The Great Bifurcation

I think the author is stretching the separation of the online world from the 'real world' to support the bifurcation thesis. The online world isn't a separate reality or separate world.

'This is a place with no need for traditional money, or traditional art; the native solution is obviously superior. To put it another way, “None of this real world stuff has any digital world value” — the critique goes both ways.'

The Metaverse isn't a computer game, or at least isn't only a computer game made up of entirely imagined content. As an extension of the internet it's primary purpose is to do away with the physical separation and distance between real world people and resources.

Fundamentally networks are communication systems, whether it's a telephone network, the Web or the Metaverse. It's about taking resources that are physically distributed all around the world and making them function as though they were right next to each other, re-composing them in different ways.

The first phase was to allow you to log on to a server anywhere in the world, instead of only the one in your building. The next step with the Web 1.0 was to link and re-compose documents regardless of what server they were located on. The next step with web 2.0 was to give access to applications running on any server anywhere, rather than just applications installed on your local computer. Social media was another phase which did for interpersonal relationships and communication what the original web did for documents.

The Metaverse doesn't really add any new capabilities here, it's just a new user interface. It's a VR browser instead of a web browser. It's not a new world anymore than the combination of facebook and twitter are a new world, they're not, they're just a way for real world people to talk to each other. With the Metaverse they will virtually stand next to each other instead. My kids already do this in Minecraft, Valorant and LoL.

The bifurcation thesis works in terms of businesses, and that's what Stratechery is about, but the article doesn't actually analyse the business implications of any of this.

I had been doing this way before the pandemic. Sometimes family members are wearing headphones and such, it just seemed polite.

My two cents. Great proclamations of vaporware often come before a tech reset - be they VR, AI over reach, future money, or some other boondoggle that everyone is meant to love but actually sucks and people hate.

Facebook is pivoting to a non existant technology, and no one even knows whether anyone would want it if it existed. Everyone is dumping dollars on self driving cars and other AI tech that Keeps missing deadlines.

As long as there is free money, tech companies will burn it trying to invent the future. But at some point, if the illusion is pierced, everyone will just see a money pyre.

Yes, but I'm not entirely sure it is related. The reason I think I've taken up more real-world hobbies and moved farther away from online stuff is that it seems like everything online these days is trying to sell me something. If not a product, then a scam, or FOMO about some new fad, or the latest conspiracy theory, or outrage about some thing or another. I don't think it used to be this way, it used to be a place I could go to hang out with people who had similar interests and talk about them. Theoretically that's what this place is and it still seems like people are trying to sell me shit all the time (mostly blockchain nonsense, web frameworks, and cloud services).

Has it gone this way because of the ever-increasing monetization of it? I'm inclined to think so, but it's also possible it's just the natural result of becoming more widely used. Tragedy of the commons and all that.

Agree with the idea that the physical and digital worlds are bifurcating.

The main way I see it is in discourse, and particularly the way in which people seem to believe "their way" is the only way, when actually they're just in a bubble.

Comments here allude to it. Many people have been diving into the virtual world since lockdowns became mainstream. But many others have gone the complete other way - many of the groups I'm in have been rejecting technology more and more because they now value human experience far more.

This is only one example, but as far as I can tell, these two groups are almost completely at loggerheads now, the other side just seems baffling to them.