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The metaverse is bullshit

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Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#771

Post by THATthereguy »

michaelmrose wrote: post #668
reddog wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the essay topic was "Tell me what a tiger looks like".

The Tyger By William Blake Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the…

Good ole Billy Blake. I want what he's having.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#772

Post by m0zg »

CRConrad wrote: post #764
m0zg wrote: post #84

It's not even a question. We're long overdue to exit online and return back to the real world. It's a struggle but it's doable. Meet other real people IRL. Go to bars and shows. Have sex instead of watching porn. Marry. Have kids. Have real, physical hobbies instead of computer games and scrolling instagram all day. Exercise. Play sports with other people instead of watching them on TV. Sleep well. Read paper books t…

100% agreee on everything except: > Read paper books that you actually own. What's wrong with reading borrowed books? Public libraries are a marvellous invention!

Nothing. I'm also a big fan of libraries. I meant not DRM-d to hell Kindle, which Amazon and only Amazon can control, and which you never actually "own".

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#773

Post by CRConrad »

m0zg wrote: post #772
CRConrad wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreee on everything except: > Read paper books that you actually own. What's wrong with reading borrowed books? Public libraries are a marvellous invention!

Nothing. I'm also a big fan of libraries. I meant not DRM-d to hell Kindle, which Amazon and only Amazon can control, and which you never actually "own".

Suspected that, but thought the clarification was important. Thanks!

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#774

Post by JohnFen »

charcircuit wrote: post #513
JohnFen wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But land ownership gives you an actual, tangible benefit. You get exclusive use of the land. NFTs don't offer anything except bragging rights.

It gives you a benefit in the real world vs a benefit in a virtual world. It's not that different especially for people who spend more time in virtual worlds than the real one.

The part I don't understand is what benefit NFTs actually have in the either the real or virtual world, outside of bragging rights.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#775

Post by lajarre »

The author seems to be falling for a kind of a fallacy.

First, I can’t believe the author can call the metaverse bs because it would be nonexistent or would soon die: it is already nascent and seems to be growing by the mere fact people (some of them influential) are pushing for it, as he points out himself.

Consequently, we are left with an ethical viewpoint: internet of text has more virtues than vr or blockchain, games are more creative (thus, beautiful?) if closed worlds, etc. Allow me to call is the “down to earth” viewpoint. I should also mention the calling out on private interests driving the metaverse developments, but allow me to stay concise.

I can definitely relate to it, but, in some sense, this criticism sounds like a lack of respect for future humans who might feel like this metaverse thing is actually improving their lives. It’s a bit like criticizing a religion in front of a believer: that’s rude and often not conclusive.

At that point or the discourse (as a better conclusion to the article), I’d be more interested by reading some ideas to concretely promote a different vision for the future of the internet and games. What else can we suggest, as programmers, designers, … that could be convincing to people to follow the “down to earth” path?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#776

Post by dbbk »

christophergs wrote: post #264
silvestrov wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results They were successful with one thing. Now they are talking about something else. Why shouldn't "MetaVerse" be compared to the insane optimism of AI in the 1980'ies? Something that seemed just around the corner, but never arrived. It's like Thorium reactors: half the people think it's the next great thing, the other half thinks it will never come into production.

Timing matters. The latest generation of VR headsets are incredible. I feel like this point matters, the same way that Netflix needing broadband to be fast enough to stream video mattered.

People don't want to put things on their head, no matter how great the visual quality might be. We couldn't even get them to put on glasses for 3D TVs.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#777

Post by HellDunkel »

herodotus wrote: post #582
JKCalhoun wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Ha ha, so, in fact, bullshit. I'm so happy someone called it out. Being a developer, tech-savvy person, I should be all into BitCoin, VR, meta ... but I have recoiled from more or less the last decade of crap (including, I might add, "social" and maybe even phones — although they are great for navigating). Maybe I am just getting old (that is true) or maybe thi…

with you all the way...

same

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#778

Post by parasubvert »

enneff wrote: post #731
parasubvert wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off my lawn! Reminds me of when no one cared about native mobile (vs the Web), or before that, no one cared about GUIs (command line is where it’s at)

Except neither of those things are true! GUIs were tremendously exciting from the start and when Apple launched the iPhone saying “just build web apps” everyone was disappointed. How did you even think to offer those examples?

GUIs were rejected by the vast majority from the start (which for argument let's say was 1984 for the Mac). The Mac barely cracked 9% market share through the 80s and mid-90s, shrinking to 5%. PC's and DOS dominated alongside the Commodore 64, whose 3rd party GUI (GEOS) was used by a fraction of users. The command line cult was legion.

GUIs started to catch on in 1992 with Windows 3.1, and only became ubiquitous when Windows 95 came out. At which point the Mac plummeted to 2% market share, before the iMac started to turn it around in 1998-1999.

The backlash to Steve's announcement of "web apps only" was largely from game developers and early adoption tinkerers. Native mobile was rejected by a majority of developers (who still complain even though we're down to 2 platforms) as an abomination that eschews the open standards of the web and required 3-5x the work to support Android, iOS, Windows Mobile , Nokia Symiban, Blackberry, etc.

Most "native" apps were thin wrappers around HTML5 sites until around 2012-2014. Instagram is arguably what changed this, and why Facebook bought them for $1b in 2012. Users liked the features and responsiveness of native apps. Shortly after, Facebook shipped their native mobile app (written by a 3rd party contractor that knew native mobile - it was an HTML5 wrapper prior to this).

Dozens of essays have been published on HN over the past decade lamenting the death of the Web, PCs, hobbyist PC tinkering, and all that is good, because of the terrible trend driven by native mobile.

So, yes, GUIs and native mobile were exciting from a certain point of view, but they've also had huge (and ultimately ineffective) backlashes that slowed things down a bit.

Saying "nobody cares about VR" feels to me exactly like this. Those that see how important AR/VR will become feel like those that saw the potential of GUIs or native mobile early. Those only seem obvious in retrospect.

In both cases the new UX environment took 5-10 years to catch on. We're now arguably in year 5 of VR/AR (if you assume 2016 era devices were the first viable mass market ones, which also coincides with the release of Pokemon Go as the first mass market AR experience) which is easily as big a shift as it was from keyboard to mouse.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#779

Post by enneff »

parasubvert wrote: post #778
enneff wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except neither of those things are true! GUIs were tremendously exciting from the start and when Apple launched the iPhone saying “just build web apps” everyone was disappointed. How did you even think to offer those examples?

GUIs were rejected by the vast majority from the start (which for argument let's say was 1984 for the Mac). The Mac barely cracked 9% market share through the 80s and mid-90s, shrinking to 5%. PC's and DOS dominated alongside the Commodore 64, whose 3rd party GUI (GEOS) was used by a fraction of users. The command line cult was legion. GUIs started to catch on in 1992 with Windows 3.1, and only became ubiquitous when…

Not sure where to go from here except to say I disagree with your characterisation of these events, and the events you have chosen to represent the history of these things.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#780

Post by parasubvert »

enneff wrote: post #779
parasubvert wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs were rejected by the vast majority from the start (which for argument let's say was 1984 for the Mac). The Mac barely cracked 9% market share through the 80s and mid-90s, shrinking to 5%. PC's and DOS dominated alongside the Commodore 64, whose 3rd party GUI (GEOS) was used by a fraction of users. The command line cult was legion. GUIs started to catch on in 1992 with Windows 3.1, and only became ubiquitous when…

Not sure where to go from here except to say I disagree with your characterisation of these events, and the events you have chosen to represent the history of these things.

Look, I’ve provided some facts and my interpretation of them, you’re obviously free to disagree. But you’ve not even provided an iota of argument about your original statement: “Nobody cares about VR”.
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