Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Been thinking about making a thread about this, but this article just pushed me over the edge.


There were also a couple good tweets about this, from random people.

One, in response to Facebook, Inc.'s rebranding as Meta, was a declaration that the term "metaverse" officially became boomer.

Another was an explanation of the metaverse less as a place, but more as a gradual transition during which our digital lives become more important than our physical lives.

Anyway there will be a number of technologies, each entailing their own revolutions, that are in the process of converging into an overwhelmingly robust digital reality.

- AI / machine learning, as a means by which we may outsource a significant portion of our cognitive labor, i.e. certain kinds of data analysis. Visual object recognition, content recommendation, etc.

- Video games, already boasting a global market significantly bigger than that of sports or that of film/television, and may eventually dwarf both of these industries combined. Work meetings will be held, at least some of the time, with workplace avatars. Virtual land, as in Decentraland or Upland, will gain value insofar as those spaces can be socially inhabited, thus qualifying as the grounds for markets/marketing.

- Gamification, here defined as the process of engineering an experience to be systematically rewarding or punishing, i.e. establishing and revising the parameters of an experience qua game. This can draw from or otherwise relate to video games, but is far more general and can apply to virtually any socially and/or technologically mediated experience.

- VR / AR, we begin to perceive digital objects enmeshed within the physical world, perhaps an unprecedented technical extension of the mind.



- Blockchain, perhaps especially the utility of the non-fungible token, i.e. the publicly verifiable certificate of digital ownership. It cannot be stressed enough how important this verifiable digital ownership is. Before NFTs, this was largely impossible, to my knowledge. More broadly, blockchain allows unprecedented access to capital markets, as far as I can tell, as well as incremental degrees financial independence as our economy comes to understand and rely upon crypto assets as media of exchange, stores of value and units of accounting.

Blockchain is just a particular, robust protocol, or family of protocols, to be piled onto the internet qua stack of protocols. And there is a sort of network effect to be witnessed, in terms of protocols being added to the internet and unlocking new features, new combinations of features. Every new protocol introduced entails new combinations for all pre-existing protocols.

So we're still early into this, insofar as brain-computer interfaces are still primitive (to my knowledge), insofar as the term "metaverse" itself may seem silly or fantastical, insofar as most humans are not digital natives, and insofar as it is still a niche concept/interest.

It is a bit of a gaudy term, in my opinion, but what it denotes is quite serious and incipient, and will blossom (or metastasize, depending on how you view it) regardless of whether or not you take it seriously.

Really what I'm interested in now is probing potential next steps for a post-metaverse society. What frontiers await us once the premises and innovations entailed by the metaverse are taken for granted, just as the premises and innovations entailed by the internet are now taken for granted?
 

luka

Well-known member
again this seems to me to be an attempt to build cyberspace the way it was always supposed to be, as a space you can move around in, not as a selection of pages, one after the other
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
again this seems to me to be an attempt to build cyberspace the way it was always supposed to be, as a space you can move around in, not as a selection of pages, one after the other
Yeah just as video games evolved from board games, in terms of doing the visualization and sensation for the player, i.e. becoming more technically robust, so the metaverse will involve spaces that are much more space-like than what we've been calling cyberspace so far.
 

luka

Well-known member
im not sure abut the red text on your link Stan, from an aesthetic standpoint that is
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
im not sure abut the red text on your link Stan, from an aesthetic standpoint that is
Yeah I'm not attached to it, I just wanted it to stand out initially. I could change it now, think its had whatever effect it could have.
 

luka

Well-known member
i dont mean that. i mean choose not to pursue this particular path as a civilization, not as individuals
 

luka

Well-known member
as soon as 5g is possible it has to be installed instantly everywhere. there's no why. theres no consultation. its a kind of mental illness really.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Well it seems like there is too much of a motivation to say yes to it, collectively. It promises a more frictionless society, where the means open up to have transparent governance. Not that everyone with power will embrace these means, however.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
as soon as 5g is possible it has to be installed instantly everywhere. there's no why. theres no consultation. its a kind of mental illness really.
A sort of technoprogressive mythos, which I personally condone in large part, coupled with a capitalist praxis, which I personally condone albeit less fully.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
It is like a mass compulsion, I agree. I just happen to see plentiful reason to move in this direction, but yes it is a direction we seem to be moving in somewhat blindly, as if driven by some natural force.
 
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