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The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

nianticlabs.com

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Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#71

Post by XorNot »

wyager wrote: post #38
spoonjim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why escaping reality is bad. Is theatre bad? Books? Movies? Providing a good escape from reality can lower people’s demands of reality, which can lead to a more sustainable future. If people can eat beans but be tricked into thinking they’re eating steak it can improve health and lower emissions, for example.

I don’t know about “bad”, but any fictional or surrogate reality certainly seems to me like a vice. Whether or not it’s bad depends on if you abuse it too much.

I don't know why you're arguing reality is so great though. Other then us needing to exist in it, there's nothing here to recommend it. Hence caves and then houses.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#72

Post by CryptoPunk »

I think the public blockchain is the only basis of a non-dystopian metaverse. With it, ownership over digital assets can transcend any specific proprietary platform. For that to happen, a general consensus needs to emerge that the public blockchain is the canonical source of truth on ownership of works of arts, and a convention needs to be established where platforms respect blockchain-based claims and reserve for possessors of such claims exclusive use of the respective artwork.

Without an open ownership system, people will be compelled by market forces to converge to using a single proprietary platform that can provide a consistent account and set of rules on claims to digital property, and this platform being mutable by the proprietor, will make that proprietor inordinately powerful in a way that disfigures the socioeconomic landscape to make it less functional.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#74

Post by vkou »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #69
vkou wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is interesting about the building next to you So, it'll tell me that it has a Zappos™, a Coke™ Vending machine, a Jamba Juice™, and a Wells Fargo™ ATM, with an average retailer Yelp™ score of 4.2?

As far as I know, Zappos has no physical locations.

They do.

And if they didn't, AR can also 'solve' that problem, by putting their virtual storefront in front of your eyeballs.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#75

Post by goatlover »

Barrin92 wrote: post #34
spoonjim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why escaping reality is bad. Is theatre bad? Books? Movies? Providing a good escape from reality can lower people’s demands of reality, which can lead to a more sustainable future. If people can eat beans but be tricked into thinking they’re eating steak it can improve health and lower emissions, for example.

Trying to trick people into desired behaviour through escapism rather than creating a shared culture of stewardship, responsibility and self-control is exactly what a dystopian nightmare looks like. I think you should look at the roots of theatre. The principal function of theatre wasn't escapism but Catharsis , the cleansing of one's emotional state to be able to re-engage with the world and to renew and restore one…

And books, tv, gaming, rock and roll? These complaints don’t seem all that new. People do like escaping. I certainly don’t want to spend all my time socializing, and when I do, I prefer part of it to be digital.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#76

Post by jay_kyburz »

api wrote: post #60
accountofme wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use it then?

More money will allow them to develop vastly superior UI and user experience, better graphics, etc., and it will suck so many users from anything else that the other things will become tiny niche environments or die. Just like what happened with everything else including most of the open web.

Yeah but, all the interesting stuff happens in the niche corners of the internet.

Let the mainstream play Fortnite, we'll enjoy better games that nobody knows about.

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#77

Post by cloudking »

hanniabu wrote: post #68
TechBro8615 wrote: post #32

Surely if any metaverse is to truly compete with reality, we’ll need to build it on a federated fabric. Sometimes I wonder if people would invent the internet of today by modeling a company after Cloudflare. The success and resiliency of the Internet comes not from the strength of a single company, but from its focus on federation and interoperability. No single company could build the Internet and be successful, and…

> I’m surprised there aren’t more “metaverse for crypto” initiatives There's a few projects working in this space, but individual components. The NFT space will converge onto what I believe will be the winning metaverse vision. Participants own the IP, the land, the characters, the tools, the weapons, etc.

https://decentraland.org/

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#78

Post by ursugardaddy »

kmeisthax wrote: post #40
shock-value wrote: post #13

Whenever a company describes their vision of "the metaverse" (or I guess "reality channels" in this case) it's always exceedingly vague and never really explains in concrete terms what sort of utility or entertainment a person would derive from it. I guess it's just the latest vehicle to get investors or stockholders excited without needing to rely upon any work or logic beyond the unclear promise of technologies tha…

The metaverse has a consistent definition - at least, if you read Snow Crash. It's just not what any company would actually want to bring to the market. 3D game worlds have value, open systems have value, but in completely opposite and contradictory ways. The value is in the entertainment of playing a well-built one, which means there has to be monetization and centralization. In other words, they have "production va…

I'm really not convinced that what we're communicating on isn't already the metaverse

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#79

Post by strken »

spoonjim wrote: post #16
fullshark wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got it. I'm pretty sure he's saying: VR bad, AR good. VR = escape from reality, AR = richer engagement with reality.

I don’t get why escaping reality is bad. Is theatre bad? Books? Movies? Providing a good escape from reality can lower people’s demands of reality, which can lead to a more sustainable future. If people can eat beans but be tricked into thinking they’re eating steak it can improve health and lower emissions, for example.

I'm starting to think my relationship with books might have been unhealthy in some of the same ways as video games. Theatre and movies might be similar for others. Less "escaping reality" and more "passive consumption at the cost of active creation".

Re: The metaverse is a dystopian nightmare – let’s build a better reality

#80

Post by norov »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #69
vkou wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is interesting about the building next to you So, it'll tell me that it has a Zappos™, a Coke™ Vending machine, a Jamba Juice™, and a Wells Fargo™ ATM, with an average retailer Yelp™ score of 4.2?

As far as I know, Zappos has no physical locations.

The Zappos™ storefront overlay is also AR
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