Metaverse Pioneer Who Helped Launch Last VR Hype Wave Proposes Drawing New Map of Our Mixed Reality

Help Draw a Map of Reality is a new proposal from Linden Lab alum Reuben Steiger and some two dozen VR developers to create a new guide to a world impacted by VR, AI, augmented reality experiences like Pokemon Go, and so on, including:

• A STATEMENT A single statement defining why now is a definitive moment in the history of mankind and a vision for guiding our efforts and energy.
• CATEGORIES AND FRAMEWORKS (This is the largest single deliverable). The future of simulated reality requires common naming conventions. We will attempt to create a working model so that relationships between disciplines and markets are clearer. For each category, there will be an Editor.
• A MAP: A graphical representation of the systems, software, content and markets that comprise the future of networked experiences. 

If you want to get involved in this consortium, register your interest on Reuben's Medium, or on Reuben's Facebook page. VR veterans will feel some very keen deja vu, and there's a very good reason for that: 

Reuben Steiger at mixed reality event during SLCC 2006

This new project explicitly resembles the Metaverse Roadmap of 2006, which Reuben and myself and a lot of really smart people including Jeremy Bailenson, Raph Koster, Robert Scoble, and Ethan Zuckerman helped produce, laying much of the groundwork for the virtual world hype wave which started that year. Which is one very good reason I'm personally skeptical that a new roadmap will help us much in coming years, because our predictions from 10 years ago were mostly so, so terribly wrong. But even if so, it was a rewarding thought experiment all the same. More on that soon!

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Comments

[JohnC]

I may be wrong, but is this not a great example of the massive self importance that currant VR developers attach to themselves and their industry, that at this ridiculously early stage in development the rest of humanity needs a guide to their oh so important world.

[Reuben Steiger]

Hope all folks understand that this is an attempt to do something hard and maybe useful - grass-roots and not easy. Please help if you like - the more people and more opinions the better.

[JohnC]

It might help if you hired a bus and traveled around a bit in AR, actual reality, and when I say travel I mean far away from locations where VR developers gather and imagine a world “impacted” by VR.
Granted, most people seem to have a mobile phone, and many households have a games machine of some kind. The vast majority of people buy stuff online now also, but these people are just the same people as they always were, except they are using these machines for convenience or entertainment or because they are too lazy to go shopping in the real world. When you get on the ground at the grass roots in a small town or village in England where I live there is not some cyberpunk revolution going on, people are way to busy with normal life. Sure I can set my sister, who is busy working and being a grandmother, up with a VR headset and show her some cutting edge VR stuff. She will doubtless be suitably amazed for a few moments, but it won't be meaningful to her in any way, and once she takes off the headset, which I am sure she would detest,then she will return to the real amazing things in her life, her grandchildren. You see it just does not mean that much to a vast majority of people in the world. I have always been completely consumed by the idea of virtual worlds as long as there have been computers powerful enough to create them. But I am also aware that I am some kind of minor freek who has the luxury of time enough to explore these ideas. But IMHO the majority of mankind does not care about or would ever want anything to do with anything other than AR at this moment in Human development, real life is way to preciouse to them.

[sirhc deSantis]

Well, bits are easy

A STATEMENT : 'because we think it is (something)'

CATEGORIES : more pointless FPS games - in 3D GoreOVision! Pron in all its forms - in 3D! 'Blockbuster linear scripted mindless entertainment' ie Holly/BollyWood. 24 hours of sigh RealityTV through some celebs viewpoint - in 3D! (Although Gibson covered this already) Art which might be worthwile. Attempts at education which will fade quickly. Sure you can think of more..

FRAMEWORKS : whatever mark Z et al decide.

MAP : bunch of overlapping cubes representing where the money is - and track it as it shifts. That would be fun.

Sorted. I look forward to the 2026 recap, which will start 'well we were completely wrong but in interesting ways'.

[Pussycat Catnap]

This just reminds me of back when you could go to a store and buy a 'yellow pages of the internet' and when Yahoo tried to do search by manually crawling and recording 'every website'...

It just won't scale well, or end well.

[Sc]

JohnC pretty much said it all:

"...a great example of the massive self importance that currant VR developers attach to themselves and their industry, that at this ridiculously early stage in development the rest of humanity needs a guide to their oh so important world."

If their VR causes world peace, ends global poverty and cures all illness, then I might be interested in their guide, but until then, it's just not worthy of my time and attention.

[aaa]

Comments section overly negative and critical... little can be done without writing things out and brainstorming. Perhaps virtual reality cannot cure illness or end wars, but can any other forms of entertainment do that? If you can't provide anything helpful then why comment at all? It is ridiculous to believe that no progress can be made over decades. If the inspiration is there, a small community could certainly create something big that anyone could be a part of.
Though probably not at easy as it sounds, I think something important is to work on simplifying content creation. Streamlining it to the point that almost anyone could contribute to expanding the universe, could help with the question of people who wouldn't commonly have much interest in virtual reality. I believe there is an attachment when you've created something yourself and it is much easier to understand the appeal and functionality of virtual reality as a creative tool before other possible facets of the experience.

[JohnC]

The negativity is a reaction to the seeming naïve acceptance of the hype storm surrounding VR at the moment, and even more justified considering a similar attempt at almost exactly the same thing was attempted, and fell very short of its goals during the last Virtual world Hype storm. Of course it is up to each individual to believe or reject whatever they wish. But it is also up to each individual on a public forum to express an opinion either positive or negative in reaction to any article posted there. What use is a comments section where the blogger only accepts posts that are positive and agree with whatever is said in an article. SL already did the simplification of content creation very well and encouraged many thousands of people who never believed themselves to be creative in any way, to have a go at being creative. I cannot see how the rezzing of simple prims and connecting them to create more complex items as your experience grows, could be simplified any further. If Sansar is not like SL then it has simply complicated the creative process and already turned off thousands of its core supporters. the reverse of what you seem to be suggesting.