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The Great Bifurcation

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Re: The Great Bifurcation

#21

Post by humanistbot »

I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble.

Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll be different because people have to buy an expensive and uncomfortable VR headset?

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#22

Post by [deleted] »

humanistbot wrote: post #21

I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll b…

[deleted]

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#23

Post by yepthatsreality »

lumost wrote: post #15

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 dead…

> Facebook is pivoting to a non existant technology, and no one even knows whether anyone would want it if it existed.

This is not true. The tech exists, Facebook is creating hoopla about a VR video game to distract from its offenses and to dissuade regulation. You can’t regulate something that is undefined.

I don’t disagree with the rest of your point.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#24

Post by boringg »

I like Ben's writing but this one seems a bit of a stretch for me. I do like the bucketing of tech eras. Though in regards to the Metaverse I feel like he might be drinking too much of the kool-aid.

Metaverse feels like google glasses to me without any of the actual quasi benefits/hard-tech that google glasses created. That and Zuckerberg has killed any good will to build a project with such grandiose vision with the general public.

And any experience to unite it under one roof seems a bit optimistic.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#25

Post by TigeriusKirk »

Rastonbury wrote: post #8

I still cannot see any reason I'd want to connect any identifier or avatar across different online worlds apart from gaming. Am I missing something? For sure Meta wants to connect everything so it has a whole picture of its users so it can serve ads but why would people be compelled to connect their discords/linkedin/facebook or whatever personas when a key part of the web is anonymity, I don't even use the same hand…

I don't even use one handle on HN or Reddit over time, I change every couple years.

But those are sites where there's not much value in keeping the same identity for the average person. Only at the very top end is your identity meaningful on some sites.

On Twitter and Facebook, however, I've keep my real name identity for well over a decade. There is value for the average person there to be known by a consistent identifier.

I don't know which approach I'll take with the metaverse. My instinct is that I'm going to want my identity to be quite malleable. In a place that's all about expressiveness (or at least that should be its core purpose) I think I'll want different identities depending on what it is I'm expressing.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#26

Post by [deleted] »

simonh wrote: post #11
rajekas wrote: post #2

I agree with the thrust of this article, especially this line: "For a long time I felt somewhat unique in this regard, but COVID has made my longstanding reality the norm for many more people. Their physical world is defined by their family and hometown, which no longer needs to be near their work, which is entirely online; everything from friends to entertainment has followed the same path." The unbundling of physic…

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#27

Post by sofard »

humanistbot wrote: post #21

I'm of the age that I remember getting sucked in to the Second Life hype. MMORPGs were also becoming popular, and there was this narrative that "virtual worlds" were on a rocketship to the future. Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. Now I guess we call virtual worlds "the metaverse" and think it'll b…

I seriously wonder whether there will be a cultural rebellion against the digitization of our lived experiences. It seems like everyone (even the youngest who grew up in a fully digital world) feels like we're on this path to black mirror dystopia, but there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat it. It wouldn't surprise me if down the road there's a cultural movement that decides "we're opting out of all this"

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#28

Post by [deleted] »

lumost wrote: post #15

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 dead…

[deleted]

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#29

Post by bsedlm »

Rastonbury wrote: post #8

I still cannot see any reason I'd want to connect any identifier or avatar across different online worlds apart from gaming. Am I missing something? For sure Meta wants to connect everything so it has a whole picture of its users so it can serve ads but why would people be compelled to connect their discords/linkedin/facebook or whatever personas when a key part of the web is anonymity, I don't even use the same hand…

[delete]

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#30

Post by motohagiography »

How does one bet against the Metaverse?

People hating on Web3 appear to do so because they aren't makers. They persuade and complain, but they don't build or risk. The Metaverse is just another centrally planned architected model that must be imposed from above. From what I can tell, that's just fancy communism meets Bentham and Taylor, all for your own good surely. The current platform owners are just not cool enough to pull it off. Nobody wants to be them.

Facebook mainly worked because it had the Eros of a demographic bump from rich, elite college students. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros_(concept) ) When it started, it had the one thing everybody wanted. Now it does not, and economically, it is an inferior good. Instagram will also age out like a boy band. The schools do not have it anymore either. The absolute best the planned Metaverse will achieve is to contain some captive populations, and be a kind of global prisoner entertainment system like television has become.

When people say they are doing things "for humanity," it's usually because there are no specific people who actually want what they are proposing. Admittedly it is a familiar conceit, but now I know it when I see it, and I would like to get short.

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