Can Oculus Rift Become the Metaverse -- and Should It?

The Oculus Rift subreddit has a long and interesting thread on my Monday post about the Facebook-owned VR technology and building Neal Stephenson's metaverse. (I credit Neal's beard for all the upvotes.) The Redditors seem to miss my point about Stephenson not really being a strong enthusiast for the metaverse actually being built, but several make many other interesting points. Like "ENG_NR" here:

If Oculus can still give us a standardized browser (Firebox already making good strides) and let people create doorways in and out of the FB controlled worlds then it really well be the metaverse. If it's just some Facebook thing then it'll go the way of AOL when the real metaverse comes along.

And this point from "whistlinpixie" (LOL) on whether we should really want a single metaverse at all:

I think it it more likely (at least for the foreseeable future) as well as more desirable that we'll have a multi-metaverse, similar to how we do things with applications and the internet now. Just like how your online experience differentiates between your TF2 game, your ESO game, your reddit visit, and your news browsing, we'll see limited instances for VR. These will likely grow into larger spaces with a more connected experience, but they'll be largely insular, maybe with some kind of analogue to the hyperlink with a door or teleporter.

If you Reddit, Reddit with the Redditors here.

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Comments

[Ciaran_Laval]

Maybe it needs a monorail.

I do think people are getting a bit ahead of themselves and overexcited, although it's good to dream .. maybe not of electric sheep though.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." -- Mark Twain's prologue to Huckleberry Finn. I am forever grateful that the ghost of Mr. Clemens never found its way to my AP English class.

No authorial intent survives contact with a readership. The moment your narrative is read by another person, it's no longer solely yours -- it's a collaborative work between your words and the readers' imaginations. Something you meant as a metaphor or a flight of fancy or a dire warning might be taken as an inspiration. I'm firmly convinced that there are interests in the United States who regard Brave New World and 1984 as instruction manuals.

I'm a fan of Stephenson's work, but although he coined the term "metaverse", he didn't create the concept. He evoked a compelling interpretation of it, one that has been and will continue to be influential in its development, but he was building on an idea that was already progressing and which would have continued with or without him.

I regard the metaverse as inevitable. The only question in my mind is how we, as early developers and users of it, will shape it. Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and Ernest Cline (among others) will be remembered as prophets -- whether they want to be or not.

[MetacamOh]

Of course it should, it's inevitable whether Oculus want to be those people that start it or not, it will happen.

[Iggy]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that building a Metaverse is an awful idea?

I'd prefer a future where we spend more time in the desert of the real. Maybe with more attention, we'd have more real places worth caring about again. Maybe we could build a garden of the real.

[Iggy]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that building a Metaverse is an awful idea?

I'd prefer a future where we spend more time in the desert of the real. Maybe with more attention, we'd have more real places worth caring about again. Maybe we could build a garden of the real.

[cathartes aura]

@Iggy. It's not just you. Not everyone is a herd member/follower.

If trends continue "meatspace" will become a place you don't want to spend time in. 1% control everything, no jobs, no money, societal breakdown, riots (political, resource, and racial).

Hence the need to create an alternate reality to mesmerize, entertain, indoctrinate, and to eventually subdue the masses. Once everyone jacks in we cease to be individuals and become the "hive", the "noosphere".

The readers of this blog, the first explorers of this technology are for the most part aware of the upsides/downsides of virtual reality. We can turn it off and walk away if we desire. The first days/weeks in Active Worlds/Second Life/etc. were amazing. Many, many hours/late nights spent exploring and interacting with those environments. But at some point we are all able to unjack. Virtual Reality is just a small part of our lives.

What happens when "meatspace" becomes so toxic and the masses discover virtual reality and jack in? Will they be able to resist it's ability to create an alternate reality to replace "meatspace". Will the masses be able to resist creating false personal Utopias? Will the masses use it like any other entertainment option that can be turned off or resisted?

I don't think the average person will be able to resist and be able to use it in a normal, non-addictive way. And maybe that's the plan, man...

The economic system in every country/society is rigged. Communism/Socialism/Capitalism have all failed or are in the process of failure. What comes next for the 99%? For the 1%?

If you are the 1%, what better way to eliminate the 99%, who you no longer need if every good/service becomes automatically done/manufactured by non-humans. If the 99% spend all waking hours jacked in to the metaverse, the vast majority of them will die off eventually from disease at an early age. Leaving a depopulated earth for the 1%r's. Eugenics has long been a passion of the 1%r's. They truly believe that they are special. More Intelligent. Stronger. Better.

My advice to the masses - Resist. Be an individual. It's ok to spend time in Virtual Reality as just one entertainment option among many. Preferring it over "meatspace" spells doom for the vast majority of the human race.

[MetacamOh]

So if you live in a slum, or a third world country with nothing around. Not everyone has the luxury to live in "meatspace" and enjoy it. Not everyone lives next to a beautiful park or right in a bustling area where this is plentiful things to do.

The metaverse should not be created because some people will get addicted? We can say that about everything. Might as well outlaw the computer now then if that's your stance.

[cathartes aura]

There is nothing inherently wrong/evil in the creation of a metaverse and its use. You miss my point.

My point is that if it's used to escape "meatspace" to avoid dealing with real life, it's many problems, and not used to improve societal/economic systems to make them better for the vast majority of humankind then it's a negative.

If it is used as Virtual Opium to keep the 99% entranced, entertained, and oblivious to what the 1% are up to then the metaverse becomes a tool of control. A handy dandy tool for the 1%.

Up to this point in human existence, life for most humans has been one of backbreaking work for very meager pay, living in poverty, with no hope out, and an early avoidable death.

Maybe Virtual Reality/Metaverse technology can improve the human condition but I'm not optimistic given past history.

[Iggy]

@Metacam,what you wrote really worries me:

"So if you live in a slum, or a third world country with nothing around. Not everyone has the luxury to live in "meatspace" and enjoy it."

If it's that bad, I'd say "find some friends and change the world with an AK-47, if you can't do it in your tinpot-dictator nation at the ballot box."

Surrendering to a rotten dominant paradigm is not reason to have a Metaverse. But having some fun? Running simulations? Enjoying a bit of mindless escape, as at the cinema? That's fine.

To replace a horrid reality? No thank you, Cypher. Your Metaverse becomes just another version of Meth or Crack at that point.

[MetacamOh]

Iggy what you wrote really worries me.

The Metaverse will be many different things to many different people. Human's will naturally misuse anything given the chance, and it's not up to you to decide what other people are going to use it for.

[cathartes aura]

@Meta. I don't think Iggy's deciding for anyone what they do with the metaverse. Just raising questions about what may happen when it rolls out and gets mass adopted. Who will be in control of the metaverse? And what is their ultimate agenda?

As for myself, I'm just raising one possible scenario among many. Given past history, current societal and economic trends, and basic human nature the hope for a metaverse that benefits the vast majority of people is remote.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Humanity has lived on this planet for roughly 250,000 years. For about 246,000 years, our numbers were relatively stable at below ten million individuals. Then we learned agriculture and writing and industrialization and modern medicine and all the wonders of modern civilization. There are now over 7 billion people on earth, 700 times our natural population levels, with little sign of our growth rate slowing. Over 5 billion of these were added just in the past century -- a single human lifespan.

And since the advent of civilization, but especially in the past century, most of those people have been sold one very simple and very compelling lie -- that each and every one of them might someday achieve, through hard work or sheer luck, the fabulous wealth of the most elite.

It is a lie that is steadily destroying our planet, the only habitable world within our reach. We are depleting all our resources at an alarming rate to meet that endless hunger to acquire things that will allegedly make our lives better.

We have to change. We can't sustain this. But in order to change, we need to fight not just centuries of cultural conditioning, but the primal instinct of homo sapiens to hoard as much as it can -- a useful instinct in times of scarcity, a ruinous one when it goes unchecked.

Virtual reality is a tool. It can be used for a multitude of purposes, good or bad. What I see is a potential aid in solving the issues I put forth in that windy prologue. If the essential acquisitional nature of the hairless ape can be sated with zeros and ones building the illusion of fabulous wealth, we might be able to slow the rapacious destruction of the world and focus on building a sustainable global society.

I know that strikes some people as a very sinister future, and I'll admit I have misgivings. But I'm at a loss to otherwise save a very stupid species of self-important primate (and countless other species that stand in the path of paving the planet) without sharing with them the rabbit-hole to Wonderland.

[William Wallace]

Arcadie Codesmith, the mark twain meme that viewing the work, tranfsorms it.

This fits perfectly with that video about "consciousness science kept hidden" and einstien:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFSRTsLOiv0

Like if Mark Twain's works get read, it alters it, like if a scientist observes the quantum computations, it alters it, collapses the waveform (like about 3 to 4 minutes into this video talks about), can't observe the system without changing it.

Lets see what jadorwosky said about this same MEME of erasing the author, or altering his message by hearing. seeing, observing it, receiving it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-oBEGF7uwE

http://oculusrift.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1904

http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/jodorowsky/

I did not want to respect the novel, I wanted to recreate it. For me Dune did not belong to Herbert as Don Quixote did not belong to Cervantes, nor Edipo with Esquilo.

There is an artist, only one in the medium of a million other artists, which only once in his life, by a species of divine grace, receives an immortal topic, a MYTH... I say "receives" and not "creates" because the works of art its received in a state of mediumnity directly of the unconscious collective. Work exceeds the artist and to some extent, it kills it because humanity, by receiving the impact of the Myth, has a major need to erase the individual who received it and transmitted: its individual personality obstructs, stains the purity of the message which, of its base, requires to be anonymous... We know whom created the cathedral of Notre-Dame, neither the Aztec solar calendar, neither the tarot of Marseilles, nor the myth of Don Juan, etc.

One feels that Cervantes gave HIS version of Quixote - of course incomplete - and that we carry in the heart the total character... Christ belongs not to Mark, neither to Luke, neither to Matthew, nor to John... There are many other Gospels known as apocryphal books and there is as many lifes of Christ as there are believers. Each one of us has their own version of Dune, its Jessica, their Paul... I felt in enthusiastic admiration towards Herbert and at the same time in conflict (I think that the same thing occurred to him)... He obstructed me... I did not want him as a technical adviser ... I did everything to move him away from the project... I had received a version of Dune and I wanted to transmit it: the Myth was to give up the literary form and to become Image...

Hollis went dark and stopped making music ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXQYyKzyDaE but that paved the way for gwen stefani to do her version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubvV498pyIM