I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble.
Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll be different because people have to buy an expensive and uncomfortable VR headset?
I seriously wonder whether there will be a cultural rebellion against the digitization of our lived experiences. It seems like everyone (even the youngest who grew up in a fully digital world) feels like we're on this path to black mirror dystopia, but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat it. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road there's a cultural movement that decides "we're opting out of all this"
A bunch of episodes of Black Mirror aren't really even about the future. They're criticism of things right now (or, rather, when the episodes were made).
I took a course in university on sci-fi and the professor said that all science fiction was a reflection of the moment it was written, and had almost nothing to do with prognosticating.
“The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like—what’s going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don’t tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.”
How many video game developers rarely play video games? I bet most game devs don't count gaming amongst their defining interests.
There seems to be a majority swath of humans who get hooked on unproductive hobbies. Drugs, partying, social media, video games. I'm talking HOOKED, dreams framed by the TikTok UI, taking work off to watch a Counterstrike tournament, weeks of back-to-back hangovers.
I mean, I've been there. I too hear the lull of chemical dissociation.
What I'm wondering is, what happens as that lullaby gets louder and brighter and more attractive, in sync with people working less and less as automation forms a mechanical sheen on all economic activity?
I'll just toss this one I caught as I wrote that: You think the opioid epidemic is bad? Is it better or worse for us that our addictions can't annihilate us in an instant? How many people are in their rooms right now, alone, entangled in expensive parasocial relationships and expensive video game habits?
What if people aren't stealing and robbing shit for drugs anymore, but are doing it to donate to their favorite streamer, or buy the new Supreme hoodie or buy a PS5?
I mostly agree with this, but I think it's more subtle.
Every game developer I've ever known, which is a good number, was a hard core gamer who loved games. Most of them really reduced it as they get older - not just because as you get older you just don't have the time or energy, but because doing something for work just kind of ruins it for most people.
That last bit is very common: my wife is a professional artist and doing that as her profession has just about ruined her interest in painting and drawing despite doing it for a lifetime. I was a hobby coder my entire life until mid-way through my career. Now although I sometimes do short stints, I gotta say, it is kind of ruined for me.
So, sure, you are probably right, but probably for the wrong reasons.
As for "unproductive hobbies" the reality is that all hobbies are basically unproductive. The stained glass artists I know struggle to give away their output because there's only so much anyone around them wants, but their hobby is to produce it. Ditto the painters, woodworkers, etc. Yes, these can give you practice with useful skills, but they're still basically generating a waste product, and if you try selling it, on average, you're just trying to mitigate your losses, piece work is almost never financially sound. This is all to say that one shouldn't view hobbies as "productive" or not, you should view them as providing benefits not directly related to the activity. Hiking, running, cycling, weightlifting - these are all "unproductive" but they are useful practices. Games aren't devoid of value in this sense - hand eye coordination, rapid tactical thinking, etc. are all skills you develop and maintain with practice.
That said, I'm 100% on board with you about the parasocial relationship thing, but to note the obvious, the real elephant in that particular room is social networking in all of its guises. Video games aren't even close, and, if anything, are probably closer to the "real relationship" end of the spectrum than any other online endeavor. I know many gamer groups who have transitioned to real life on multiple dimensions, far more than "hey these are the people i interacted with on Twitter" and other purely ephemeral constructs.
I wouldn’t consider “Hiking, running, cycling, weightlifting” to be “unproductive”. It is pretty well established that regular exercise routines improve your quality of life in many physical and mental ways.
You are correct that social media and online gaming are not the same: I have heard numerous examples of online gaming friendships transforming into real life friendships, but I have never heard of people on twitter/tick-tock/etc forming real life relationships.
I believe that gaming is fine in moderation, but as soon as gaming starts to negatively impact other aspects of your life — personal health, relationships, work/study commitments — you need to cut back. I have seen numerous people squander away their education and futures to video games. I’m guilty myself of letting video games negatively impact my life and it can be hard to find the right balance.
Well John Romero got fired for slacking off on development of Quake 1 playing Doom deathmatches all the time. So I can imagine some devs love the games they make but probably not that many.
I think the backlash against Google Glass might have subsided if it had been a useful device that was widely available. (Of course, the wide release version was on watches)
As it was, wearing a Google Glass was making several statements: I have acccess to this special thing; I'm going to wear this mostly useless object in a highly visible location on my body; and if actually using it in public, I don't care that having a one-sided conversation with a computer annoys those around me (kind of like talking on a phone/bluetooth headset, but worse). Maybe the camera was the anchor for the issue, but I don't think it was the real issue; I don't recall seeing articles about people being shunned for wearing the Snapchat camera glasses.
If/when we have AR glasses that are reasonably priced and genuinely useful, I'm inclined to think they'll be broadly accepted. Yes, there will be people including some of the people reading this who will be upset about the panopticon-like invasion of privacy associated with always-on cameras everywhere. But they'll be largely ignored just as they are today with respect to video/photos being just a smartphone in the pocket away.
It's easy to forget that less than 20 years ago taking a photo, much less a video, was a pretty deliberate act involving equipment that most people didn't routinely carry with them.
Google has lame boring marketing and is just not fashionable enough at this moment, just wait until Apple iGlass ProPrivacy™ appears on the market, lines at the Apple Store will be record long and owners will wear it with pride and sense of accomplishment/superiority.
I mean, if it's the same product, more or less an Apple Watch you have to strain your eyes to see, I expect it'll have the same lack of customers, even if Apple invents it. Maybe with less backlash.
Google Glass was just too sudden a change. Another decade of eroding our collective sense of privacy and boundaries means it might be more successful now than it was back when we still had some expectation of personal privacy.
anecdotal, but I went to a concert recently and was amazed/thrilled to see maybe five or ten isolated instances of someone pulling out their phone to take a few second clip for insta or snapchat or whatever
5-ish years ago it would be common to see 25-45% of the crowd with their phones up and out recording almost the entire show
I'll gladly be part of a movement to opt out of this. I tend to be very selective about technologies I let into my life. My wife hasn't always shared my view, but the metaverse she agreed doesn't need to be part of our lives.
I hope the bifurcation is real because that will make it easier to keep the metaverse separate from the real world.
It's less niche than I would have guessed--about 5% of industry revenue and about the same as CDs (which surprised me a bit given that I still sometimes buy CDs and haven't bough vinyl for decades). Still, that's revenue not listens or anything like that so that's still pretty much a rounding error.
It is extremely niche because the relevant measure isn't revenue, it is "hours of music listened to". And the amount of hours spent listening to vinyl as a proportion of all music listened to is vanishingly small, smaller than it has ever been. A hipster resurgence as a novelty collectors item doesn't change that.
Ebooks never gained the completely dominant position that digital photography and music did. And even those among us who prefer ebooks for fiction consisting of flowing text still prefer printed books for a lot of more reference-oriented or "coffee table" books.
As someone who went all-in on ebooks for 10+Y, having bought a kindle immediately and used it extensively, I've gone back to books. The kindle experience just isn't as good and it took me a long time to simply accept that.
I like the Kindle especially for travel. Lighting in hotel rooms/planes often is less than ideal and it's great to not be forced to choose a book I'm going to be in the mood to read on a given trip. But, for the most part, I don't like cookbooks and other essentially reference books on Kindle/iPad. (I still buy them sometimes but mostly because I got some sort of $1/$2 deal.)
Yeah, kindle is only for travel and for when I'm living abroad in places where I just can't get access to non-mass market paperbacks and so need to order from the e-book store
Slow. So awful for going back and forth that I stopped doing it. Smaller display than I’d like. I have special hate for the touchscreen kindles, I really prefer my 1st hen kindle to the current version. Actual forward and backward buttons.
I'm going to call it now: The zeitgeist of the 2030s and 2040s will be a focus on biology to contrast with technology. So instead of trying to eliminate humans from the equation, we'll see a group of people who take parts of tech they like (such as systems thinking) and focus it on human improvement instead of external tech.
Think genetically engineered humans vs. cyborgs; there will be a focus on holistic 'working with' human impulses and neurology instead of 'what can the tech accomplish'?
This is starting to happen now, and we're working on it related to neurology and improving sleep at https://soundmind.co
Cyborg always has the feeling of a severely augmented and strange human. I'm surprised by the number of people who have no interest in Neuralink, and say they wouldn't go near it.
As we're seeing the mental health benefits of sometimes turning off our digital devices and focusing on ourselves, I think this will drive the future of us not being always connected, but being connected when we want to.
I think what you're pointing to is correct, Augmented Humanity, rather than Augmented Reality.
I know just enough about that shit to not want to go ANYWHERE near Neuralink or the 'Metaverse'.
Which is sad because I love the idea so much. Plus I remember the Web before advertising, I don't even want to think of what they'd do with NL or the Metaverse. I can see them doing things like trigging shots of adrenaline so I feel appropriately angry viewing 'Red/Blue Team Bad' video stories.
Regarding the zeitgeist change: don’t you think that expectation windows for results based on success of disrupting markets by tech have shrunk to a point where it’s not possible for a more long term and complex projects (biology being one of them) to attract enough talent? I feel like such changes are only possible based on big crises
I do, but I also think that we'll see this biology flowering from non-tech people who have some tech skill. So it won't be tech companies moving into biology space, it will be lab workers and students who know some coding realizing that 'hey, I could do this thing using my phone' and sharing with each other. I also think that as the sector grows and we see more people trained, we'll see a medical research boom the same way we saw a boom in devs in the 90s so the talent base will expand a LOT.
The expectation windows are set by investors, and I think biology has a good shot at being able to get resources/funding without having to rely too heavily on VCs or investors (think government and academic funding). Likewise, there's no Microsoft, Google, or FB waiting in the wings to buy up/bury any advancements.
I also think we're overdue for some major social changes because our current ways aren't sustainable (regardless of what you think the problems are + what 'side' you're on, I think we can almost all agree that this can't continue). The main problem I think IS that we're too short sighted currently, and we'll have to correct that, so I do think long-term projects will become easier in the early 2030s.
I think you have a point, I am betting on human-to-human occupations, especially psychology, gender roles being shrunk might bring some new ideas and shake the field up.
> I also think we're overdue for some major social changes because our current ways aren't sustainable (regardless of what you think the problems are + what 'side' you're on, I think we can almost all agree that this can't continue).
I'd love to hear more of your POV here - I tend to think things are....pretty okay? In the grand scheme of things?
In the grand scheme of things, they are. (I mean, for most of human existence we barely had any medicine and as a disabled person, I do love me some medical science).
Change, however, doesn't come based on how good things are. It comes based on what people expect from the future, and right now we have a system that more and more people aren't trusting to be there in a few decades.
From a domestic American POV, we need to address things like retirement funding, healthcare, and political corruption as well as our lack of social cohesion. Imagine a pandemic like COVID but slightly deadlier in the late 2020s; it'd be absurd because EVERYBODY'S blown their good will at this point. Likewise, our supply chains and economy clearly don't have key risk redundancies built in. On a more sociological scale, I note that more and more people are beginning to feel like it doesn't matter what they do because the system will ALWAYS fuck them, and stripping people of agency doesn't lead to good, stable societies.
On a global scale, since the start of the Industrial Revolution we've focused on growth while disregarding externalities and we really need to stop that. Likewise, since America is going to probably go down (or at least knock itself out of the unipolar world) in the 2030s/2040s, I also imagine there will be a backlash to the American Era, including in cultural values, which will also result in big changes.
This is a fascinating question, because my first thought was 'maybe they would be' but as I thought about it more, I don't think so for two main reasons:
1.) Geopolitics. I don't imagine this biological cultural flowering to come from the First or Developed Worlds. If I had to guess, I'd say India or Africa, because they have a ton of manufacturing going on (and therefore a bunch of practical knowledge) AND governments that both a.) don't give a shit about copyright or property law outside of their borders and b.) are incentivized to make sure it stays that way.
For example, Moderna could try to bury an Indian biotech company, but how? Literally. So what if they're infringing on one of your patents in making their 'turn your eyes purple' serum? They don't care.
And for buying, yes, they could, but the regulatory differences between acting in the developed versus developing world are huge, so it would be purchasing a company solely to keep the product off the market/so it isn't approved in the developed world before their own version. Okay, so they buy the company... and all the foreigners quit and start a new one. Or they don't, but they tell their friends so their friends who didn't sign an NDA do it and then hire them for something 'unrelated'.
2.) Vertical integration or lack thereof. You know how FB is particularly insidious in the Third World? How it pushes WA, for example? Good luck developing anything tech wise without being bought out or discovered when all of your communication tools are made by the people who have an interest in burying you. The tech companies have done a very good job at integrating themselves into logistics at a base level on a global scale. Pharma, on the other hand, doesn't have this advantage. If Google or Apple ARE recording all my phone calls, they aren't giving that data to Moderna. They'd rather keep it and later try to poach the medical-data business from Moderna or fund some SaaS company.
I did not see this reply until now because I'm bad at HN, but I appreciate the effort you put into it. It's really interesting to think about, but I'm not sure I can engage much because I'm pretty out of my depth!
Does point 1) not apply to tech innovations outside the global north as well? I can definitely see your points about patent infringement being relevant to the Chinese tech ecosystem.
Vertical integration is a really interesting point. It's easy to believe that monopolies are all-powerful, but there's plenty of room in the "margins" in industries which aren't (yet) built on pervasive surveillance.
What makes the difference in my mind is that AR technology is gaining steam. There's a chance that we'll have a new desire to link the spatial, physical world to spatial and virtual interactions.
The push to own the metaverse seems like a land grand.
It seems like AR is the key to making the Metaverse a thing. VR is neat, but the current experience reminds me of 3D TVs from a few years back - gimmicky and awkward. Even if parts of the physical and digital worlds bifurcate, I still think there's a lot more AR could do by linking them and making it possible to build a digital world on top of the physical.
The Daemon series by Daniel Suarez showed an impressive vision of what AR could do in a not-so-distant future where online information is linked to physical entities. The things to make it work like haptic suits or lightweight AR classes with overlays and a HUD are getting fairly close technology-wise.
Honestly I doubt that will happen. Every glitzy ad showing the possibilities of AR are a lie... we will only have that sci-fi world when holography reaches mainstream adoption in the way we see it in sci-fi
Quite a few people interested in the circles I walk in, but pretty much everyone also agrees that the technology just isn't particularly close to viable yet (cost is high, general usability is low). And that's ignoring the google-glass style problems there would be with general use.
Microsoft is pushing Hololens dev, Meta is pushing AR features into the Quest, Snap just put out some AR spectacles. There's development interest but the consumer devices aren't quite ready yet so there's no real market quite yet.
Hasn’t VR been gaining steam for a while now, as in, never coming around? All I see are companies massively pushing for it, but I don’t see any real take up. Anything that I’ve seen seems like a gimmick and not something that will actually stick or resonate with people.
There's ~15 million VR units sitting around and there's steady growth. That's much more than the zero from a few years ago but you're right its not massive popular. There's just enough that some VR game devs are finding success but by no means is it a gold rush and I don't mean to imply that.
I think sitting around is the key point. :P I have a PlayStation VR headset that does just that. There was only one game that ever actually drew me in with VR, and that was Thumper.
My theory is that I think the companies that sell these things are just really good at hyping and selling the headsets. I just don't see what the end game is. It's certainly possible that I'm wrong about all this though.
> Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble.
A lot of dumb things happened in the past, especially with companies that tried to substitute virtual scarcity speculation for an actual business model.
It's easy to mock them for how ridiculous it all is, but I don't see any evidence that Meta is charging down a path of repeating all of the failed business models of years past.
I think a lot of the old timers who have seen hype cycles of past businesses are projecting too much of those old, failed businesses on to this new wave of activities. Everyone is so busy speculating that Meta is going to fail that it's hard to actually understand what they're doing or what their business model really is.
Regardless, it's trivial to see that video games and VR of 2021 are nothing like the Second Life of almost two decades prior. Back then, video games and even computer-based entertainment were a niche hobby. Today, video games are everywhere, VR is cheap, and everyone is already attached to their phones 24/7. I'm interested to see where this goes.
Roblox seems to be doing alright with virtual scarcity, with designer avatar accessories going for $15,000 in some cases. (Roblox takes at 30% cut of the transaction.) I'm not exactly sure why they're successful with it, but just because Blizzard failed at a real life auction house doesn't mean everyone failed at it.
Good VR headsets are cheaper than computers today and cheaper than computers were back when Second Life was getting started. People almost universally own smartphones which can support a LOT of additional activity.
That's not to say that the metaverse will take off (I think it still lacks a compelling use case), but many of the parameters have changed.
Anyone remember LambdaMoo? This has all happened before.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
I think focusing on stupid looking headsets misses the author's point. He's looking toward a decentralization of thought aggregation and how that will impact the 'real world'. Maybe it'll be similar when cable happened and we all stopped watching the same three channels?
Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll be different because people have to buy an expensive and uncomfortable VR headset?