracts. For the most part limited liability only shields you when it comes to your creditors and ordinary business dealings; if you harm someone deliberately, or through negligence, your status as an agent of a limited liability corporation will not prevent you from being found personally liable. And it's not difficult to specify in a contract that any compensation for breach of contract is limited to the assets of the company and not its owners, so that much does not require any government intervention. That leaves a "grey area" limited to accidental harm not involving negligence where the corporation lacks sufficient resources to cover the liability—which is a tiny minority of all cases where corporations probably receive more protection than the corresponding organizations would in a free market, and really not something worth obsessing over.
This may be correct only in the sense that, without a government, there would be zero liability (instead of limited liability) for big companies. After all who could go against, for example, Microsoft if it decided to screw their customers and suppliers?
Even the largest companies are dependent on maintaining their reputations as organizations which uphold their ends of any agreements. A company which no one will contract with might as well not exist. They're not going to just turn outlaw and repudiate their liability as determined by a fair arbitration process; that would be tantamount to corporate suicide.
This is a very simplistic explanation of limited liability, and absolute does not cover all situation for which government shields companies from liability.
For example EPA, and other government agencies have all kinds of regulations that cap, or other shield companies from liabilities preventing ordinary citizens from seeking compensation from the corporations that harmed them.
There is also the endless amount of regulations the protect businesses from consumer backlash which is also a form of liability shield. This is why businesses wanted the government to step in an mandated masks, vaccinations, etc so they would not have make the hard choices for their own business they can stand back and say "it is not us, it is the government making us"
Of course these are just 2 examples there are many many many others
I agree that the government does various other things to shield specific companies from liability in specific circumstances, but these are not inherent in the concept of a limited liability corporation under discussion.
Given that I started this discussion I think I have a understanding of what is under discussion.
The main thesis that was/is being debated is one on corruption and the feedback loop between government and corporations. For which I contend that governments created corporations to shield these entities from liability.
you described one type of liability which excluded other types, I maintain that my original comment has a greater scope
> For which I contend that governments created corporations to shield these entities from liability.
The concept of limited liability for corporations, equitable trusts, and the like predates its official recognition in law. For a long time it was simply taken for granted that creditors could not pursue a business organization's debts against its individual members. The term "corporation" may have been a government invention—originally associated with de jure monopolies—but government did not create the idea of an organization with limited liability. It did extend the concept slightly to include protection against liability for certain kinds of torts, which I agree is not something that could exist in a free market. And of course the idea of a corporation in the original sense, as an organization granted a monopoly on a certain kind of trade, is incompatible with the free market. But the idea that large companies with limited liability (only for contracts, not torts) could not exist in a free market is nonsense. And when it comes to torts, liability ought to rest with the individual(s) whose action or negligence caused the harm, not the shareholders, which makes the lack of limited liability for torts for the owners of a large joint stock company less of a concern; they're not the ones responsible for the harm to begin with.
There's also an inherent contradiction to it all. If you create a world where users can create their own content and have a lot of freedom - they will create lots of digital penises (see the aforementioned Second Life). But if you want an environment where "brands" are comfortable to "engage" with users you need to keep the space as penis-free as possible.
Given Facebook's history of prudishness I suspect their metaverse will be closer to "Fortnite -shooting +ads" rather than Ready Player One.
> But if you want an environment where "brands" are comfortable to "engage" with users you need to keep the space as penis-free as possible.
As always, advertising is the root of all the evils we face today in our technological society. When is this industry gonna be regulated out of existence?
I would kind of prefer a space where I can "engage" with companies/people I'm interested in instead of a space full of peni.
Without being reductive, though: there's obviously a middle-ground here. For example, property/space is "owned" by entities in Second Life and those owners can kick/ban others who aren't behaving from their space. It seems entirely possible for a large, 3D space to have areas where brands (or other entities) can ensure they have a penis-free space without dictating what the rest of the "world" is like.
You can have standards of behavior. This site does. The problem is advertisers imposing their standards on everyone else on pain of demonetization.
It's not just certain websites anymore. The internet is no longer decentralized like it used to be. Independent communities are pretty much dead. Now everything is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, whatever. All of these are advertising companies and they regulate what you can and can't say there. Basically you can't say or do anything that offends these advertisers.
I'd rather have a free internet where I can witness the full spectrum of humanity, good and bad. Not what some company or even some government deems acceptable.
Sticking with the Epic example, a great deal of custom maps made it into regular rotations in the original Unreal Tournament community, and a great many mods were played for a very long time.
But people weren't doing it for money, or "brands" as you say. They were building stuff for their own enjoyment.
A community polices itself, ultimately. If "brands" try to police it, then yes you will get penises and Hitler, because "brands" have assumed liability for said policing and the community itself is rightfully reluctant to help them do their jobs. Penises and Hitler are more often than not a subconscious lashing-out at the "brands."
they will create lots of digital penises (see the aforementioned Second Life)
Actually, they rarely do in Second Life. As I mentioned in a previous posting, in a big 3D world, being a jerk doesn't scale. You can only make trouble locally. Second Life is about the size of Greater London.
Most virtual land is leased to individuals, and the leaseholder can eject or ban annoying visitors. There's also peer pressure. People can and will tell jerks they are being a jerk. This works better in 3D than it does in text forums.
There are a few public places in Second Life that are jerk magnets. These are the "social islands", where new users enter the system after completing the tutorial. They're the bus terminals of Second Life. They're intended as transit points. Most users take one of the portals and leave for a new destination. Some new users, confused about what to do, stay there. Some losers go there to harass new users. They're the same kinds of losers found in real-life bus terminals.
People who write articles about Second Life sometimes don't get past the entry area, and they think that's typical of the whole virtual world. It's more like visiting only the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC and then publishing an article about your trip to New York.
> Most virtual land is leased to individuals, and the leaseholder can eject or ban annoying visitors.
> Second Life is about the size of Greater London.
Both these statements are directly contradicted by https://secondlife.com/land/ which says land is bought from LindenLabs and that SL is not fixed in size but they continuously add more "land" with new users, so anyone can buy land themselves. Premium users get 1000 square meters free.
Linden Lab uses the term "buy" in promotional material, but it's really software as a service, hosted at AWS-West-2, and there's an ongoing monthly charge.
Second Life Main Grid size as of 17 Oct 2021 is 1786.64 square kilometers.[1] The area of Greater London is 1,572 square kilometers.[2] The number of regions changes slightly from day to day, but not by much.
>> If you create a world where users can create their own content and have a lot of freedom.
Wasn't this the promise of the internet? A place where any and all information could be free? Now we have ongoing war over who controls the information and who can see what information when. We have companies that skirt users privacy, manipulate user data and manipulate users so they can monetize them to the fullest.
I don't see how the "metaverse" will be any different than what the internet has become.
I don't know, our own world is pretty much penis-free and brands are confortable here. Freedom doesn't give penis, anonymity give penis, and considering the amount of people that get banned regularly from Facebook for not having a real name...
Now does I believe Facebook has any chance of succeeding in that sphere? Not at all, but it won't be because of virtual penis everywhere. To be frank I don't even believe Facebook will still be relevant in 10 years (and maybe they agree with it and it's why they are trying to push that hard toward something else).
The metaverse stuff is really, really embarrassing. Second Life has existed for 20 years and it's a fun novelty.
As a Second Life user and creator, and client developer, I agree. I think Second Life could be bigger if the technology was improved, and can see ways to do that. But the concept will not scale to Facebook levels. Besides, we have no way to do full dive technology in a home environment. (Location-based, maybe. The Star Wars Experience and omnidirectional treadmills indicate it's not impossible with enough space and machinery.)
What will scale, and I suspect this is Facebook's vision, is AR goggles. Facebook, in your face, all the time. The dystopian vision of this is the "Hyperreality" video.[1] That's all too achievable, and very much in line with Facebook's business model.
Every time you mention this video, I will thank you for posting it!
It is a brilliant distillation of the commercialization of AR, and a "must watch" for all fanboys of the m-word.
Many of us saw the potential of the Internet, the WWW, and have lived long enough to see its trajectory from pure promise and world-changing potential, into mostly commercial milking medium.
I see no reason to assume that Zuck's vision will be any different.
I wrote a blog post recently that touched on this very disappointment with the potential that was the Internet and how I hope that the metaverse is a new opportunity for that early creativity to be unleashed. However, in my mind that will require either decentralization or a different gatekeeper than Facebook.
That's what worries me.
We can't do Ready Player One level immersion yet, but the Hyperreality level of AR is very close. About two more generations of Ray-Ban displays.
And it's so Facebook.
Business opportunity: "METADWEEB.COM" is unregistered.
> Second Life has existed for 20 years and it's a fun novelty.
Eh. My mother learned English in Second Life by paying an actual company that provided classes in Second Life. Instead of a boring chapter with some canned dialogue about, say, an airport scenario, they would take the class to a virtual airport, and roleplay there.
Having a setting where everyone could interact led to organic conversations and seemed much more effective than the textbook approaches.
> The metaverse stuff is really, really embarrassing.
Tangentially: If I remember Snow Crash correctly, the Metaverse/Internet in that novel belonged to only one person – who was the villain of the piece. He wanted to use the metaverse to distribute a “mind virus” which would enslave the world population to him.
Somehow I do think Facebooks PR flunkies have not read the same novel as I.
The metaverse was an open standard in Snowcrash. The villain L. Bob Rife was distributing a mind virus in the metaverse and in real life using a drug, but he didn’t create or own the metaverse.
> The dimensions of the Street are fixed by a protocol, hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Global Multimedia Protocol Group.
> In order to place these things on the Street, they have had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, have had to buy frontage on the Street, get zoning approval, obtain permits, bribe inspectors, the whole bit. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG, which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist.
… but in another way this:
> „I deal in information,” he says to the smarmy, toadying pseudojournalist who “interviews” him. He’s sitting in his office in Houston, looking slicker than normal. “All television going out to consumers throughout the world goes through me. Most of the information transmitted to and from the CIC database passes through my networks. The Metaverse—the entire Street—exists by virtue of a network that I own and control.“
So somewhat the moneychanger-in-Klondike approach.
(“He” = Bob Rife, the villain; CIC = privatised CIA)
I was on the IEEE committee that worked on the "metaverse" standards back in 2007. I gave up after companies added members who pushed their own proprietary visions into the standard that made it meaningless. I have no hope for open standards.
It would be really cool if you could share some of what you guys envisioned for the metaverse at that time and how developments in AR and VR since have lined up with what you foresaw vs diverged, etc.
Simplest example, how does an Avatar from one proprietary system travel to another? You would need a common(open source) format for the avatar metadata (what meshes make it up, how/where are they attached to each other, what animations the avatar has, what textures they have, what shaders they use), a common format for the animations, the meshes, the textures. You also need a common name for avatar actions, walk, run, crawl, wave, etc. Of course everyone wanted their own proprietary format to be the standard. This doesn't even touch on more complex issues like currency, voice communications, video communications.
The problem is everyone has to find value outside of their proprietary systems, which 14 years ago was as much of a problem as it is now. Only outcome I can see is we will live with silo's until we get AI good enough to convert from one systems format to another's.
I believe PKD's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is a better metaphor for what Facebook wants to do with the Metaverse, but it'll end up more like "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Luckey".
A different view: they've lost the narrative and this is a way to reset it. Facebook used to be seen positively by users as it connected the world and brought people together. That's no longer the case. There's been scandal after scandal and users now associate Facebook with all of the negative things Facebook has become.
At this point, they can't win the war on changing people's minds on these issues. So, instead, they need a new narrative to build around. They're ditching the Facebook name and branding, and focusing on a new vision around the Metaverse.
It doesn't matter if this is real or not, or if VR/AR doesn't become the next computing paradigm. The narrative itself is a new, interesting thread to build their brand around.
>They're ditching the Facebook name and branding, and focusing on a new vision around the Metaverse.
I doubt they are ditching it, and instead just abstracting the ownership chain one degree with a holding company and installing a straw man to blame. Watch him copy Larry and Sergei's moves, he may one day realize he held on too long and became something hard to un-become: infamous.
... to his own foundation, which he controls the money of. He even manages the Gates foundation investment decisions. Oh, to be rich enough to fund my own foundation for tax and PR purposes!
Agree with this. To add, I think they initially tried to rebrand as a privacy/security-first company but that, IMO, failed because they didn’t commit to being a radically transparent company. Now they are trying to rebrand as something bigger.
I still think they should just take a leap of faith and become radically transparent.
In a way it does; because if it is widely perceived as phony and yet another distracting ploy, then it much less chance of actually changing the narrative around the reputation of "the company formerly known as FaceBook". In fact, further "sleight of hand" manoeuvres would fortify the dodgy reputation.
They need to convince people to buy into, but the technology itself doesn't need to be real. Not in the 5 year time frame.
Tesla's self-driving product is a great example of this. They got consumers to buy into the vision of self-driving cars way before it was actually ready. This allowed them to sell a lot more cars and pre-orders as well as have a narrative for investors to pump their stock. If they get FSD to work, it will be great. But, even if it never is a successful product, they've benefitted tremendously from the narrative itself and have been able to turn it into sales and cheap capital to invest in the business.
> They need to convince people to buy into, but the technology itself doesn't need to be real.
Maybe. But on the other hand, Tesla was starting out with a _lot_ more user goodwill than FaceBook.
Tesla isn't perfect, they have (IMHO) a good basic product, but with some build quality issues, labour issues, over-promising self-driving issues etc, and yet ... these issues have not shifted the narrative from basically favourable. Part of me still wants one, even though I know it's not going to drive itself. Maybe narratives are sticky?
So, FaceBook is going into this with a massively negative narrative. Shifting it will be hard. We're all really cynical about FaceBook already.
> a horny 15 year old shaving his body hair so he can be more aerodynamic in VR while engaging in extended self-congratulatory monologues about what a Nice Guy he is for not being repulsed by his "Rubenesque" girlfriend while he recites lines from Ghostbusters in a series of completely incoherent "memba this???" vignettes, is not a vision for the future.
Sadly, I think this may be the future where we don’t solve climate change so more and more people just check out from reality.
In Snow Crash, I don’t think people liked the meta verse so much as their life in a shipping container sucked being in the meta verse was better.
Facebook, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Epic, etc, etc are all grabbing onto this metaverse thing and it is super embarassing. They say its about “not one company”. There is only one reason why they all talk about this. Apple. Apple is obviously building its own metaverse and isn’t inviting some of these companies to the party (NVIDIA) or making them pay high fees to join (Microsoft xbox, epic, etc). The kicker is going to be when all of these companies realize metaverse isn’t a thing and Apple wasn’t working on it all along. Instead, Apple builds up AR technology so they can make useful products that actually sell to everyone.
Are they able to control people's transactions? No
They do influence the development of ethereum, however what's great about blockchain is that the community can "fire" the developers and choose new ones if they want. This almost happened after the DAO rollback drama in-fact.
Does someone with no money own any stake in Ethereum? I don't understand your point.
Why would you think Ethereum is supposed to be a socialist's paradise?
I sincerely hope this ages better than the comments rejecting the initial announcement of Dropbox saying no one will need it. I'm afraid that Facebooks best bet to grow even bigger is to try and force themselves in the aspects of our life that are now still mostly "offline". Facebook doesn't have to get everything right from the start it just has to be able to use its resources to outpace the competition.
This is pretty simple. Facebook is taking bets on the next big Platform™ because they cannot afford to miss out on determining what comes after mobile.
Yeah.. I’m a bigger VR fan than most, but nobody has figured out the UX for it or any killer use cases yet. I don’t think Facebook is particularly likely to be able to ship something that can compete with whatever Microsoft or Apple can put out, either
BUT if it only costs then a few dozen billion to take a stab at it, they may as well. We can see what a disaster the mobile platforms locking down Facebook’s spying has been for their ad business
The issue is that we have like 40 years of UX improvement for desktops and now have super high resolution monitors that make that UX experience usable. We have like 5 years for VR and 0 years with a high enough resolution to make it usable. I think once high resolution enough VR comes out it'll pretty much be "oh I don't need monitors anymore, but keyboards/mice are still pretty much ideal for text entry/knowledge work, so lets keep those. probably more standing desks also." The metaverse thing is a solution in search of a problem, and in Facebook's case, clearly a solution in search of more money.
> I don’t think Facebook is particularly likely to be able to ship something that can compete with whatever Microsoft or Apple can put out, either
Yes, but the Oculus Quest 2 is pretty good for the price, and fact that its probably 5 years earlier than anything anyone else is putting out. They're really actually trying it seems, which is pretty welcome.
I honestly think the coolest aspects of it are the simple AR-ish things they're doing (hand tracking, keyboard tracking, the camera based zone for where you can walk, etc).
I don't understand how you say this when Oculus Quest 2 (owned by FB, of course) is probably the best + most popular VR experience. Is it early days? Yes, of course. But this quasi-religious idea that only Apple (or Microsoft? lol..) can create the "2.0" or "3.0" VR experience is a bit lacking in evidence.
Not that I am saying FB will necessarily be the ones, but I think the only honest position is that "the jury's still out" on who owns this one.
On the flip side VR is just 1 UX innovation away from blowing up.
The rate of gains in mobile computing (M1x), mobile vision (pixel 6 pro) and mobile sensors will make the technical and monetary barriers to VR dissapear within the next 5 years.
Whatsapp was a small.iterative change to chat apps and it cost them $20 billion. Spending a few billions to get ahead on the next paradigm in interactive experience simply prudent spending.
Yeah, their usual play would be to see which innovative upstart begins to own the space and buy them out. But with all the antitrust attention and valuations being what they are, they can't expect to do that anymore.
Dunno, the silly stuff is what saves the film for me. Underneath there is just a banal boy-meets-girl story with bad interpreters (classic Hollywood "attractive girl trying to pretend that she's not attractive", among others); but the ridiculous "VR van" and the smorgasbord of nerdpop references make for some decent smiles, if not laughs.
I really hope that VR simply replaces screens and results in us being somewhat less sedentary. You're right that there is a great danger it could replace a lot more of the real world leading to a dystopian nightmare, things like real social interaction, time spent in nature, and making physical things but these are also the things that have been most severely impacted by screens, mass media, and the internet.
AR is probably the bigger threat to social interaction, allowing us to use our phones without even looking down.
VR lends itself more to MMORPG-like experiences, which are quite social. Similarly, Ready Player One didn't lack social interaction or real friendship.
For time spent in nature or making physical things it's probably the other way around. AR could make these things much more accessible (even if "less pure"), while VR doesn't exactly promote them.
> virtual interactions will never be as real as real world interactions
I'm not quite sure what makes an interaction more or less "real". The people on both ends of the interaction are real, so surely if they interact that is a real interaction?
So far all virtual interactions lack some aspect of communication, but with full-body tracking and eye-tracking VR already offers the closest analog to face-to-face communication we have. Mapping all the tiny facial expressions will remain a challenge, but isn't really that far fetched.
Most of our screen time is spent working. 8+ hours staring at a screen is bad enough for our eyes and brains. Imagine how much worse it will be when that screen is an inch from your eyeballs. I highly doubt that VR will be replacing screens for anything but occasional recreation anytime soon.
I don't find there's too much difference between staring at a computer screen and using VR. VR headsets do provide a motivation to create displays that can allow your eyes to focus on closer or further objects though since they aim to reproduce reality and a big sticking point is the fixed focus nature of all current headsets. We'll have to see if there are any announcements at the next Connect event since they've been working on this technology https://uploadvr.com/half-dome-3-prime-time/
I quit reading it when there was an audience cheering the protagonist on for knowing facts about 80s video games, it just made me super embarrassed, in the same way I used to get when I’d watch the show Doug and he’d talk to Patti Mayonnaise, or literally any scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The difference is the evocation of that embarrassment was intended by the authors of the latter two.
I agree. The whole time I was reading the book I was thinking "I'd probably enjoy this more as movie" and I was right (although only a bit, still didn't care much for the movie). Name dropping a bunch of references for references sake is more effective when you can see them.
Also it seemed clear to me that some chapters only existed to provide notes to a future movie production, and didn't need to be infodumped. (One chapter in particular the only thing that actually happened was he was sitting in class and letting his mind wander, IIRC, and did nothing to drive the plot forward, just infodump).
Well, yes. I didn’t cite the specific silly things from the movie I was referring to. But the one from the trailers that always made me groan was the synchronized sitting down in and buckling themselves in for the car chase. Just tins of cringy stuff in the movie. The book was a quick read with silly things but spoke to my childhood so I enjoyed it
Literally what are you on about lol. The Quest 2 was the first breakout VR system and they've already got Quest 3 and AR glasses coming down the pipe. I for one am glad a big company is taking this space seriously.
This. I’ll be the first to signup for the ad free Sony or Microsoft metaverse. I pay for cable and Netflix. I will have no problem paying the equivalent to pop into VR and experience whatever this becomes. My hunch is a hybrid of MUDs, Fortnite, Subreddits, Tinder and Peloton.
It's honestly making me depressed that this recoining of the term metaverse is being taken seriously and is likely to stick the way "cloud" stuck, and worse, that the things development will be driven by a company like FB. I'm not the slightest bit interested in Mark Z's vision of a metaverse. Instead, I am afraid about how many more wrong turns we can take with how we develop our information technology and apply it across society. The FOSS vision of computing where software progress is shared and acts an equalizer, and where people control their softwares behavior is what we need, not new and better attention-whoring surveillance-economy user-hostile junk. (Now in 3D!)
That's what VRChat has been for 4 years now. Though it's less Clubhouse rooms packed with celebrities and clout-chasers, and more improv comedy meets "Humans of New York":
Your comment was going pretty well until you wrote
> Even crazier, most of them approvingly point to the execrable "Ready Player One" as an example of a vision to deliver on. No, I'm sorry, a horny 15 year old shaving his body hair so he can be more aerodynamic in VR while engaging in extended self-congratulatory monologues about what a Nice Guy he is for not being repulsed by his "Rubenesque" girlfriend while he recites lines from Ghostbusters in a series of completely incoherent "memba this???" vignettes, is not a vision for the future.
Is pretty much as far from what actually happens in the book as you can get and completely misses the point on why it's used as a reference point to this metaverse stuff.
The book is even worse than the movie, IMHO. Shamelessly plugging my own article [1] But the movie had the potential to be a cultural game-changer in the same way as Hackers and surely The Matrix had to the adoption and "coolness" of the Internet at the turn of the century.
Hackers was a joke but it has an enduring cultural cachet with IT nerds at least. I hear "hack the planet" and references to "the gibson" all the time still. I don't think I've ever heard a single IRL reference to anything in RPO
There were plenty of references, but they were to the same '80s pop culture that the book worships. Really, all of the VR tech was just a plot device to create a magic world where that Gen X nostalgia never ends.
Ready Player One tells us about technology about as much as Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 does.
Huh? People refer to corny one liners from Arnie movies too, that doesn't mean they had a philosophical impact on the way those people think about guns, or whatever.
Hackers is a hilarious and fun over the top movie but I don't think it changed the way anyone thinks about technology.
Hacker surely was exaggerated, ridiculous, and misinformed but it made tech "cool".
I believe that Metaverse tech, which is currently at the same stage is isolationistic and enjoyed by a fringe of users. Same as the Internet was seen in the early '90s.
It does completely and utterly miss the metaverse reference point. So wrapped up in regurgitating its reddit style take that it overlooks that the virtual world is all the current metaverse building crowd is taking from it. The characters and even the nostalgia are irrelevant for that purpose.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm still waiting on the Segway to revolutionize cities' transportation infrastructure.
>Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder, predicted that in future cities would be designed around the device, while Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, also backed the project publicly and financially.
>John Doerr speculated that it would be more important than the Internet[...] Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that it was "as big a deal as the PC"[...]
The Segway in some ways succeeded, but it came in the form of electric scooters and EUCs. The thesis was right - personal electric vehicles - but you can’t rebuild cities.
It is not a useful analogy in any case, for a variety of reasons. The question you need to be asking is if video games will be able to break into reality once a certain level of capability and UX is met. You may be too old: AR may be a young person’s reality.
That's not really a revolutionary thesis? At least, not to the point where I would hold it up as a prior for AR. Bicycles started appearing in the early 1800s, adding an electric motor was an obvious step once the technology was small enough.
Not to derail the topic at hand, but it was the Segway that proved the concept of dynamic stabilization, which in turn led to drones, bipedal robots, SpaceX’s reentry boosters, and much much more.
My point is that the Segway does seem like a silly device in retrospect, but it was actually profoundly impactful.
No, it was the cheap, good-enough inertial sensors that made that impact. Segway didn't invent them. Segway was beyond all hope when Weird Al made "White and Nerdy"
that’s exactly the the advancement that the segway represents, but while the sensors, actuators, and engineering were notable, it was mainly the advancement of computing power that enabled dynamic stabilization. before the segway, the computations couldn’t be done in real-time without (relatively) very expensive computers.
I wasn't referring to a specific hardware stack when I was referring to AR. I was referring to a software stack which also includes experiences that do not incorporate physical reality. And in my opinion the holographic transparent AR glass tech track is largely a dead end. I think passthrough AR devices like the Lynx-R are the best proxy for future consumer devices that incorporate the physical world.
I feel pretty strongly we'll see a good Passthrough AR device from Apple in 2022.
No, that's just a different kind of blindness: not recognizing your own experiences might not extrapolate to others.
I'm sure there was pockets of people who thought 3D TV was the greatest thing ever, and look how far that technology has come. Alexa and Siri were once upon a time going to be the greatest things ever, until everyone realized how very meh the experience was in practice. Smart watches were similarly going to change the world and have since largely pivoted to being niche products for health nuts.
BTW, I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong! I just don't think there's any reason to believe you're right, either, and a lot of reasons you might not be, including sky-high costs, practical technology limitations, the lack of killer applications, social barriers to adoption (see: Google Glass), etc.
Once I saw a father who was separated from his kids by an ocean get down on the floor with them and draw together in VR, I realized that basic human needs are going to be met by VR technology eventually. The removal of physical proximity as a pre-requisite for social presence is about as disruptive development as they come. It’s not 3D TV, and it’s not about tech: it is about the human experience of being together when physically apart. This is why Facebook is repositioning the whole company behind it. Zuck has understood this for a long time.
> Once I saw a father who was separated from his kids by an ocean get down on the floor with them and draw together in VR
Man, that family must be doing very well for themselves to afford at least two full VR rigs.
Look, if VR kit becomes reasonably priced for average consumers (which also means GPU prices have to come down), maybe I could buy into your touching vision, here.
But we've got a long way to go before this kind of gear is remotely affordable enough to result in the kind of mass adoption required to realize these purported benefits.
As for Zuck, if he sees opportunity here, all the more reason for me to hope it never succeeds...
The point of AR is to layer one's reality with additional information, while the point of VR is to escape reality entirely. I think the latter is more compelling for most people, and the products for VR are here now.
No these terms are going to end up being dropped - the key capability is being able to override visual and auditory perception fully. Physical reality is one of the inputs and can be used or discarded to the degree necessary. For example, a fully immersive VR app that takes into account objects and other things in the room to ensure the virtual experience generated doesn’t lead to a person walking into things. This will, in many cases, be a knob a user can turn or the software will turn on their behalf: how much do I want the real world to leak into my eyeballs and ears? If I am walking down the sidewalk with a friend, we may be experiencing a quiet forest path, with other strangers we pass in the real world appearing as elves or animals to cue us of their presence, but as I approach the curb and go into the street, due to increased hazards, the real world will become more apparent and the forest will dissolve away so I can remain safe while I cross.
>For example, a fully immersive VR app that takes into account objects and other things in the room to ensure the virtual experience generated doesn’t lead to a person walking into things.
This already exists and works very well, in the form of the SteamVR and Oculus VR play area guardian systems:
>If I am walking down the sidewalk with a friend, we may be experiencing a quiet forest path, with other strangers we pass in the real world appearing as elves or animals to cue us of their presence
I’m aware of guardian - it is the hello world example of what I’m talking about. Currently VR apps are not meatspace aware, guardian is just a safety tool.
Not sure how it will be bigger than mobile. In public I won’t be donning one of those headsets, but I will pull my phone out to comment on hacker news, or scroll news articles, etc. I don’t think my scenario is unusual.
Eventually it will be on contact lenses. The point isn’t the hardware but the software stack whose outputs are “all visual and audio sensory perception” and inputs are “all body state.” This will be the all enveloping abstraction of interactive computing. Everything we have today will run within that context. The headsets today are a transitional tech and will also on their own get very small, thin, light, and culturally accepted to wear in public. And no, they won’t be ugly or hide your face.
For many, not being seen via an avatar will be akin to feeling unclothed. It will be strange and unlikely to be fully accepted by people who are above a certain age.
that's sorta like saying 'I can't see how computers will be bigger than pen and paper. In public I won't be using a mainframe computer, but I will pull my journal out of my pocket to take a note'.
the implicit premise is that the category (AR/VR/XR) remains the same but the technology improves until its better for pretty much all usecases we currently use 2d screens.
I can see your point, and admittedly I see how mine might come across a bit heavy on the Luddite. That said, I feel like this is one of those things that has been “just around the corner” for some time.
that's fair, and it does remain to be seen if the 'truly good VR/AR' is a few years away or several decades. I'm not optimistic about solving for virtual 'touch'/kinesthetic sense.
No matter how good VR is it still is no competition for the real, and will never be.
It might be a nice entertainment gadget or working tool but that's all, anyone believing in the VR revolution is a fool. The TV or internet could have been amazing things, but we all see how it turned out: ad infected, mega corps ruled, consumerism oriented, echo chambers of the dominant ideology
I work on a social VR product for learning foreign language. Yes, VR language immersions are never going to replace real life, in-country immersions. But moving halfway around the world to study a language is just not a realistic prospect for the vast majority of people. For one, it's expensive and extremely disruptive to the rest of your life. Our students aren't college students who can take a semester abroad, they're professionals already in their careers, with kids and mortgages. For another, most of our students are studying languages where they wouldn't be allowed to move to the target country--either by the target country itself or the students' employers.
Man, that’s a great point. Most of the commenters here can afford to just hop on a plane wherever they want with their limited vacation time, and of course a real trip is usually going to be better than a VR one.
Your argument falls in the "nice gadget" category. Learning foreign languages ranks kind of high on the "privilege" ladder btw, it's very far from a "need", plus you don't need VR for that, we have video chats, youtube, instant translation tools, &c.
My argument is an example, from which one should be able to easily imagine other scenarios. A general class of "Remove artificial geographic constraints from knowledge work".
And our students do "need" foreign language training. This isn't something they're doing for funsies; their employers are paying for them to take the classes. These aren't executives looking to wine-and-dine business partners in China, these are diplomats, foreign aid workers, and intelligence analysts.
And these other methods aren't working to meet the demand for fluent speakers. You're not going to learn how to tell an old, former-Soviet base commander, "show me the nuclear storage facility access control logs now or expect some UN sanctions" from YouTube.
There is an international ranking schedule for foreign language acquisition, ILR Level, that roughly quantifies a person's fluency. Untrained, you start at 0. Most people get to level 1 by the time they finish college. Level 2 is basically competent enough to survive without a translator in-country. Level 3 is considered the minimum to be "competent enough to do work". There are a few higher levels, but everyone's goal is to get to 3.
With current training methods, almost anyone can be trained to level 2, 2.5, but there is still a big gap between what those people are capable of doing and where they need to be to do their jobs. We need more 3s and just doing "video chat" isn't working. Think, "the US military just sunk a cool million into your education to be able to translate intelligence on the fly, you better start showing results."
But there is some evidence that VR not only improves learning in general, but that it's particularly suited for language acquisition. UMD for example has a body of research they've been developing over the last 20+ years that shows there are real, psychological changes to people who perform language training in VR versus traditional and even flat screen simulations.
I can't think of a worse company than Facebook to be the first one to create a legit metaverse. The appeal of the VR in Ready Player One was that it was created from a core of sincerity. Facebook's approach would create it around their business model, which is arguably poisonous.
An NFT can represent any digital asset. Digital assets are a key part of any "metaverse".
If NFTs become the standard then you could theoretically take your assets off Facebook into another Metaverse without losing your items. NFTs help avoid lock-in and put pressure on Facebook to play nicely with others.
I am shocked how this stuff hasn't made its way into HN yet. Everyone PLEASE DYOR and start by researching Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, you can spread out your NFT horizons from there.
Its especially ironic how none of the CEOs seem to recognize the entire story of Ready Player One being about an evil corporation desiring complete control of the "metaverse" in order to push advertisements, while enslaving people in virtual to pay their debts.
From my perspective it seems inevitable that somebody will create a killer VR app/world. If FB is really dedicating a large amount of resources to this, I'm sure they will be successful at some point. Their budget can be orders of magnitude higher than even the most expensive game ever developed, if they wanted to. I just hope they take cues from game designers and focus on making it "fun".
I mean, a VR office could conceivably be a new normal setting to perform work in. The technology is not far enough along at this point though... imagine trying to code on a virtual screen in low res, hah. And many prefer the privacy of the new remote work normal, and probably wouldn't want to be "physically" present, even if in virtual form.
Haven't really followed what their intention is with metaverse, but I imagine they are trying to build an actual endless/seamless virtual world where you'd spent a large amount of time in, and possibly even work in.
But again, gonna be kinda hard to make it that engaging with current tech. And the amount of assets that would need to be created is enormous.
I don't think there is any chance of Facebook becoming the company that hosts the most widely popular metaverse in 20 years.
Facebook, under Zuck's leadership in particular, is driven by greed and control. They repeatedly demonstrate a willingness to make user hostile decisions for short term gain: they build to commodify their audience, not to satisfy them.
Times Square Wal-Mart is Mark's idea of a virtual wonderland, and that's why it won't win.
The successful metaverse will be led by someone with the spirit of Willy Wonka - it must be whimsical and empowering and sincere. Facebook simply lacks that spirit and heart, and I see no path to them changing company culture that drastically.
Pokemon GO was a hit because of Pokemon, not be because of AR. Players will use the AR feature one time and then disable it and play like there's no AR in the app at all.
It's more than embarrassing, it's in my opinion kind of crazy. Zuckerberg seems to be obsessed with "governing people" and "leadership", he mentions this in almost every interview. He really seems to believe that he's "governing people" on Facebook and that there will be even more governing to do in the "metaverse."
I'm not blaming him personally, he might just have happened to have surrounded himself with a few too many people who lost touch with reality, but the metaverse and these plans to "govern people" seems to have gotten to his head. He sounds more and more like a lunatic.
Not enough people are interested in virtual reality and even less people are going to be interested in one based on Facebook's arbitrary and vague rules (aka "governing people") and their algorithmic discrimination. Not to forget about actual governments who will also have a few things to say about some aspects of the planned metaverse such as its economy and payment systems.
>The metaverse stuff is really, really embarrassing.
I suspect it's less about a new incarnation of second life, and more about what happens when we've all got access to an AR layer while traversing the real world.
AR is an obvious candidate for the next platform and superior UX (if the hardware is possible) when it's ready.
"Metaverse" branding doesn't matter, UI in line of site and ability to manipulate things in the real world just by looking at them and gesturing has obvious massive potential and appeal.
I don't care about Ready Player One and the fiction stuff is irrelevant.
The ability to have interactive virtual overlays in the real world is big, the potential for new things given that platform is enormous. If you think that hardware is impossible that's one thing, but to not even see it is just short sighted and a classic knee-jerk HN dismissal that can end up a joke ten years later.
I think it's either an embarrassingly stupid business move made by execs who have no idea what they are doing (best case). Or worse it'll be a success and make Facebook an even more dystopian force. The potential for VR/AR to deeply damage society and sow discord is huge...assuming it's ever a thing.
The concept of a "metaverse" comes from Snow Crash, which was a more realistic and cooler depiction of large-scale networked VR environments -- cooler because it reflected the early 90s internet, full of freaks and weirdos.
If we're going to have a real metaverse, can it be the one from Croquet? I've always liked saying Alan Kay was building the metaverse, but only as a stepping stone to his true goal of building the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age...
Seems to me like a play for patents -- the more they move forward in this direction, and file patents that are crucial for doing so, the more shareholders can profit off of the inevitability that something like a Ready Player One dystopia is indeed in America's near future. The embarrassment is the society that can't take ourselves off that track. Which I guess is just another way of saying 'don't hate the player, hate the game.'
Once somebody figures how to emulate all the five senses in VR, it's going to happen. Drink whatever you want, eat whatever you want, feel whatever you want, for as long as you want, from your La-Z-Boy? The whole world will rush to virtual reality.
I agree that a VR helmet is not going to significantly change anything, but one day we will absolutely plug ourselves into the matrix and never leave.
>just like adding branded content and sticking it in the skeletal husk of a bad shooter game for 12 year olds wasn't an improvement when Epic did it.
I'm pretty sure it was though. Fortnite is one of the most popular games in history and is single handedly responsible for Epic's financial success over the last 5 years.
In the context of a consumer product, not really. Everything is always a tradeoff to optimize for multiple factors. Mcdonalds may not be the highest quality, but they've sold billions of hamburgers for a reason. Their product is what the market wants, with enough acceptable tradeoffs to operate at a scale that fulfills demand.
I'm not going to bash anyone interested in shaking up the status quo of the internet, cause a Times Square Wal-Mart is what we have right now and it seems to be getting worse.
This is a bit like saying 'vacuum tubes are too fragile and always break, computers will never succeed'.
That being said, I do think FB will succeed on the hardware front but flounder on the software front unless they somehow completely reinvent themselves and stop being so "Disney".
My point was that your comment "VR makes most people nauseous" is criticizing the metaphorical vacuum tubes of VR/AR - IE: current VR/AR implementation != all possible VR/AR implementation. So you're criticizing the growing pains period but the medium itself doesn't necessitate nausea. And in fact there has already been tremendous advances in both hardware and software to mitigate nausea.
The guy has a point, any experiences that move you around will make almost everyone who tries them sick after 10 to 30 minutes. Nobody’s found a perfect solution yet.
On the upside, even a boring “stand around and talk to people” game will be more immersive and fun in VR than most action-packed run-and-gun games without it
I've never had issues with VR even with 8hour sessions. I have an HTV Vive original pre-order. There were some very early games with bad locomotion systems that could cause motion sickness but I haven't seen any of those since the very very early days of VR. There are people who have spent 24hr+ in VR without issue. Not sure what you are basing your comments on.
Modern VR standards are even better than what it was with my older PC setup (GTX 970 + vive). Way larger FoV and better PPI screens are making a big difference
I think it's a bit like complaining that GUI operating systems aren't a good fit for text adventure games. It's a completely different paradigm. Shifts in dominant genres should be expected.
That’s absolutely false. Many people do experience discomfort when they are new to VR, but with time most people adjust, and are able to play for any amount of time with no negative side effects.
IMO it's pretty disingenuous to just casually gloss over the fact that most people have to carefully condition themselves to get used to VR motion
If you try to just power through the sim sickness, you can reprogram your body to get sick when you so much as look at a headset
The VR enthusiast community is laughably tiny compared to the gaming/computing/mobile user world at large, and it's self-selected down to people who were either immune to sim sickness or willing to put in the effort to get past it
I dunno, I don't have any numbers on hand, but it's pretty blatantly obvious that everyone gets sick in VR when they move around. I've never seen someone claim otherwise except this dude and a few random wackos on VR subreddits.
https://who.is/whois/meta.com - updated yesterday
https://who.is/whois/meta.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(academic_company)