Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all things tech. But boy, that that less
Speaker 1: phrase comes with a lot of qualifiers, doesn't it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that I might need to create a sub
Speaker 1: series of tech Stuff episodes called the Grumpy Old Man Episodes.
Speaker 1: Um and in which case, maybe we need like some
Speaker 1: sort of grumpy old man music, maybe something you know,
Speaker 1: like hill billy esque playing in the background, considering my
Speaker 1: my my own background in southern culture. But um yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a grumpy episode in many ways.
Speaker 1: And it's because I thought I would talk a bit
Speaker 1: about the concept of the metaverse and what that is
Speaker 1: besides being kind of using. And the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 1: it up at all is there have been a few
Speaker 1: recent examples of companies committing to building out a type
Speaker 1: of metaverse. One of those is Facebook, which you know,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this in the future, might not
Speaker 1: be called Facebook anymore. The company that is. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the platform will still be called Facebook, but the company
Speaker 1: is looking at a rebranding at least according to rumor,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I'll talk about that more in tomorrow's
Speaker 1: news episode, but first let's talk about some general concepts,
Speaker 1: because we're not just going to talk about Facebook's metaverse here.
Speaker 1: So the term itself has its roots in science fiction,
Speaker 1: similar to the term cyberspace. In fact, we should first
Speaker 1: consider cyberspace before we move on to the metaverse. Now, cyberspace,
Speaker 1: at least the version of cyberspace that became popularized within
Speaker 1: mainstream culture, originated from the works of cyber author William Gibson.
Speaker 1: Gibson himself was no programmer. He was not even a technologist.
Speaker 1: He has said that he picked up terms and expressions
Speaker 1: when essentially eaves dropping on conversations at a science fiction
Speaker 1: convention back in the early nineteen eighties, and he found
Speaker 1: certain phrases and you know, jargon, really captivating and they
Speaker 1: became part of his work and he used them liberally
Speaker 1: and loosely. One of the terms that he used with cyberspace,
Speaker 1: and he kind of coined it. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 1: other artists had actually used the term cyberspace before Gibson,
Speaker 1: but in a different context. So I'm not really including
Speaker 1: those in his short story Burning Chrome He called cyberspace
Speaker 1: a consensual hallucination. So it was a thing that took
Speaker 1: abstract data and ideas and turned it into stuff you
Speaker 1: could actually see, like visualize. And that sounds pretty trippy,
Speaker 1: but stick with me for a second, because honestly, this
Speaker 1: is how we interact with a lot of our technology today.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, mundane to us. So take the
Speaker 1: typical computer user interface or even smartphone interface. Most systems
Speaker 1: that the average person comes into contact with these days
Speaker 1: are some variation of a graphical user interface or g
Speaker 1: u I or gooey. In other words, there are obviously alternatives,
Speaker 1: and I mean if you're working on Linux systems with
Speaker 1: line code and things like that, you know that's different.
Speaker 1: But most of us tend to encounter systems that are
Speaker 1: using some form of gooey. So the graphics on screen
Speaker 1: represents stuff like programs and processes. So for example, if
Speaker 1: you have a uh your desktop up and there's a
Speaker 1: Chrome icon on the screen, you can click on that
Speaker 1: and it opens up the Chrome web browser. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you were to click on an icon that was for Minecraft,
Speaker 1: it would open up Minecraft. You get the idea. The
Speaker 1: process of executing a program, which you know that's kind
Speaker 1: of abstract. The idea of telling a computer, hey, I
Speaker 1: need you to execute this specific code. That has made
Speaker 1: more understandable by representing that process with the icon. You
Speaker 1: click on the icon and the computer does the thing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to try to figure out how to
Speaker 1: tell the computer to do the thing. The computer knows
Speaker 1: how to do the thing. All you had to do
Speaker 1: is click on the icon. Gibson's description of cyberspace was
Speaker 1: kind of like that, but on a global scale. It
Speaker 1: was an extension of how we already used various methods
Speaker 1: to try and visualize data. I mean, we've been doing
Speaker 1: that for ages, you know. We use tables and charts
Speaker 1: and graphs in order to do this. Humans are not
Speaker 1: super good at processing big numbers, like we can't really
Speaker 1: conceptualize big numbers effectively. But if you break it down
Speaker 1: into a picture, then we typically get the idea, ah ha,
Speaker 1: that piece of the pie is much bigger than this
Speaker 1: other piece of the pie. You know, mm hmm pie.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a throwback for the long time text
Speaker 1: stuff listeners out there. Well later people would specifically interpret
Speaker 1: Gibson's description of cyberspace to mean computer networks in general,
Speaker 1: and then the Internet in particular. Cyberspace was this kind
Speaker 1: of nebulous location. It wasn't physical, but it was possible
Speaker 1: because of these interconnected computers. It was the the abstract
Speaker 1: idea of space represented by these computer connections. Cyberspace was
Speaker 1: where data could flow from one source to another, or
Speaker 1: from one source to many others, or from many sources
Speaker 1: to one destination. As the general public became aware that
Speaker 1: there was this thing called the Internet, the term cyberspace
Speaker 1: would sometimes be used to describe it. In fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of us still use it today. I would argue
Speaker 1: that Gibson's original concept was a little more poetic than
Speaker 1: the Internet, that it was less about the actual interconnections
Speaker 1: and more about this experience of the abstract taking a
Speaker 1: synthetic form that we could interact with in some presumably
Speaker 1: meaningful way. But there you go. Well, by the time
Speaker 1: we get to the nineties, the Internet was a known thing,
Speaker 1: at least to a slightly larger number of folks. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't really take off in the public consciousness until the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web started to gain speed. Really, by the mid
Speaker 1: to late nineties, it had been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but mostly it was college students who were aware of
Speaker 1: it before then. But in those early nineties we got
Speaker 1: another concept from science fiction, and this would be the metaverse. Now,
Speaker 1: this time the author was Neil Stevenson and the book
Speaker 1: was Snow Crash. That book, by the way, is a
Speaker 1: darn entertaining read. There's no way I could give a
Speaker 1: synopsis of that book and do it justice. It would
Speaker 1: just sound like gibberish if I try to explain it.
Speaker 1: But it includes stuff like cyberpunk elements, the concept of
Speaker 1: human language being somewhat synonymous with programming languages, the idea
Speaker 1: of corporations becoming the dominant force in modern life, and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Also, the main character's name in that
Speaker 1: book is Hero Protagonist, which is just playing awesome. But
Speaker 1: the part we want to focus on is the metaverse.
Speaker 1: So in the books No Crash, there is this online
Speaker 1: virtual space that exists in tandem with our own physical world.
Speaker 1: Using a computer system like a terminal, you can log
Speaker 1: into this persistent virtual world, and in that world, each
Speaker 1: person has an avatar to represent themselves, just like you
Speaker 1: would find in your typical massively multiplayer online role playing
Speaker 1: game or m m O RPG. Now, this kind of
Speaker 1: gets back to Gibson's description of abstract data taking forms.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the abstract data would be all
Speaker 1: the different kinds of interactions you would have within a
Speaker 1: virtual space, and the form would be the avatar. Right.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you're in a virtual pub, and
Speaker 1: this virtual pub has a dartboard in it, and you
Speaker 1: decide you want to play a game of darts, so
Speaker 1: you direct your avatar to the dart board. Then you
Speaker 1: begin a game, and the whole process of your avatar
Speaker 1: walking to the dart board and pulling the darts out
Speaker 1: and getting ready to throw the darts is kind of
Speaker 1: analogous to how you would click on an icon on
Speaker 1: your standard computer or smartphone gooey like, when you want
Speaker 1: to play a game on your phone, you just touch
Speaker 1: the icon for the game on your screen and it
Speaker 1: launches and then you're off. In this version of a metaverse,
Speaker 1: a virtual representation of you seems to go through these
Speaker 1: stages that a real person would go through in our
Speaker 1: physical real world to play the real version of that game.
Speaker 1: So again it's giving form, it's mirroring the real world
Speaker 1: in that case. Now that's just a simple example, of course,
Speaker 1: And in snow crash. The metaverse includes not just avatars
Speaker 1: that represent people and not just like entertaining diversions. There
Speaker 1: are also representations of programs and processes that take a
Speaker 1: form like akin to a physical form in the metaverse. Again,
Speaker 1: let's think about your computer. One thing you might have
Speaker 1: on your computer is an anti virus program that, right,
Speaker 1: the anti virus is designed to keep your computer protected
Speaker 1: from malware threats. Well, in the metaverse, you might have
Speaker 1: something akin to malware protection, but it takes the form
Speaker 1: of like a security guard or maybe a personal bodyguard,
Speaker 1: and you actually see a representation. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: do it this way, right, You wouldn't even have to
Speaker 1: have a visualization of that process, but you could. So
Speaker 1: some of the things in the metaverse would not be
Speaker 1: representations of other people, but of specific processes or programs.
Speaker 1: On a similar note, maybe you've got a personal assistant
Speaker 1: in this virtual world, and the assistant isn't an actual
Speaker 1: human being using an avatar. Instead, it's a computer generated
Speaker 1: conduit for things like notifications. So instead of seeing like
Speaker 1: something pop up within your vision telling you, hey, you've
Speaker 1: got a message, maybe you've got this personal assistant who says, hey, boss,
Speaker 1: I got a message for you, like, that's another way
Speaker 1: you could have this implementation. Now, that is the tippiest
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg when it comes to metaverse implementations,
Speaker 1: of course, And I should also add that the concept
Speaker 1: lumps and a few other things as well. For one thing,
Speaker 1: stuff like virtual and augmented reality bleed into the idea
Speaker 1: of a metaverse. The metaverse becomes something that one can
Speaker 1: experience within the virtual environment, or sometimes the metaverse can
Speaker 1: bleed in to the real world through technologies like augmented
Speaker 1: reality and the Internet of Things. Really, the metaverse is
Speaker 1: an evolutionary step and how we interact both with the
Speaker 1: world of computers and computer systems and our real world
Speaker 1: around us. Now, let's talk about augmented reality for a second.
Speaker 1: I often think of augmented reality or a R as
Speaker 1: being kind of an isolated experience. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: I frequently take a fairly narrow view of a R.
Speaker 1: I imagine glasses or maybe a headset. Then lets me
Speaker 1: do stuff like see virtual overlays like directions displayed on
Speaker 1: top of my real world view. So maybe I'm desperately
Speaker 1: trying to put together a piece of IKEA furniture and
Speaker 1: I'm having real hard time just following the paper directions.
Speaker 1: So I put on my A R headset that has
Speaker 1: a program that has all the different Ikea furniture programmed
Speaker 1: into it, and the headsets camera is looking where I'm looking,
Speaker 1: so it identifies the various pieces is of Ikea furniture
Speaker 1: in front of me, and it gives me directions step
Speaker 1: by step on what I need to do next. It
Speaker 1: tells me if the piece I'm working on is backwards
Speaker 1: or not right, might say, hey, you need to flip
Speaker 1: that around, which is very useful. It prevents me from
Speaker 1: doing what I otherwise will do practically every single ding
Speaker 1: dang darn time, which is that I will install the
Speaker 1: drawers upside down in my desk. Anyway, with the A
Speaker 1: R glasses, I'm not just getting instructions like I would
Speaker 1: from the paper book. I'm getting contextual, relevant instructions for
Speaker 1: what's happening at that moment, where I am and how
Speaker 1: everything is oriented from my perspective. The glasses interpret what
Speaker 1: it is I'm looking at and what it should look like,
Speaker 1: and then it is able to tell me what I
Speaker 1: should do next. I mean, the earliest versions of A
Speaker 1: R were meant to do this sort of thing. One
Speaker 1: very early implementation of augmented reality was to help people
Speaker 1: who are putting together commercial air craft. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that has to happen correctly to
Speaker 1: build a working commercial aircraft, for example, wiring up the
Speaker 1: aircraft that you're putting together so that all the electrical
Speaker 1: systems work properly. So one early implementation of the ARE
Speaker 1: was to create a guide for technicians to follow when
Speaker 1: they were wiring up aircraft to make sure that the
Speaker 1: correct wires were going to the correct places. Well, these
Speaker 1: are kind of isolated examples of a R. In a
Speaker 1: metaverse implementation, the a R glasses could tap into this shared,
Speaker 1: persistent universe and create experiences in our real world connected
Speaker 1: to that virtual universe, and it could do so in
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. I mean, maybe it allows
Speaker 1: you to travel within both the real world and the
Speaker 1: metaverse at the same time, which I think would probably
Speaker 1: be a little bit confusing at least for me. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it lets you tap into stuff that enhances your
Speaker 1: experience in both realms in some way, Like you could
Speaker 1: think of ways that marketers could create real world experiences
Speaker 1: that enhance your experiences in a virtual world or vice versa,
Speaker 1: like you could have it go both ways. When you
Speaker 1: pairent with things like the Internet of Things and ubiquitous computing,
Speaker 1: you really start to blur the lines between where the
Speaker 1: virtual world ends and the real world begins. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the point. Now. I mentioned that in snow
Speaker 1: Crash there's kind of a social system in this metaverse
Speaker 1: um and it depends partly on how good your avatar
Speaker 1: looks like. That's a big part of it. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is that you typically need to be pretty
Speaker 1: talented as a programmer or a hacker in order to
Speaker 1: make a really cool looking avatar. Uh. And the way
Speaker 1: you tap into the metaverse and snow Crash is reliant
Speaker 1: on what kind of terminal you are using. What's your
Speaker 1: end point, your your access point. The folks who are
Speaker 1: really well off in the real world have their own
Speaker 1: personal terminals with powerful computer systems and sophisticated electronics, so
Speaker 1: the look great when they log in. Their Their avatars
Speaker 1: aren't just cool, they're like high resolution, detailed avatars. But
Speaker 1: you could also access the metaverse using publicly accessible terminals,
Speaker 1: but these run on much older pieces of hardware, so
Speaker 1: you look kind of jankie when you log in like
Speaker 1: a low resolution version of whatever it is you're trying
Speaker 1: to be, and that means that the folks around you
Speaker 1: will look down on you like your status is lower
Speaker 1: because you're accessing the metaverse using some publicly accessible terminal,
Speaker 1: not like through some fancy sh fancy one. Now that's
Speaker 1: an interesting concept. It's one that I think we would
Speaker 1: have to tweak a little bit today for it to
Speaker 1: translate properly. And the reason I say that is because
Speaker 1: of cloud computing. Most of the time online worlds rely
Speaker 1: on cloud based servers to do the heavy lifting. So
Speaker 1: the device you use, whether it's your computer or virtual
Speaker 1: reality setup or even your smartphone, that device doesn't need
Speaker 1: to do as as much work. Has to do some
Speaker 1: it's got to render stuff for you, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the heavy lifting is done on the server side,
Speaker 1: not on the client side. So some processing has to
Speaker 1: happen at your side, but a lot of it needs
Speaker 1: to happen in the centrally located cloud. So in this case,
Speaker 1: what's really important is that you have a good Internet
Speaker 1: connection in order to have a seamless experience. But then
Speaker 1: the servers do the rest. So I think if Stevenson
Speaker 1: were to write snow Crash today, he might put more
Speaker 1: emphasis on connection speed versus the actual physical hardware you're
Speaker 1: using to access the metaverse, and that the speed would
Speaker 1: end up being something that affects your perceived status within
Speaker 1: the metaverse. Anyway, the metaverse plays a really big part
Speaker 1: in snow Crash, but it plays an even bigger part
Speaker 1: in a novel titled Ready Player one by Ernest Klein,
Speaker 1: which also was famously turned into a movie. Now. In
Speaker 1: that novel, there's an online world called Oasis that is
Speaker 1: in many ways a metaverse. It's where people go to
Speaker 1: escape the harsh and mundane challenges of the real world.
Speaker 1: Like snow Crash, how you experience the Oasis depends largely
Speaker 1: upon the equipment you have at your disposal. If you
Speaker 1: have a basic setup, you get a taste of it,
Speaker 1: but to really get the most out of it, you
Speaker 1: need really high tech and expensive gear that not only
Speaker 1: lets you navigate this virtual environment, but you get real
Speaker 1: world haptic feedback. Haptic in this case, that that's talking
Speaker 1: about your sense of touch. So you have some sort
Speaker 1: of technology that can give you touch feedback to stuff
Speaker 1: that you're encountering. In this virtual space, which creates your
Speaker 1: sense of immersion, right, and you can physically experience the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're virtually encountering. The two realities, you know,
Speaker 1: the reality of the real world and the reality of
Speaker 1: this virtual real world kind blend into one another. Also
Speaker 1: in the metaverse and Ready Player one, that metaverse mostly
Speaker 1: exists so that you can endure countless references to nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties pop culture like a lot. Now, I know this
Speaker 1: isn't a literary criticism podcast, but I have to say
Speaker 1: that the one thing I found Ready Player one to
Speaker 1: really be was irritating, both because I felt that Klein
Speaker 1: was leaning way too hard on references to kind of
Speaker 1: stand in for story, and also what little story there
Speaker 1: actually was once you peeled the references away, amounted to
Speaker 1: very little more than a juvenile male power fantasy, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a key for me. And because all
Speaker 1: the references were for the nineteen eighties, I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but feel that Klein was really writing this book for
Speaker 1: folks who belonged to kind of my generation, the same
Speaker 1: as Klein's generation. You know, people who were kids in
Speaker 1: the eighties like those references wouldn't have the same appeal
Speaker 1: to people who were born and say the late nineties,
Speaker 1: for example. But then you've got a juvenile male power
Speaker 1: fantasy that was written in a book that was mostly
Speaker 1: geared for people in their forties. Anyway, I'm off track,
Speaker 1: you know what. Actually, I think we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the concept of the metaverse. One thing that we need
Speaker 1: to take into consideration when we're talking about the metaverse
Speaker 1: is the idea of what comes next, because that's kind
Speaker 1: of what the metaverse is. And it helps if we
Speaker 1: think of some of the technologies that were emerging at
Speaker 1: the time that folks first started to think about stuff
Speaker 1: like the metaverse. For one thing, you had the emergence
Speaker 1: of virtual reality or VR. Now, VR in the nineties
Speaker 1: was pretty primitive, but folks latched onto this concept like Gangbusters.
Speaker 1: The hype was out of control. The general public was
Speaker 1: familiar with, at least, you know, to some extent, of computers,
Speaker 1: and they were at least aware of computers. Stuff like
Speaker 1: video game systems, personal computers, and digitized workplaces. Meant that
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody had at least some awareness of what
Speaker 1: computers are and what they can do. Virtual reality had
Speaker 1: this promise of bringing what computers do into a new
Speaker 1: kind of experience, a really immersive, enveloping experience like the gooey,
Speaker 1: like the graphical user interface. Virtual reality we were told
Speaker 1: would revolutionize how we interface and access computer information and programs.
Speaker 1: So rather than sitting at a desk and using a
Speaker 1: keyboard and mouse, we would use a virtual reality set
Speaker 1: up and we would virtually walk around environments and interact
Speaker 1: with virtual objects. Would be the next step up from
Speaker 1: having icons, right, And this was the era where Hollywood
Speaker 1: kind of envisioned a very different, unrealistic version of what
Speaker 1: using a computer was all about, and an even more
Speaker 1: unrealistic depiction of what virtual reality experiences were like. If
Speaker 1: you take a look at films from the early to
Speaker 1: mid nineties that involved computers, there's usually some sort of
Speaker 1: scene where someone is, you know, at a computer and
Speaker 1: they're going through a file system and they're navigating through
Speaker 1: some sort of three dimensionally rendered virtual structure. They might
Speaker 1: even be avoiding viruses or or security programs that are
Speaker 1: represented in some way like it's like you're playing a
Speaker 1: first person shooter game that all you're trying to do is,
Speaker 1: you know, run a simple program. It's nonsense, but it
Speaker 1: was a way to bring about that abstract idea into
Speaker 1: something that was, you know, filmable, because it's not very
Speaker 1: exciting to see someone either type in code into a
Speaker 1: computer or click on an icon on the screen. Well,
Speaker 1: VR would end up having a drastic decline, largely because
Speaker 1: people became disenchanted with where the technology actually stood versus
Speaker 1: where people thought it was based upon these like Hollywood
Speaker 1: films and stuff. So VR fell off the edge of
Speaker 1: the hype train and it would take another decade or
Speaker 1: so before it would start to re emerge to make
Speaker 1: another go at it. The VR would be one of
Speaker 1: the many components we would see incorporated into the concept
Speaker 1: of the metaverse. Then we've got the idea of web
Speaker 1: two point oh, which ties into this general idea of
Speaker 1: whether the Internet, or to put it less whimsically, what
Speaker 1: comes next, what's the next evolutionary step. So web two
Speaker 1: point oh was essentially a marketing buzz term. It was
Speaker 1: a way to reduce a lot of different important concepts
Speaker 1: into something that was easy to reference, even if you
Speaker 1: weren't being particularly precise with your language. It's unfortunate that
Speaker 1: people went with two point oh as a designation because
Speaker 1: it suggests that we first had Web one point oh,
Speaker 1: and then at some point some developers somewhere pushed out
Speaker 1: an up date to the web and we got Web
Speaker 1: two point oh. But that's not what happened. Instead, Web
Speaker 1: two point oh was a kind of collective term to
Speaker 1: describe websites that embraced stuff like dynamic, interactive experiences instead
Speaker 1: of a static web page. These experiences didn't have to
Speaker 1: be you know, thrilling, edge of your seat kind of things.
Speaker 1: For example, shopping sites that let users post reviews of
Speaker 1: products and then future visitors will see those reviews. Those
Speaker 1: are considered to be interactive and dynamic. The users are
Speaker 1: adding value to the experience of visiting the website through
Speaker 1: their activities. They're changing things over time, and future users
Speaker 1: can take that and say, oh, this person gave a
Speaker 1: really good review for this particular item, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and order it. Then you contrast that with
Speaker 1: some of the early web pages that were nothing more
Speaker 1: than just text. I mean, maybe you've got a table,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got a picture or two if you were lucky,
Speaker 1: if you were unlucky, maybe you also had a MIDI
Speaker 1: file playing in the background. Because I built some of
Speaker 1: those pages and and I am sorry anyway. These early
Speaker 1: pages were more like a physical catalog or a reference book.
Speaker 1: It's something that had inc committed to paper kind of
Speaker 1: approach to it. You know, the books and the catalogs,
Speaker 1: they never change. The publisher might send out an updated
Speaker 1: version further down the line, but the ones that they
Speaker 1: send out originally, those don't change. Right. If you buy
Speaker 1: a book, a physical book, and you put it in
Speaker 1: your bookshelf fifty years from now, it's going to have
Speaker 1: the exact same words on it as it did the
Speaker 1: day you bought it. That was kind of how web.
Speaker 1: A lot of web pages were in the early days,
Speaker 1: and these were seen as kind of boring and un engaging,
Speaker 1: and there was no reason to go back to them.
Speaker 1: You visit it once and you got it right. If
Speaker 1: it's never going to change, there's no point in going back.
Speaker 1: And the idea was that the future of the web
Speaker 1: was really going to be more insights than included rich
Speaker 1: experiences and ways for users to have meaningful interactions. So
Speaker 1: Web two point oh was less about here's where the
Speaker 1: web is going and more about here's how you can
Speaker 1: make your web presence impactful. Here's how you can stick around.
Speaker 1: But there were very early versions of Web two point
Speaker 1: oh at the same time as the quote unquote Web
Speaker 1: one point oh pages. It's not like it's not like
Speaker 1: we saw things change over time, but rather we saw
Speaker 1: which strategies worked in the long run, more like more
Speaker 1: like a web version of natural selection than anything else. Um.
Speaker 1: But it also set the stage for people to start
Speaker 1: talking about Web three point oh as then what's the
Speaker 1: next evolutionary step. Well, opinions about what that was gonna
Speaker 1: be varied. Some folks thought the next version of the
Speaker 1: web would be a virtual experience that you would travel
Speaker 1: through the web as if you were navigating real space,
Speaker 1: like you had a virtual environment and you're traveling around
Speaker 1: and you're interacting with stuff that way, sort of the
Speaker 1: wrecord Ralph version of navigating the web. The world of
Speaker 1: the web would be modeled in some ways on our
Speaker 1: real world, but we wouldn't be restricted by the laws
Speaker 1: of physics. Maybe in Web three point oh you can
Speaker 1: virtually fly around, or teleport or do any number of things.
Speaker 1: Maybe experiences on the Web would go beyond clicking on
Speaker 1: a link to go to a page. Maybe you would
Speaker 1: take a more active role in some way it could
Speaker 1: transform how we work and play on the web. Now,
Speaker 1: that was one concept of what web three point oh
Speaker 1: might be. Another involves the idea of the semantic web.
Speaker 1: And I've talked a lot in past episodes about how
Speaker 1: natural language processing is a non trivial challenge for computers. Now,
Speaker 1: we humans use language in odd, wonderful, and often confusing ways. Uh,
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to play the part of old
Speaker 1: persons speaking in lingo here, which I get it's cringe inducing,
Speaker 1: but this is to prove a point. Let's say I
Speaker 1: see that you pull off an amazing stunt of some sort.
Speaker 1: I might say that's cool. Or I might say that's bad.
Speaker 1: Or I might say that's sick, or I might say
Speaker 1: something else that ultimately means I am very impressed with
Speaker 1: what you did, and I applaud your efforts. But words
Speaker 1: like cool, bad, and sick don't just inherently mean good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I might say something is cool, but what
Speaker 1: I mean is that the temperature of that thing is
Speaker 1: lower than the temperature of the stuff around it. I
Speaker 1: might say it's bad if it's you know, not good.
Speaker 1: I might say it's sick if it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: puking it scuts out. Computers are not so good at
Speaker 1: picking the meaning out of what we have to say,
Speaker 1: even if what we say is straightforward. Computers cannot do
Speaker 1: that on their own. It requires a lot of work
Speaker 1: to create natural language processing, but we have seen big
Speaker 1: advances in that field, with systems getting better at parsing language,
Speaker 1: determining what was said, what was meant, and then formulating
Speaker 1: a response to that. Well, the semantic web would be
Speaker 1: able to interact with people using human language, and at
Speaker 1: least in some visions of the semantic web, the browser
Speaker 1: itself would pull from various sources to create a unique
Speaker 1: presentation of information based on whatever your query was. So
Speaker 1: not only would the semantic web understand what you were
Speaker 1: asking for, it would be able to go, well, look
Speaker 1: at all the different depositories of information about that subject
Speaker 1: and pull the relevant information for you, understanding what it
Speaker 1: was you were actually looking for. So, let's say you
Speaker 1: were doing a search on William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
Speaker 1: The semantic web might actually generate a unique web page
Speaker 1: for you based upon what it knows about you, and
Speaker 1: that page contains information about the play, maybe some video
Speaker 1: clips of different performances, maybe some passages from critical analysis
Speaker 1: about the play and so on. So it's not sending
Speaker 1: you to a specific web page that has all these things.
Speaker 1: It's actually generating that content itself, pulling that information from
Speaker 1: all these other sources. Then there's yet another web three
Speaker 1: point idea that relies on stuff like machine learning and
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. This is the concept of a web experience
Speaker 1: that that really customizes itself to the individual user. So
Speaker 1: think of all the times you encounter stuff online that's
Speaker 1: a targeted ad that's targeting you. Maybe you've done some
Speaker 1: web searches about like a particular style of coat, and
Speaker 1: then the next time you're on a website you start
Speaker 1: seeing ads for companies that make the type of coat
Speaker 1: you were interested in. Stuff like Internet cookies allows for
Speaker 1: that kind of collaboration that's going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of money going on back there too,
Speaker 1: and the result is that we feel some of the
Speaker 1: experiences we have have been curated for us. That can
Speaker 1: sometimes be good and often it can be pretty intrusive
Speaker 1: and creepy. Now that extends beyond ads. Obviously, sites like
Speaker 1: Facebook and YouTube use algorithms to choose which pieces of
Speaker 1: content you're more likely to encounter based upon your past behaviors.
Speaker 1: If you engage with one piece of content, that's like
Speaker 1: sending a message to the algorithm saying, Hey, I really
Speaker 1: happen to like topic X, so send me more stuff
Speaker 1: relating to topic X. Web three point oh would, in theory,
Speaker 1: take this concept and move really far forward with it.
Speaker 1: The browser for Web three point oh would anticipate what
Speaker 1: it was you wanted. It would draw conclusions based on
Speaker 1: what it knows about you, and a truly sophisticated version
Speaker 1: might be able to serve stuff up before you can
Speaker 1: even be aware that you wanted to see it in
Speaker 1: the first place. It also could be either magical or
Speaker 1: super creepy. Now, some of these ideas have filtered into
Speaker 1: our real world experiences, some of them are still outside
Speaker 1: of our realm of capability. Nothing has like truly transformed
Speaker 1: the Web, and some of the ideas have made their
Speaker 1: way into the concept of the metaverse. But really the
Speaker 1: whole reason I brought it up is that, at least
Speaker 1: in some ways, people are looking at meta versus as
Speaker 1: another answer to the question what comes next, At least
Speaker 1: as with regard to to how we interact with the
Speaker 1: online world and online experiences, all right, So a metaverse
Speaker 1: is more than just a virtual space. It's even more
Speaker 1: than an experience that can cross over from virtual world
Speaker 1: into the real world via stuff like the Internet of
Speaker 1: things devices, actuators are being a reality technology, et cetera.
Speaker 1: We generally think of a metaverse as being something that
Speaker 1: has the capacity to support its own society, at least
Speaker 1: to an extent. That can involve stuff like having a
Speaker 1: role within the metaverse and having the ability to perform
Speaker 1: certain types of transactions. And I think you can make
Speaker 1: a persuasive argument that a lot of m m O
Speaker 1: r pgs incorporate aspects of the metaverse concept, but I
Speaker 1: think that they don't get to full metaverse level. And
Speaker 1: that's largely because m m O RPGs have a certain
Speaker 1: immutable structure within them. So what do I mean that
Speaker 1: by that? I mean? Was that actually mean? Well, let's
Speaker 1: take a specific example and we'll talk about World of Warcraft, probably,
Speaker 1: you know, arguably the best known M m O RPG.
Speaker 1: It certainly was the most popular for many years. This
Speaker 1: game will be coming up on its twentieth anniversary in
Speaker 1: just a couple of years, so it is huge players
Speaker 1: have lots of options when it comes to picking a
Speaker 1: race and a class. They play a part in a grand,
Speaker 1: sweeping narrative, except it's a narrative that doesn't actually progress,
Speaker 1: at least not on a real level. See in games
Speaker 1: like World of Warcraft, players can take on quests to
Speaker 1: gain experience and loot and that sort of stuff. They
Speaker 1: progress as characters within this world. Their individual story can
Speaker 1: advance a little bit. But that quest you just did,
Speaker 1: let's say it's a quest that you know was to
Speaker 1: save a villager's child, that quest still exists for other players.
Speaker 1: Like you just rescued that one villager's child from a threat,
Speaker 1: But guess what the next player is gonna end up
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. That villagers child is perpetually immortal peril,
Speaker 1: and no number of rescues are ever going to change that.
Speaker 1: The world around you remains the same. Occasionally, you'll get
Speaker 1: an update to a game like this and that will
Speaker 1: incorporate really big changes that affect everything. But this isn't
Speaker 1: a consequence of player actions. It's something that the developers
Speaker 1: came up with as the next phase of this otherwise
Speaker 1: immutable world. When you really boil it all down, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you do or don't do within the game.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: It might have the illusion of mattering, but it doesn't really.
Speaker 1: It just gets pretty heavy, right. So, because the world
Speaker 1: has these ultimate boundaries, there's a limit to how much
Speaker 1: it can be a metaverse. It can have qualities of
Speaker 1: a metaverse, but otherwise it's kind of stuck. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that players can't create new methods of play
Speaker 1: within the game. They can, and they do. There are
Speaker 1: always players who will find ways to play that weren't
Speaker 1: intended by developers, and that emergent gameplay can be a
Speaker 1: bit closer to a true metaverse in some ways. But
Speaker 1: there are other environments that are even closer to the
Speaker 1: metaverse concept as it originally appeared. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about one of them. But first another quick break.
Speaker 1: Let us now take into consideration Second Life, which means
Speaker 1: first we need to talk about Linden Lab, the company
Speaker 1: that made Second Life. Now. Lynden Lab, founded by Philip Rosedale,
Speaker 1: did not set out to create a metaverse, at least
Speaker 1: not at first. Linden Lab's original focus was in hardware,
Speaker 1: with the goal of creating a system that was called
Speaker 1: the RIG that would provide like haptic feedback for virtual experiences.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be like a fully fledged virtual experience.
Speaker 1: It's piece of hardware that would uh create an an incredible,
Speaker 1: you know, experience for the user when they were going
Speaker 1: through VR. Taptic feedback, as I said, refers to the
Speaker 1: sense of touch, and a rumble pack in a video
Speaker 1: game controller is an example of a simple haptic feedback device.
Speaker 1: The RIG ultimately proved to be impractical, but one thing
Speaker 1: to emerge around this same time was this idea to
Speaker 1: create a virtual environment that would interact with something like
Speaker 1: the RIG. I mean, hardware like the RIG only does
Speaker 1: something interesting if you compare it with software that powers
Speaker 1: the experience, right, So in some ways I kind of
Speaker 1: think of this similar to how J. R. R. Token
Speaker 1: created the mythology and history of Middle Earth. Not Tolkien
Speaker 1: was a linguist, and he set out to make a
Speaker 1: few languages. Specifically. He first really started with a couple
Speaker 1: of versions of Elvish, but then he needed to have
Speaker 1: a world where these languages have existed, where they would
Speaker 1: have come from, and and so he started creating Mental Earth.
Speaker 1: Second Life, an online virtual world, sort of has a
Speaker 1: similar origin story. Now. Rosedale has said that while he
Speaker 1: had red snow Crash, or at least he was familiar
Speaker 1: with snow Crash, he had already been thinking about a
Speaker 1: persistent virtual online world before he encountered that book. And
Speaker 1: that's entirely possible because lots of folks were looking into
Speaker 1: these sorts of things around that time. Second Life would
Speaker 1: emerge in two thousand three as a kind of metaverse.
Speaker 1: In Second Life, users create an avatar to represent themselves
Speaker 1: in the virtual world. They then can visit this virtual
Speaker 1: world that lives on real world servers. They could own
Speaker 1: space within that virtual environment, so you would purchase virtual
Speaker 1: real estate using real world money to do it. And
Speaker 1: then you could create objects. You could code and DESI
Speaker 1: mind stuff for yourself, or you could create stuff and
Speaker 1: then offer it up to other users. You could even
Speaker 1: sell it within the game. They had an in game currency,
Speaker 1: I call it a game, it's not a game, then
Speaker 1: an in world currency, and you could interact with other
Speaker 1: people in Second Life, and you know, you had this
Speaker 1: shared online space, this community that existed. Virtually. Social structures
Speaker 1: began to form, so people actually did create communities within
Speaker 1: Second Life. You had the economy come about as a
Speaker 1: result of all this as well. Second Life wasn't constrained
Speaker 1: by the rules we face in reality, so it was
Speaker 1: a type of realization of a metaverse. Now you weren't
Speaker 1: required to encounter this by wearing you know, VR equipment.
Speaker 1: You could use a computer and you had a simple
Speaker 1: interface and you would navigate it like you would if
Speaker 1: it were like a first person shooter game or a
Speaker 1: third person perspective game. You could navigate the world that way,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't necessarily that you were all kidded out
Speaker 1: with a headset and gloves and all the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff we see in science fiction. But it was a metaverse,
Speaker 1: and it also came with some pretty big problems. Some
Speaker 1: of them were in ways that Lyndon Labs tried to
Speaker 1: monetize the platform. So, for example, the company once tried
Speaker 1: to initiate a tax system in which users would have
Speaker 1: to pay a certain amount of tax based on the
Speaker 1: amount of virtual stuff that they owned within Second Life.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you had purchased some virtual real estate,
Speaker 1: and let's say that you had, you know, the knowledge
Speaker 1: and talent to be able to code stuff in Second Life,
Speaker 1: you can maybe make something like a castle in the
Speaker 1: sky if you wanted to. Uh. Lyndon Labs said that well,
Speaker 1: in an effort to rein in some of the more
Speaker 1: extravagant displays and could serve server processing power, it would
Speaker 1: end up taxing folks for building that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So the more grandiose in large your design, the more
Speaker 1: you were going to have to pay. Folks found ways
Speaker 1: around this. They essentially they did the effect of deleting
Speaker 1: their stuff on the days when taxes were going to
Speaker 1: be assessed and then reinstating it the next day. It
Speaker 1: was not going smoothly, and Lyndon Lab of that ultimately
Speaker 1: chose other pathways towards monetization than that. But there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other issues within Second Life as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like again from the economy side, there were copy bots
Speaker 1: that would create counterfeit versions, like copies of user creations
Speaker 1: because we gotta remember everything users created was digital and
Speaker 1: digital files are easy to copy. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the issues that cryptocurrency had to work around, like
Speaker 1: how do you prevent people from copying the same thing endlessly?
Speaker 1: And because some users were actually making a living by
Speaker 1: creating and then selling virtual items within Second Life. This
Speaker 1: was a big problem. There were other issues that were
Speaker 1: user generated issue use like there was there was very
Speaker 1: taboo content. Taboo is putting it lightly. There was illegal
Speaker 1: content on Second Life as well, and it got a
Speaker 1: really bad reputation for that. That's not to say that
Speaker 1: everyone on Second Life was engaging in illegal practices, but
Speaker 1: the fact that they were happening and they were not
Speaker 1: particularly secret made it a stain on the reputation of
Speaker 1: the platform. Now, Second Life gained popularity for a while,
Speaker 1: kind of peeking around two thousand thirteen or so, and
Speaker 1: then it kind of declined. It still exists today. There
Speaker 1: are fewer than a million active users. Some estimates hover
Speaker 1: between half a million and nine thousand users, and a
Speaker 1: million is a lot of people, but when you compare
Speaker 1: it to platforms like Facebook, it's not even a drop
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Right, So Second Life is still around.
Speaker 1: It hasn't gone away, but I think the rise of
Speaker 1: social media platforms, primarily Facebook, led to a decline in usage.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that In Life was the only
Speaker 1: attempt at creating a metaverse. There have been several others,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it wasn't even a conscious attempt
Speaker 1: to create a metaverse. For example, I would argue that
Speaker 1: Minecraft didn't set out to be a metaverse. But there
Speaker 1: are Minecraft servers that are themselves their own little metaverses.
Speaker 1: So there are Minecraft servers where players create communities. They
Speaker 1: might have specific roles in those communities, they have different
Speaker 1: ways to interact with each other. The virtual world itself
Speaker 1: is persistent. Player actions can have a meaningful impact on
Speaker 1: these virtual worlds. So, assuming whoever is running the server
Speaker 1: hasn't prevented users from you know, the basic mechanics of Minecraft,
Speaker 1: the players get to shape the world however they like.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they create a subterranean uh community and
Speaker 1: the surface of the world is only occupied by animals
Speaker 1: and monsters. All the people are below ground, or maybe
Speaker 1: everyone's living up in the sky and they don't have
Speaker 1: flight turned on, so if you make a bad step,
Speaker 1: you're gonna faul to your death. You get the idea.
Speaker 1: And like I said, there are a lot of metaverse
Speaker 1: examples out there, and most of them have had a
Speaker 1: fairly limited impact. So there are subcultures that spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time in these metaverses where there are meaningful
Speaker 1: communities out there, but this experience hasn't become anywhere close
Speaker 1: to being ubiquitous. I guess it's not nearly as popular
Speaker 1: as just going online to check your social media right.
Speaker 1: Like tons of people use Facebook, a very small percentage
Speaker 1: by comparison, actually spends time on one of these metaverses.
Speaker 1: But Facebook itself is actually trying to change that. Facebook
Speaker 1: acquired the VR company Oculus back in and in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Facebook announced the development of what was then called Facebook
Speaker 1: Horizon Um. Now it's called Horizon Worlds. There's also a
Speaker 1: a work related one called Horizon Workplace. These are virtual
Speaker 1: environments in which players can actually create their own virtual
Speaker 1: spaces and even program their own games within those virtual spaces.
Speaker 1: So Horizon world comes with tools that let users make
Speaker 1: gameplay elements, and then as a user, you can navigate
Speaker 1: around and explore this virtual space. You can go to
Speaker 1: these different user generated worlds and try out the stuff
Speaker 1: that they've programmed. But it's currently just in a beta phase,
Speaker 1: and it also requires either you know, an Oculus Rift
Speaker 1: or an Oculus Quest as in the Oculus Virtual reality systems.
Speaker 1: As such, this is limited to a fairly small group
Speaker 1: of beta testers. For right now. I mean, first you
Speaker 1: have to limit it to just the folks who own
Speaker 1: an oculus system. Then you have among those the subsection
Speaker 1: that got a personal invite to participate in this beta.
Speaker 1: But that's just the start. In June of this year,
Speaker 1: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed to employees that the company
Speaker 1: had a plan to develop its own metaverse. Such a
Speaker 1: platform would incorporate vr are and a are, along with
Speaker 1: aspects of social networks and online shopping sites. It's essentially
Speaker 1: an effort to create the next thing for online spaces.
Speaker 1: It would be a thing that Facebook would own, which
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of hard to overstate how big
Speaker 1: a deal that would be for the company. After all,
Speaker 1: Facebook has billions of users. If it can even you know,
Speaker 1: managed to support of those people to this, that alone
Speaker 1: would be enormous because imagine for a moment that Facebook
Speaker 1: wasn't just a big player on the Internet. Imagine if
Speaker 1: Facebook was synonymous with the Internet. Imagine if every link,
Speaker 1: every interaction, every purchase, all of that. Imagine all of
Speaker 1: that filtered first through Facebook's systems. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: I think the company is hoping for with the creation
Speaker 1: of this metaverse. Experience to create something so compelling and
Speaker 1: immersive and interesting that folks migrate to it as I
Speaker 1: or the next phase of what it means to be online,
Speaker 1: or more likely, as you know, an additional way for
Speaker 1: a subset of people to interact online. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: like me, you probably think that doesn't sound great. Facebook
Speaker 1: has a pretty bad reputation when it comes to stuff
Speaker 1: like ethics and concern about users safety and privacy, And
Speaker 1: you can easily imagine a system that relies on stuff
Speaker 1: like VR and ARE hardware to provide even more opportunities
Speaker 1: for Facebook to gather information about users, information that Facebook
Speaker 1: would then leverage when working with, let's say advertisers. And
Speaker 1: think for a moment about the conversations we've had about
Speaker 1: Facebook's algorithm and how it's exacerbated problems like the spread
Speaker 1: of misinformation and hate speech. Now imagine the same company,
Speaker 1: which has shown at the very least a lack of
Speaker 1: urgency in addressing those issues, is literally in charge of
Speaker 1: every aspect of your online experience when you're inside It's metaverse.
Speaker 1: That's kind of chilling when you think of it that way.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's one science fiction film that has a
Speaker 1: metaverse in it that I think is a pretty fair analogy,
Speaker 1: and that's the matrix, because in the matrix, nearly all
Speaker 1: of humanity is actually inside a computer simulation, and their
Speaker 1: real bodies exist solely as an energy source for machines. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like Facebook metaverse would be kind of similar,
Speaker 1: except we'd be the source of money while occupying this
Speaker 1: virtual space. Anyway, I don't want to get too alarmist
Speaker 1: in that. It's true that I am beyond skeptical of
Speaker 1: a Facebook metaverse being, you know, a good thing. But
Speaker 1: it's also true that even if Facebook launches such a product,
Speaker 1: it's not guaranteed to succeed. So far, these metaverse experiences
Speaker 1: tend to appeal to a limited number of folks. Even
Speaker 1: in the Minecraft examples, I was giving like, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of Minecraft players who play on a private server
Speaker 1: who never interact with anyone else. That's not really much
Speaker 1: of a metaverse in that case. So it's not like
Speaker 1: any of these examples has reached a broad mainstream audience.
Speaker 1: They're all sub audiences. So in some cases people might
Speaker 1: not gravitate towards a metaverse because of the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: the metaverse, or it might be because the experience itself
Speaker 1: doesn't appeal to them, like maybe navigating the world is
Speaker 1: not natural to them and they don't enjoy it. Or
Speaker 1: in others, it might be because the equipment you need
Speaker 1: in order to even take part in it is prohibitively expensive.
Speaker 1: They can't afford to give it a shot. So there's
Speaker 1: no guarantee that the Facebook metaverse will become a huge hit,
Speaker 1: or that it's going to, you know, somehow replace the
Speaker 1: way we go online now. Uh So, no one has
Speaker 1: really made a metaverse on a scale like what we
Speaker 1: saw in the fiction of snow Crash already player one.
Speaker 1: No one has built something so amazing that practically everyone
Speaker 1: is already on it. No one has built the Facebook
Speaker 1: of meta verses, and we don't even know if Facebook
Speaker 1: will be able to pull that off. I'm skeptical, I am.
Speaker 1: Iagine whatever Facebook makes will not be my cup of tea.
Speaker 1: But then I also thought that my Space would beat Facebook,
Speaker 1: So what the heck do I know? Anyway, that's this
Speaker 1: episode about meta versus. Hope you enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle we use for the show is tech Stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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