The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#561

Post by splatcollision » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #370

imiric wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of endless scenarios of how this plays out, and that is not one of them. Corporations rule us today and will only continue to grow larger and more powerful. There's not a thing any individual or even a group of people can do about it because the vast majority of people either don't care or embrace it with open arms. See the futile fight for privacy some of us still care about as an example. We, the techno…

> There's not a thing any individual or even a group of people can do about it because the vast majority of people either don't care or embrace it with open arms. I don't think history supports this prediction. We've been through several cycles of of this over the past few hundred years already -- the rise of powerful corporatocracy, followed by the people ultimately getting sick of that and knocking corporate power…

I appreciate your optimism, but this time around the elites have learned their history lessons and we haven’t.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#562

Post by parasubvert » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #446

mox111 wrote: post #416

I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for themselves, the fact that it is a total game-changer for work and play. The thing with this space is, enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media and working on realising its potential, that it will inevitably end up producing value that can…

I don't know, I own an Oculus Quest and some games are definitely amazing. Beat Sabre and I Expect You To Die for example. I love them. But I still rarely use it. Even completely wireless it's still a hassle to get out, and not especially comfortable or easy to wear. And even shifting it slightly results in things going out of focus so you need it lines up just right. Plus very few people have big empty dedicated VR…

For socializing and work I think there’s quite a lot of chance for VR, especially if due to climate and pandemics we can’t travel as much as we used to.

It’s just a matter of finding the right balance of capability and convenience.

Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#563

Post by r-w » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #515

mlac wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will use VR when I can put on my headset, anywhere, and be transported to my "desk". I want to be able to take documents and move them around in VR, read them, put them on my "table", and then have apps that appear as monitors. So I can move and pull up email in front of me, "grab" an attachment, and "put" it into another email that I will compose. And have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually…

> have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan For some reason this is a hilarious image in many ways. Perfect example of imagining the future being a better horse. But it also does sound cool

Or more aptly, a car with reins.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#564

Post by atoav » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

I am a huge fan of text. As someone who has a master of arts I like pictures as well, obviously but there lies a certain genius within the expressiveness, clarity, composability, transformability, movability that comes with any text based process.

Sure it shifts parts of the cognitive load to those writing or reading it, but in my eyes if there is any meaningful societal future text would play a central role.

This is why I am no friend of the direction IT is taking nowadays. Although I didn't grew up with it myself, I wished people would have to learn working with a unix shell and programming languages just like you learn how to read and write.

Learning to read and write is certainly not easy, but it really pays off if a society teaches its members how to do it no theless. In my eyes learning text based computing is just the same

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#565

Post by peterthehacker » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #354

Oddskar wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this three times and I'm still not sure what your point is.

That we, "the old folks", just don't get it, limited by having passed our "exploratory" phase and well into "exploitation" phase (something I read here in HN the other day). And they may have a point: after all, "the old folks" 30 years ago were saying the same thing about the Internet, well into 2000s.

> we, “the old folks,” just don’t get it

Zuckerberg is 37 years old, so he’d probably be lumped into “the old folks” category. Why would he get it and not us?

I’m, a decade younger than Mark, so idk if I’m young enough by your standards to get it, but my sister and her friends are in college and think this is all a joke. None of them are interested in putting on VR goggles, let alone joining the “metaverse.” None of them had heard of it until Facebook’s name change.

The Metaverse is a top-down Wall Street sponsored hype cycle. It’s not a matter of “old folks” not getting it. It’s Zuckerberg’s attempt to distract Wall Street investors and consumers from Facebook’s growing problems.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#566

Post by polio » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

> The Metaverse will be programmed with text.

Suggesting that a metaverse in VR is plausible has nothing to do with eradicating text. There will be plenty of it in there. People will not be welded into headsets and have their books torched, as the Nostradamuses want us to think.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#567

Post by parasubvert » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #401

cromka wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That we, "the old folks", just don't get it, limited by having passed our "exploratory" phase and well into "exploitation" phase (something I read here in HN the other day). And they may have a point: after all, "the old folks" 30 years ago were saying the same thing about the Internet, well into 2000s.

Oh come on. Usenet in the 1980s was full of people in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. Sure, some people didn't "get" the internet, but millions of demographically similar people were getting value out of it. That isn't happening, and won't happen, with this metaverse BS. And if it does, attentive people of all ages will see it coming many years in advance.

Eh, I think Facebook is really onto something, particularly if you see Oculus as the main tip of the spear. They’re playing a very long game.

My high school and college friends and I are spread across the continent. The pandemic and a mix of Discord and Tabletop simulator brought us back together to do regular board gaming. This is effectively a VR environment without the headset.

My 12 year old hangs out on VRchat or Minecraft , simultaneously watching YouTube or Twitch streams at the same time with his friends when he is home. Today this is a mix of FaceTime , Discord etc, but all-in-one will be used if it’s better.

My younger daughter likes to explore VR worlds, and interact with them.

We are seeing what’s coming years in advance, but many aren’t looking. Facebook is going to eat this space up completely at their current rate of success, if Apple , Microsoft or Valve don’t step up.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#568

Post by RamRodification » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

JohnAaronNelson wrote: post #486

mox111 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing us to use this tech. If we all happened to agree that it was annoying or "super weird" then we would just opt out. Fact is, that for now it feels valuable enough for us to keep using it (more so for social 'hangouts' than for things like stand-ups, which we still do via Zoom and where we can be as authentic and vulnerable as we like)

How many people participate? Doesn’t seem like it would scale outside a small group. Once you get past that size, it becomes a clique and thus corrosive to team building. A small group will have a wonderful time, everyone else will resent them. The company will then crumble or become something different entirely

> The company will then crumble

Watch out guys, VR destroys companies!

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#569

Post by slightwinder » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

> Text is mightier than the Metaverse.

"A Picture says more than a thousand words."

> Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting.

Because text is asynchronous, and persistent. Text is a weak medium, but with specific strengths which can beat others in certain situation if they can played well.

> We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text.

I guess you haven't discovered yet youtube, twitch, instagram, tik tok...

> News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors.

No, they do not? Some do, not all. If anything, the people reading tweets are the one you should trust the least. But that's for reasons of twitter, not text.

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear.

Which is proof that text is the weaker medium, because text demands the readers to fill the holes, which is for some a beneficial experience. And on the other side, pictures also demands more work to let them shine. This would be an actual valid argument which will make metaverse problematic. There will be a high chance of 90% of the content just being halfassed trash.

> The quarterly reports outlining its financial losses will be written in text.

More like diagrams.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#570

Post by Mikeb85 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

The metaverse might be bullshit but billionaires are essentially betting that life for the average person is going to be so dismal that an increasing number will completely disconnect from society and live their lives virtually. It's dystopian but it's the future many are predicting.