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The Great Bifurcation

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141–150 of 168 posts

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#141

"In the end, the most important connection between the Metaverse and the physical world will be you: right now you are in the Metaverse, reading this Article; perhaps you will linger on Twitter or get started with your remote work. And then you’ll stand up from your computer, or take off your headset, eat dinner and tuck in your kids, aware that their bifurcated future will be fundamentally different from your unitar…

It opened to a wider and wider audience. If you were a telephone operator in the early 1920s-1940s, you would have been messaging other operators over lines already. If you were on ARPANet you could have done it in the '60s-'70s. In the '80s you could have done it with acoustic couplers, modems, and BBSes. Then came the internet. Then came the web on desktop computers. Then the web on mobile.

I can tell you where I grew up (a poorer area), always-on internet access was very much seen as a luxury until the late 2000s. Many of my classmates used the internet at school rather than at home. Now kids in the same (still poor) area couldn't think of not having internet on their phones.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#142
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ENS is solving for this by creating a common identity across crypto wallets: https://ens.domains/ That way he can be patio11 across all platforms if he wishes (and doesnt need to worry about getting "patio11" on every new platform that's created). Or, he can just create a subwallet with a different identity but still rolls up into his main wallet. It also protects against somoene putting their twitter in their profil…

Yes, and as I'm a notorious crypto skeptic, someone squat on that ENS domain (with good intentions) and I really don't care that much. Casually, rather than e.g. legally or as a matter of trademark, I "own" patio11 across all the namespaces because I've put in the work over the years to make people associate that with me. This doesn't necessarily work in reverse; you should probably not assume patio11 DMing you in a…

If you do ever want patio11.eth, the team at support@rainbow.me will give it to you for free.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#143

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…

I like making stuff. I haven’t yet been able to figure out what web3 is actually useful for right now outside of making money off of speculation. I’m trying to.

But BTC seems extraordinarily inefficient (~$200 “spent” securing the chain per transaction, and what happens once mining dries up?). ETH seems extraordinarily inefficient (run the same code everywhere, burn a shitload of money/gas doing it). I don’t know enough about the others, so maybe the usefulness is elsewhere.

I do like the fact that all these chains seem like effectively open apis for everything, though. It gives me hope for a more interoperable future. I just wish there was some obvious fundamental underpinning to the value.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#144
> Facebook and Twitter represented Social Networking 1.0

No... bulletin boards, usenet, IRC, webrings, livejournals, etc. represented social networking 1.0

The difference is only nerds used those services, whereas FB and TWTR are inclusive to normal people.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#145
post #27

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…

I opted out of this a long time ago by never creating a Facebook account.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#146
post #27

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…

>there's yet to be a collective awakening/action to combat it

Degen?

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#147
post #35

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…

What makes the difference in my mind is that AR technology is gaining steam. There's a chance that we'll have a new desire to link the spatial, physical world to spatial and virtual interactions. The push to own the metaverse seems like a land grand.

>AR technology is gaining steam

Can you give some mainstream examples? Anything that has 1mm+ users?

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#148
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna say vinyl is a bit more than mainstream. I can buy records at Walmart. That usually means a trend is widespread.

It's less niche than I would have guessed--about 5% of industry revenue and about the same as CDs (which surprised me a bit given that I still sometimes buy CDs and haven't bough vinyl for decades). Still, that's revenue not listens or anything like that so that's still pretty much a rounding error.

It is extremely niche because the relevant measure isn't revenue, it is "hours of music listened to". And the amount of hours spent listening to vinyl as a proportion of all music listened to is vanishingly small, smaller than it has ever been. A hipster resurgence as a novelty collectors item doesn't change that.

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#149
post #68
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the difference in my mind is that AR technology is gaining steam. There's a chance that we'll have a new desire to link the spatial, physical world to spatial and virtual interactions. The push to own the metaverse seems like a land grand.

It seems like AR is the key to making the Metaverse a thing. VR is neat, but the current experience reminds me of 3D TVs from a few years back - gimmicky and awkward. Even if parts of the physical and digital worlds bifurcate, I still think there's a lot more AR could do by linking them and making it possible to build a digital world on top of the physical. The Daemon series by Daniel Suarez showed an impressive visi…

Honestly I doubt that will happen. Every glitzy ad showing the possibilities of AR are a lie... we will only have that sci-fi world when holography reaches mainstream adoption in the way we see it in sci-fi

Re: The Great Bifurcation

#150
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the zeitgeist change: don’t you think that expectation windows for results based on success of disrupting markets by tech have shrunk to a point where it’s not possible for a more long term and complex projects (biology being one of them) to attract enough talent? I feel like such changes are only possible based on big crises

I do, but I also think that we'll see this biology flowering from non-tech people who have some tech skill. So it won't be tech companies moving into biology space, it will be lab workers and students who know some coding realizing that 'hey, I could do this thing using my phone' and sharing with each other. I also think that as the sector grows and we see more people trained, we'll see a medical research boom the sa…

Can you expand on this:

> I also think we're overdue for some major social changes because our current ways aren't sustainable (regardless of what you think the problems are + what 'side' you're on, I think we can almost all agree that this can't continue).

I'd love to hear more of your POV here - I tend to think things are....pretty okay? In the grand scheme of things?

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