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The Great Bifurcation

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Re: The Great Bifurcation

#51

Post by jasondigitized »

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…

It seems to me that Reddit would be a far more interesting place if you had separate identity with its own reputation / karma per subreddit.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#52

Post by nix0n »

motohagiography wrote: post #30

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 enoug…

> How does one bet against "the Metaverse"?

Competitors to VR experiences include, real world experiences, and psychedelics.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#53

Post by derwiki »

moolcool wrote: post #39
sofard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

It's not like we're not culturally flirting with that already. Film photography and vinyl have both seen massive resurgences lately.

Wonder if the same will hold for books?

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#54

Post by Rastonbury »

meheleventyone wrote: post #40
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…

Even in gaming having multiple identities is a bonus, or even if you have the same identity having radically different customisation per game is important. I actually find it weird playing games if they actually bother to use my steam profile picture.

That's why I find many aspects of the metaverse antithetical to what the internet is. Like the reduction of privacy of anonymity. Or the ownership of internet things, the internet is scalable and open in that I can own a website or in a games I can dress up my characters in anything I want without buying an NFT, I can even perfectly replicate your 1 of 500 limited edition metaverse sneakers, obviously I don't own the real thing but is anyone going to check the blockchain?

I can definitely picture a vibrant market where people trade these things, but compared to the market that Meta dominates now I can only imagine it being tiny in comparison.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#55

Post by gostsamo »

nickdothutton wrote: post #31
gostsamo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you ready to be the casualty?

At times in my career I have been a “pioneer”, at times a “settler”, and at other times a “town planner”. While university friends took up offers from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, I started work at one of the first ISPs. Terrible pay, zero benefits. Funding the company partly on our own meagre personal credit limits, but the thrill of building something from scratch that we were sure would change the world and that should…

This is the version where you take the risk, pay the price, and/or reap the rewards. When we talk about casualties, there is another story for people who didn't take the risk, did not reap any rewards, but paid the price anyway. When we talk about externalizing the costs, those are the people meant to pay them.

So, excuse me, but when someone talks about inevitable casualties while enthusiastically pushing against regulations, it means that they do not intend to be the casualty and are looking for ways to push someone else under the bus.

Progress is something wonderful, but it should prove itself before us, not we in front of it.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#56

Post by nefitty »

sofard wrote: post #27
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 al…

How many video game developers rarely play video games? I bet most game devs don't count gaming amongst their defining interests.

There seems to be a majority swath of humans who get hooked on unproductive hobbies. Drugs, partying, social media, video games. I'm talking HOOKED, dreams framed by the TikTok UI, taking work off to watch a Counterstrike tournament, weeks of back-to-back hangovers.

I mean, I've been there. I too hear the lull of chemical dissociation.

What I'm wondering is, what happens as that lullaby gets louder and brighter and more attractive, in sync with people working less and less as automation forms a mechanical sheen on all economic activity?

I'll just toss this one I caught as I wrote that: You think the opioid epidemic is bad? Is it better or worse for us that our addictions can't annihilate us in an instant? How many people are in their rooms right now, alone, entangled in expensive parasocial relationships and expensive video game habits?

What if people aren't stealing and robbing shit for drugs anymore, but are doing it to donate to their favorite streamer, or buy the new Supreme hoodie or buy a PS5?

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#57

Post by bckr »

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…

> It's a VR browser instead of a web browser

Does this actually exist? My impression is that the Met*verse is just a marketing term for something that doesn't exist yet

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#58

Post by joshuaheard »

I love the comment about the "real world" being the physical world and the digital world combined. I go back to some of the old computer games I have played, and they seem like real places to me, where I have memories and feel a certain nostalgia. They were certainly a "real experience", even though they were digital.

One theory of consciousness is that it is a series of experiences. In that respect digital experiences are real.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#59

Post by olivermarks »

Blockchain I suspect will have a similar future and history to portable document format (PDF), an important facet of a much larger world, a solution that was originally looking for a problem slotted into an evolving world.

Regarding online 'chat' clients, Bloomberg terminals have almost literally been the tool used to run the financial world(s) for decades. Different speeds, different needs...

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#60

Post by Rastonbury »

lumost wrote: post #34
yepthatsreality wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The Metaverse FB is pitching is either a ridiculously over-hyped video game, or vaporware. Arguably there may not be a difference. In the media, the main reference has been the "snowcrash" novel or "ready player one" level of immersion. Which is tech we fundamentally lack a reference for how to build.

I'll buy FB stock once they release news of a neural implant plug into the matrix kind of technology.
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