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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

#81

Post by smabie »

ineedasername wrote: post #41
ericjang wrote: post #7

The title and content of the article, in which Hanke espouses the virtues if Niantic Labs (an AR company), were cognitively dissonant for me. > The concept reached one of its most complete expressions in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, where virtually everyone has abandoned reality for an elaborate VR massively multiplayer video game. A lot of people these days seem very interested in bringing this near-future visio…

Even if it involves interacting with the real world, I've always found Pokemon Go (and other Pokemon games) kind of brutal: basically capturing animals and making them fight until incapacitated. People go to jail for that sort of thing in real life. Of course there are plenty of game where you do things that would be illegal: GTA built an empire on it. But Pokemon is marketed towards kids .

Yeah pokemon deeply damaged me as a kid. unacceptable

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

#82

Post by est31 »

accountofme wrote: post #59
nynx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worry is that it’ll be impossible to stop this from happening.

Don't use it then?

Don't use whatsapp, instagram, snapchat, tiktok, facebook, etc. and you are missing out on a lot of social life when interacting with younger generations. Which can be your peers.

Same effect can happen for this platform as well. Eventually in order to have a social life you'll have to connect to some future network using brain implants so that they can ensure your thoughts are "safe" and "genuine".

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

#84

Post by hakfoo »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #72

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 po…

The assumption I don't like here is that we're still fixated on an ownership and scarcity model.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, many of the most exciting experiences are the ones that don't bother playing ownership police. For every one person who says "Oh, everyone isn't celebrating and paying me because that widget is My Special Creation (R) (TM) (C) (GMbH), so I'll stop creating" there are a hundred who use that widget to make to build new and exciting things. Let him leave.

The whole focus on intellectual property, and new IP-adjacent gimmicks like NFTs feels like a tragic Emperor's New Clothes skit. I'm waiting on the kid to point and say "bits aren't scarce" which causes the whole market bubble to come crashing down.

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

#86

Post by horrified »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #51
ericjang wrote: post #7

The title and content of the article, in which Hanke espouses the virtues if Niantic Labs (an AR company), were cognitively dissonant for me. > The concept reached one of its most complete expressions in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, where virtually everyone has abandoned reality for an elaborate VR massively multiplayer video game. A lot of people these days seem very interested in bringing this near-future visio…

I really want to gripe about "Ernest Cline's" Ready Player One. There was an element of dystopia to it, yes, but it was only the movie adaptation that came away with the takeaway that the virtual world was bad. In the movie they decide to add in the protagonist making the executive decision to shut down the virtual world on a couple weekdays or something. That pissed me off. That world was people's livelihoods. This…

I guess one problem with the virtual world in RPO is that it is centralized, and therefore people are fighting each other to control it.

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

#87

Post by totetsu »

nine_k wrote: post #35
totetsu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the physical world they mean the Coca-Cola vending machine, and the chain convenience store..

How about real-time explanation what plant you are looking at, what bird just flew by, what is interesting about the building next to you, etc? Look at the web — against all odds, it has tons of content beside ads!

Those things are nice. but they are mostly built in collaboration with universities. Niantic took all my hard work, photographing places of historical or cultural significance(during ingress beta), and now use them to shovel people into stores.

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

#88

Post by L_226 »

I built mirrorspace.net (beta up at https://app.mirrorspace.net/) which is a "mirror space" i.e. a virtual layer ontop of our normal physical space. Users can browse nearby landmarks (currently based on geolookup wikipedia entries) and also upload their own media. But the catch is, for anyone else to view your media and interact with it, they need to be within 50m of the upload location. This mechanic is meant to drive a dual virtual/physical interaction that gives a more holistic and potentially a more meaningful social media experience.

My idea was to add search filters, commenting, voting etc. and allow people to "feel" how people currently interact with any location - so if I fly to SF from Berlin, I can immediately browse the mirrorspace and see what people are doing specifically where I am now, and also get a handle on the social fabric of that place. I wanted to have a platform that records significant events in a temporal way, maybe protests or similar - things that define each city/place uniquely. The monetisation strategy was to allow people to pay the platform to increase the visibility radius of their posts, and/or allow people to pay to view media items from outside the normal radius - where a share of this payment goes to the uploader.

I was fucking around for a few years on this, and now I have another major project to work on so no longer have time or motivation to "finish" it. I might open source it in the future, if anyone is interested. (I haven't looked at the code in months)

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

#89

Post by Animats »

Animats wrote: post #49
kmeisthax wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A decade and change ago we had Second Life, a 3D game world built like an open system. After many struggles, Second Life achieved social stability. The company has mostly a hands-off attitude and a minimal "governance" group of about half a dozen people. There are landlords and tenants, with grumbling on both sides, in more or less balance. Griefing is rare. The large-scale scams, such as a fake bank, are gone. Copyi…

Here's Luca Grabacr's view of Second Life as the Metaverse.[1] She's the poet philosopher of Second Life. Her quiet, detailed videos of Second Life at its best show what the Metaverse can be.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdvGlwKPVk4

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

#90

Post by CryptoPunk »

hakfoo wrote: post #84
CryptoPunk wrote: post #72

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 po…

The assumption I don't like here is that we're still fixated on an ownership and scarcity model. As has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, many of the most exciting experiences are the ones that don't bother playing ownership police. For every one person who says "Oh, everyone isn't celebrating and paying me because that widget is My Special Creation (R) (TM) (C) (GMbH), so I'll stop creating" there are a hundre…

Yes, that is a fair point. One thing I'd note on that subject is that the current market of blockchain-based NFTs does not usually come with copyright restrictions. You are allowed to use a copy of an NFTized jpg, but of course the person possessing the NFT can always cryptographically prove that they own the 'official' version, which confers prestige. The analog world corollary would be owning the original Mona Lisa, while others still have the freedom to create copies. The latter does not diminish the value of the former.

So in some sense, right now with most NFTs, you get the best of both worlds: a way to compensate creators of artwork, by giving them a scarce resource representing their creation that will command market value, and the freedom to use the art others release as you want.

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