Speaker 1: Him, Mark Zuckerberg, Welcome to the podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: about the Metaverse. I enjoy barbecue sauce. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: that Mark Zuckerberg like that was pretty good? That that
Speaker 1: is that is SNL worthy. Thank you, Garrison, because it's
Speaker 1: because it's so bad. Alright, um now that was my
Speaker 1: own big goal. This is this is part two of
Speaker 1: the metaverse that never was um here at it could
Speaker 1: happen here and we're actually gonna be talking about like that.
Speaker 1: It couldn't wait until we launch portions of the show
Speaker 1: and pretend we never said all this ship. It's going
Speaker 1: to be the best Garrison, you know, Robert, remember remember
Speaker 1: when I was talking about um Seek City and all
Speaker 1: of the virtual venues. I just, I just I just
Speaker 1: got a message from our beloved parent company. I heart Media.
Speaker 1: We planned to extend UM shows into the Metaverse, which
Speaker 1: was which was announced a few weeks ago. Garrison but
Speaker 1: always thought that the Metaverse was a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: I think we we will talk about how the metaverse
Speaker 1: could be cool later in this episode, but then we'll
Speaker 1: explain why it won't be. But yeah, I heard Media
Speaker 1: did announce the Web three in the Metaverse and the
Speaker 1: newest consumer platforms for I heart media. So sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: I was just working. It's I mean, it's working in
Speaker 1: a matrix for reference there, so yes, I see what
Speaker 1: thank you. UM. Anyway, so I'm guessing for non Neil
Speaker 1: Stevenson fans, many of you probably had not heard of
Speaker 1: the metaverse before last year. UM VR. Sure you've heard
Speaker 1: of VR a R maybe, UM, but probably just as
Speaker 1: like niche gaming technology, you know, not not this massive,
Speaker 1: not not like a massive successor to the Internet. UM.
Speaker 1: Primarily three companies, Facebook, Epic Games, and Valve. Uh, the
Speaker 1: later two being mostly gaming and software companies. UM. Kind
Speaker 1: of all decided the best way to push their niche
Speaker 1: VR and software technology into the zeitgeist was with this
Speaker 1: flashy new marketing, and it kind of worked metaversus now
Speaker 1: and many more people's like personal lexicon, But it's not
Speaker 1: really the metaverse, you know, like the Walmart thing. It's
Speaker 1: a way to attract investors and drum up free press,
Speaker 1: but it's still the same old VR and are applications
Speaker 1: of the technology. None of these companies are trying to
Speaker 1: make metaverse a thing that we actually want or you know,
Speaker 1: working towards an interconnected immersive three D open source successor
Speaker 1: to the Internet, All of the different websites and services
Speaker 1: we use united under one digital roof, like a super
Speaker 1: platform that you know, is made up of all of
Speaker 1: these sub platforms. You know, you have social media, online gaming,
Speaker 1: and all of like the you know, ease of life apps,
Speaker 1: all accessible through the same digital space, under the same
Speaker 1: digital economy. That that thing isn't happening. People like that.
Speaker 1: That's not what people with money are actually pushing towards,
Speaker 1: even though they're still using the metaverse term. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a great piece in Wired that came out last month.
Speaker 1: It's a part of their Matrix VR issue. UM. It
Speaker 1: was called the metaverse is simply big tech but bigger.
Speaker 1: It was by a Cecilia di'antazio. It was so it's
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful piece and I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say a quote from it right here. UM. By
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands, it became clear that money wasn't
Speaker 1: in building individual websites that we could access on the
Speaker 1: open Web. It was making information sorders, channels, aggregators, and
Speaker 1: publishers open enough to scale with user generated content, but
Speaker 1: closed enough to reap enormous profits. This was the evolution
Speaker 1: from Web one to Web two for nearly thirty years.
Speaker 1: The gravity of the consolidation has pulled the cyberspace together
Speaker 1: under the auspice of fewer and fewer corporate titans. The
Speaker 1: freaky little planets get drawn together, collide and make bigger
Speaker 1: planets call again and make stars or even black holes.
Speaker 1: Facebook Eats, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Amazon swallows two dozen e
Speaker 1: commerce sites, and you're left with these few supermassive players
Speaker 1: controlling and appropriating the celestial motion of billions of users.
Speaker 1: This is how big tech got big end quote. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like now we have all of our isolated toolboxes, and
Speaker 1: they really fight against any inter platform integration. You have
Speaker 1: you know Microsoft Office and they're they're like off their
Speaker 1: office suite. You have like Google Workspace, you have Apple's
Speaker 1: own like air Drop, Apple Pages, and finally cut Pro,
Speaker 1: plus the the nightmare that is Adobe's subscription tools. Like
Speaker 1: Google wants you to spend all day checking your Gmail,
Speaker 1: traveling with Google Maps, watching videos on YouTube, and browsing
Speaker 1: on Chrome. Meanwhile, your friend texts you via I Message,
Speaker 1: uses Apple Maps, and calls his mom on FaceTime. This
Speaker 1: is the single person in the world uses Microsoft Edge.
Speaker 1: That is true, but like this, this form of the
Speaker 1: Internet is the one that the metaverse is growing out of.
Speaker 1: Metavers is just a way for tech companies to add
Speaker 1: VR and a R and the accompanying extra surveillance and
Speaker 1: data collection to this poor foot to like their own
Speaker 1: portfolio of proprietary products. In order for that to happened,
Speaker 1: they need to convince us that we need headsets for
Speaker 1: the next evolution of the Internet. So it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that Facebook and Zuckerberg were the first ones to crack
Speaker 1: this thing right open. It's they own not only four
Speaker 1: of the top six social media platforms, but also Oculus,
Speaker 1: which is the most popular manufacturer of VR hardware. VR
Speaker 1: has been relegated to niche gaming technology for like basically
Speaker 1: two decades, and Zuckerberg decided the best way to sell
Speaker 1: more of its headsets and software was to give the
Speaker 1: tech a fresh new paint job and call it metaverse.
Speaker 1: And like it's sort of working that There were approximately
Speaker 1: nine point four million shipment severe headsets in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: three point six million of which were done during the
Speaker 1: holiday season after Facebook's big Metaverse event. It's suspected that
Speaker 1: the quest to which is made by Oculus a Facebook um,
Speaker 1: makes up for more than three quarters of all those
Speaker 1: headsets sold, So the Democrat demographics data isn't explicitly available,
Speaker 1: but probably a lot of kids received these things as
Speaker 1: holiday gifts um Oculus Meta. Facebook does not release its
Speaker 1: VERR headset sales figures, but the Oculus app that that
Speaker 1: you need to have to make the headset work shot
Speaker 1: to the top spot in Apple's App Store on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1: That was the first time it's ever been in the
Speaker 1: number one app on the App Store, so indicating a
Speaker 1: spike and headsets received as holiday gifts. So they're selling
Speaker 1: a lot of headsets, like Oculus is is selling a
Speaker 1: lot of their things. Like you know, I I got
Speaker 1: one a few years ago, but you know, now there's
Speaker 1: there's there's more and more of them circulating UM. But
Speaker 1: you know this, it's still all relegated to VR because
Speaker 1: I'm not actually metaverse. You know, arguably the closest thing
Speaker 1: we have to the actual metaverse is stuff like Roadblocks
Speaker 1: and Minecraft. Now that is still not that's not immersive
Speaker 1: three D. It's you're still looking at it through a
Speaker 1: two D screen, But it is software that gives users
Speaker 1: development tools to create their own projects within this shared
Speaker 1: three D space. What separates these things and basically all
Speaker 1: attempts from making the metaverse from being the ideal metaverse
Speaker 1: is still the proprietary aspect. Everything is isolated islands. You
Speaker 1: can't take your Roadblocks game into Minecraft, right, It still
Speaker 1: is isolated to their specific things. But you know. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: robox Is CEO described the company as the shepherds of
Speaker 1: the metaverse in early and he is kind of right, like,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not totally inaccurate. Um, I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: again from the Wired piece by Cecilia di'antasio. Um, if
Speaker 1: big text unchecked growth continues, there will be multiple metaversees,
Speaker 1: if there are any at all, Each will be interoperable
Speaker 1: under one Tech giants giant umbrella. The same way Apple
Speaker 1: is both a walled garden and a convenient, habitable terrarium
Speaker 1: for its dedicated consumers. Users love the seamlessness of Apple's
Speaker 1: proprietary off proating system, the ambiguity of my message, and
Speaker 1: Apple presumably loves the commission it can charge on developers
Speaker 1: who sell apps in their app store. So Epic Games
Speaker 1: is the other big metaverse proponent right now, you know
Speaker 1: they were. They were actually making announcements about metaverse a
Speaker 1: few months before Facebook did UM and the c a
Speaker 1: l Epic Games. Tim sween Ley has been outspoken against
Speaker 1: the metaverse ran by a big tech giant like Apple.
Speaker 1: But that's not that's not really genuine because his version
Speaker 1: of the metaverse entails of cyberspace made accessible through Fortnite
Speaker 1: and Unreal Engine, two things owned by Epic Games. So like,
Speaker 1: it's not like he's not actually sincere about creating an
Speaker 1: open source thing. He just wants to be the one
Speaker 1: to control it. He's just upset that he thinks someone
Speaker 1: else might. Um. He tried to sue Apple last year
Speaker 1: and and failed. UM and the College Fornia judge told
Speaker 1: him that Epic Games seeks a systematic change which would
Speaker 1: result in a tremendous monetary gain and wealth. The lawsuit
Speaker 1: is a mechanism to challenge the policies and practices of
Speaker 1: Apple and Google, which are an impediment to Mr Sweeney's
Speaker 1: vision of the oncoming metaverse. So it's not actually about
Speaker 1: like him being against big tech giants and being against
Speaker 1: a big tech giant wren Metaverse. It's just that he
Speaker 1: doesn't like that he won't be able to make as
Speaker 1: much money with it if multiple tech companies work together
Speaker 1: to make it, Like that's that's that's really what he's
Speaker 1: concerned about. He would rather be in control of this thing,
Speaker 1: um because like, yeah, it would be really interesting to
Speaker 1: see if multiple tech giants work together to create an
Speaker 1: actual successor to the Internet, like an actual like you
Speaker 1: know how the Internet is just when you open up
Speaker 1: your computer and you have access to the net. It's
Speaker 1: not it's it's not like running a specific program you
Speaker 1: get to go on all the things. It would be
Speaker 1: interesting if people actually work towards creating that. But no,
Speaker 1: it's all about creating very isolated operating systems with a
Speaker 1: very isolated tool like tool chest. Like you can't access
Speaker 1: Steam games via the Oculus store. These things don't These
Speaker 1: things don't work. Now you can Oculus, you can use
Speaker 1: the Oculus on Steam games, but not vice versa. They're
Speaker 1: making things the way they're making things because they're not
Speaker 1: trying to design a new Internet because for one thing,
Speaker 1: the Internet wasn't designed. It was like the result of
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who were doing things that interested them.
Speaker 1: All kind of intersecting and building upon each other. And second,
Speaker 1: like they're in they're not They're making individual profit tunnels.
Speaker 1: They're not actually trying to create. Um, they're not trying
Speaker 1: to like actually trying to think about what people might
Speaker 1: want next, or what people might might want beyond the Internet.
Speaker 1: They're thinking, how what can we sell that we're not
Speaker 1: currently selling? And that's never going to be the thing
Speaker 1: that figures out. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. On on
Speaker 1: that point, I'm gonna do one final quote from the
Speaker 1: Wired piece. Um, if if these companies dominating Cyberus Space
Speaker 1: did decide to collaborate simultaneously, piecing together opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the quilt to create a digital tech style, that would
Speaker 1: be very polite. But is there a world in which Microsoft, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Epic Games, Apple, uh Navidia, etcetera combine all of their
Speaker 1: valuable products captain planet style into an architect of the
Speaker 1: metaverse under open source standards? Nobody in particular roops billions
Speaker 1: from That's sort of a tall task to overhaul your
Speaker 1: code and collaborate with your competitors. Why would three or
Speaker 1: four tech giants partner to make a metaverse when they
Speaker 1: already spent decades and billions constructing one of their own.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's never gonna happen the way the
Speaker 1: way society is made, the way internetworks, that's not ever
Speaker 1: going to be a thing. Speaking of companies and things
Speaker 1: that you can buy online and advertising, here's some ads
Speaker 1: and we're back and we're gonna talk about possibly the
Speaker 1: most successful version of air of of VR technology. We'renna
Speaker 1: talk about the actual use cases that are generating actual profit.
Speaker 1: So there is a there was a tweet a few
Speaker 1: days ago that I'm just gonna read the tweet and
Speaker 1: then then we'll talk about the implications. Um, this one
Speaker 1: very very viral. UM. I caught this very early on, though,
Speaker 1: and I started writing about it, and then a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of articles dropped on the topic. A farmer in
Speaker 1: Turkey has fitted his cows with the virtual reality goggles
Speaker 1: to make them think they're outside in summer pastures. The
Speaker 1: farmer found out that these pleasant scenes make the cows
Speaker 1: happier and produce more milk. Futures metaverse, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk We're gonna talk about the cow may tricks. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Yeah, yeah, it is. It is to
Speaker 1: go back in time and tell people, Hey, you know
Speaker 1: that hit movie The Matrix in the future, We're going
Speaker 1: to do that, but for more milk to get So.
Speaker 1: The thing that went viral about it that kind of
Speaker 1: broke the story for a lot of people was this
Speaker 1: farmer in Turkey with the pictures of the cows with
Speaker 1: VR goggles on them. Pretty pretty pretty fucked up. Um.
Speaker 1: But the idea and the actual technology used came from
Speaker 1: came from Russia. UM. Farmers worked together with developers of
Speaker 1: veterinarians and consultants at the Oh boy, here here's a
Speaker 1: Russian town name, or I guess a farm name, krag skernof.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, that sounds right. It's that. I
Speaker 1: think we can we can? Were we I think you
Speaker 1: nailed it. It's it's it's this farm near Moscow. UM
Speaker 1: and they teamed up so all least you know, farmers,
Speaker 1: developers and vets and consultants teamed up to make this
Speaker 1: cow Matrix project UM And there was an official statement
Speaker 1: from the Moscow Ministry of Food and Agriculture reads the
Speaker 1: global trend towards universal computerization. The significant significantly simplifies work
Speaker 1: processes in many areas that and allows you to achieve
Speaker 1: unprecedented results. Russian milk producers keep up with the world
Speaker 1: standards and are even ready to offer the market new
Speaker 1: and unexpected solutions. On a farm in the Moscow region,
Speaker 1: a prototype of virtual reality glasses were tested to improve
Speaker 1: the conditions for keeping cows. Employees of one of the
Speaker 1: largest farms in the Moscow region, together with i T specialists,
Speaker 1: decided to conduct an experiment studying the influence of virtual
Speaker 1: reality and developed a layout of VR glasses. So the
Speaker 1: herd donned these VR systems adapted for the heads of cows.
Speaker 1: Um so. And they also had to they had to
Speaker 1: to to make the imagery work. They need to tweak
Speaker 1: the color palette in the software to make it suitable
Speaker 1: for the cow's vision, because cows can't see rudder green,
Speaker 1: so there's just shades of yellow and blue. So in
Speaker 1: order to replicate what grass click to them, they have
Speaker 1: to you know, change the stuff. Um but yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they programmed a unique summer field simulation program and
Speaker 1: subjected it onto these cows. Uh. The ministry, the Russian
Speaker 1: Ministry of Our Culture concluded that the cow matrix does work. Um.
Speaker 1: In a statement from a few a few years ago,
Speaker 1: officials said environmental conditions have significant have a significant impact
Speaker 1: on cow health and as a consequence, the quality and
Speaker 1: quantity of milk produced. So you know, like this is
Speaker 1: the thing. I I talked with, um, someone I know
Speaker 1: about this, and they're like, well, if it makes the
Speaker 1: cow like actually happier and healthier than like, what's the problem.
Speaker 1: And like the problem is is that like you're gas
Speaker 1: lighting and entire creature's reality. Like you're like you're you're
Speaker 1: you're like not consentually cast lighting their reality. And I
Speaker 1: that is I don't like that. I don't everything is
Speaker 1: without their consent. So I it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's like we're also not gaslighting their reality and
Speaker 1: this like we're not depriving their senses of what the
Speaker 1: world is. No, this seems like an escalation in our
Speaker 1: war on the cow. Yeah, so you know this other
Speaker 1: farmer in Turkey heard about this and decided to try
Speaker 1: it out on his cows. Um, And yeah, the funked
Speaker 1: up Cow Matrix or the Cow Tricks does seem to
Speaker 1: do its job extracting more milk from the cow to
Speaker 1: increase profitability. Quote from quote from the farmer said, uh,
Speaker 1: we get an average of two liters of milk per
Speaker 1: day from the cows in our farm. The milk average
Speaker 1: of the two cows that wore the VR glasses went
Speaker 1: up to twenty seven liters. So yeah, when when When
Speaker 1: the story first broke there was the most popular article
Speaker 1: was from a site called Futurism, which made made me
Speaker 1: made me very depressive about about futurism of depressed atism Garrison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it made me mad enough that I'm going to
Speaker 1: read some of its to you. Thank god I haven't
Speaker 1: been naming green seconds. That cows produced more milk when
Speaker 1: VR makes them think they're in beautiful green pastures proves
Speaker 1: that keeping them in agriculture environments isn't healthy, nor does
Speaker 1: it make them happy. Putting them in a cow matrix
Speaker 1: does sound a little grim, yes, but you can't argue
Speaker 1: with the results. Oh my god, I can't. I say
Speaker 1: you actually care if all this has shown is that,
Speaker 1: like potentially, if you put cows in this thing during
Speaker 1: the winter, when it's not sunny and bright outside, then
Speaker 1: they are happier. This is not shown that, for example,
Speaker 1: taking all cows out of pastures and sticking them in
Speaker 1: matrix boxes would make them because the thing is they're
Speaker 1: not they're on pastures. They're in little jail cells with
Speaker 1: VR goggles on their head. So like it's that that
Speaker 1: was that was the use case. And like the quote
Speaker 1: from the farmers, like they're watching green pasture and it
Speaker 1: gives them an emotional boost. They are less stressed. Um,
Speaker 1: and the farmers that he plans to be plans to
Speaker 1: buy ten more. It's like you can spend thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars on specialized cal VR headsets, um, or you can
Speaker 1: you know, like use that money to buy more land
Speaker 1: for the cows to spread out. And if we're at
Speaker 1: that point in society that in order to make in
Speaker 1: order to in order to make enough cow milk, we
Speaker 1: need to gaslight cows by overruling their senses with a
Speaker 1: clunky of your headset on their little fuzzy faces, maybe
Speaker 1: we should start having milk. Maybe we should like maybe
Speaker 1: that's it, like if we require this to have milk
Speaker 1: in our cereal, then nope, no more, not not gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do that. I refuse. That's not like
Speaker 1: it's already And if you practice, if you don't buy
Speaker 1: milk like like locally from a farm, you know, so
Speaker 1: if we're doing this that just like immediately checks me
Speaker 1: out of every like, no, I'm just fully fully not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of evil. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of evil. Like the whole industry way by which we
Speaker 1: produce meat at scale is pretty evil. But that's an escalation.
Speaker 1: It's it's the specific thing of like of of of
Speaker 1: overruling their reality and senses um of another living creature
Speaker 1: like that is for some reason, for some reason that
Speaker 1: puts them into a way in order for you to
Speaker 1: get like meat, And that's just like turning them into food,
Speaker 1: but like making their living really shitty and then making
Speaker 1: trying to trick them to thinking they're not. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: even worse than just having them live in shitty conditions,
Speaker 1: I think from an standpoint, and maybe it's more pleasant
Speaker 1: for the animal, but from like our standpoint, it's worse
Speaker 1: to me. Yep. So speaking of uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: don't is there some segment that we can work this in?
Speaker 1: You know, what does essentially force you to live in
Speaker 1: an alternate reality that allows you to be more productive
Speaker 1: for the people who make money based on your existence
Speaker 1: buying these products and services that supporting this podcast. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say podcasts in general do that. But yes,
Speaker 1: also cool. All right, we are back and my last,
Speaker 1: my last big section here is titled we are the Cows.
Speaker 1: So this is that's gonna that's gonna give you a
Speaker 1: sense of how of how we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what so what what what The cow Tricks really demonstrates, though,
Speaker 1: is that the end goal of all this is to
Speaker 1: make us the cow, right, you know we we and
Speaker 1: we already are to some degree with like the Internet
Speaker 1: and smart and smartphones. But this is more. This is
Speaker 1: an escalation, right Like the people, the ghoules, that Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley and you know, the whole tech world want. They
Speaker 1: want a world where we are forced to down hardware
Speaker 1: rigs that block out our body's senses and replace the
Speaker 1: input with digital coded counterfeit. That's that's an Internet that
Speaker 1: tries to convey intoe that you're inside of it and
Speaker 1: it is inside of you. That that's that's that's that
Speaker 1: is what they want. Really, Like, even if we get
Speaker 1: the metaverse that I would prefer, you know, like the
Speaker 1: mythical open source, interconnected successor to the Internet, with all
Speaker 1: these different websites, tools and games that I like all
Speaker 1: together and intuitively accessible through a share digital space. Even
Speaker 1: if we get that like, which we won't. And if
Speaker 1: there's safeguards to protect digital privacy that are built in,
Speaker 1: which there wouldn't be, that doesn't actually make the real
Speaker 1: world much better. Like in my opinion, air technology specifically
Speaker 1: could be really cool, um, but but redesigning the world
Speaker 1: to require headsets, goggles or air glasses would suck like
Speaker 1: now would not only for people who can't get a
Speaker 1: technology right if if we redesign the world to be
Speaker 1: like the only way to interact with systems is through
Speaker 1: this digital lens, that's gonna suck. We we now, we
Speaker 1: already had that to some degree with smartphones and the Internet,
Speaker 1: but this is another escalation of it. And again, like
Speaker 1: like the cow, it's just gonna be a way to
Speaker 1: paint for our elite capitalist climate disaster of a world. Uh.
Speaker 1: Metaverse is a tech capitalist solution to our current and
Speaker 1: pressing political and ontological problems. And I have used the
Speaker 1: bathroom really badly. Well, I'll talk for a little while.
Speaker 1: I think a big part of what Garrison is saying
Speaker 1: is that instead of relying on these tech industry ghoules
Speaker 1: to build the future for you, which is a future
Speaker 1: in which they sell you a way to hide from
Speaker 1: the hell that they have made of the world and
Speaker 1: others like them have made of the world. Instead of
Speaker 1: doing that, you've just spend the rest of your life
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts. Put put blinders on over your eyes,
Speaker 1: cover up all of your senses but your ears, and
Speaker 1: just exist forever in a concoon made entirely of my voice,
Speaker 1: and occasionally Garrison and Chris's and Sophie's voice, but mainly
Speaker 1: my voice. And you're saying, not listen to just any
Speaker 1: podcast but podcasts that you benefit from. I don't think
Speaker 1: people should listen to any podcasts that I don't do.
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem right. So where's my angle on that? Huh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, I don't know how long we
Speaker 1: should vamp. While Garrison just leaves in the middle. I
Speaker 1: really needed to I really needed to see. Well, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I just told everybody that we're the metaverse now, Garrison Archie.
Speaker 1: I drank so much coffee this morning. It was a problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: And similar to all this, you know, remember the John
Speaker 1: Carmike interview from Yes That's such a bummer. The Doom
Speaker 1: co creator and former CTO of Ovoculus. Yes, these bodies
Speaker 1: are a curse. John on the journoun Show he openly said,
Speaker 1: the problems of yours to make the world you wanted.
Speaker 1: It is not possible on earth to give everyone what
Speaker 1: they would want. Not everyone can have Richard Branson private islands.
Speaker 1: People react negatively to any talking of economics, but it's
Speaker 1: a resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where
Speaker 1: things go. Economically, you can deliver a lot more value
Speaker 1: to a lot more people. In the virtual sense, we
Speaker 1: can have virtual devices that can get cheap enough that
Speaker 1: lots and lots of people will be able to have these.
Speaker 1: Not everyone can have a mention. Not everyone can have
Speaker 1: a home theater. These are things we can simulate, though
Speaker 1: to some degree in virtual reality, and the simulation is
Speaker 1: not as good as the as the real thing. If
Speaker 1: you're rich, you probably have your own home theater or
Speaker 1: mentioned in private island. Good for you. You're probably not
Speaker 1: the people who's going to benefit the most from this thing.
Speaker 1: Most of the people in the world lived in cramped
Speaker 1: quarters and are not and they wouldn't that, and that's
Speaker 1: not what they would choose to be. And if they
Speaker 1: had a limited resources. There's this piece of art that
Speaker 1: goes around the internet. It's the this dystopian kid in
Speaker 1: a corner drooling with goggles on, with like rainbow pictures.
Speaker 1: But it's a terrible looking place. And people say, this
Speaker 1: is the world you're trying to build, People plugged into
Speaker 1: virtual reality and ignoring the world around them, And Carmacs
Speaker 1: responses and encouraging. He says, but is his life really
Speaker 1: better off if he takes the goggles off and he's
Speaker 1: in the horrible place? So I I think Carmack really
Speaker 1: has convinced himself that virtual reality is a path to
Speaker 1: making the world a better place. In the interview, he
Speaker 1: compares VR to the invention of like air conditioning. He says, like,
Speaker 1: I live in Dallas, it's a hundred degrees here. We
Speaker 1: change the world around us in all that we do.
Speaker 1: We live in air conditioning. People don't generally go, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not experiencing the world around you because of air conditioning.
Speaker 1: This is what human beings do. We bend the world
Speaker 1: to our will, and this is how things get better
Speaker 1: by building, by building technology and distributing them to people
Speaker 1: so that they have something better than what we would
Speaker 1: they would have if they didn't exist. Now, if you
Speaker 1: dig into what he's saying, here's actually a few interesting things.
Speaker 1: Because the one, yeah, air conditioning is actually kind of bad,
Speaker 1: like the way we're using it and what I represents
Speaker 1: it is a band aid solution to our continual problem
Speaker 1: of heating up the earth, and it's making the problem
Speaker 1: worse every single day. Yeah, and honestly it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a band aid that also makes
Speaker 1: the problem worse because a C contributes to a lot
Speaker 1: of energy human shit. But you know, air conditioning is
Speaker 1: also an actual material change, right like it can it
Speaker 1: can actually help people not die due to heat. The
Speaker 1: Metaverse and VR has talked about does not improve a
Speaker 1: middle to lower class person's material conditions, and to say
Speaker 1: so demonstrates how disconnected these tech bros are from a
Speaker 1: regular person's reality. The Metaverse and VR and like virtual
Speaker 1: worlds are going to be built based on the perception
Speaker 1: of reality held by those who create them. That's why
Speaker 1: we're getting shitty digital private movie theaters, fake mansions, and
Speaker 1: metaverse concerts and h and M n F T stores.
Speaker 1: They're giving us a simulated version of the world that
Speaker 1: they actually get to live in for real. But we
Speaker 1: can refuse this. We we don't need to take them
Speaker 1: up on this offer. If we're gonna be stuck with
Speaker 1: with multiple proprietary branded metaverses that are made by rich
Speaker 1: tech bros to mirror a world that the that the
Speaker 1: rich tech bro gets to live in, the best thing
Speaker 1: we can do is funk with it. We can saboage
Speaker 1: it from the inside. We need to spam floating dicks
Speaker 1: at a metaverse concert. This is the actual thing that
Speaker 1: needs to happen, because, like we all know, terrorism is fun, right,
Speaker 1: everybody loves terrorism, but there's horrible consequences for doing it
Speaker 1: in the real world. In the metaverse, there's no laws
Speaker 1: against terrorism. Yet you can terrorize however you want in
Speaker 1: the metaverse and it's just trolling and that's fine, So
Speaker 1: do that much of it as possible until they make
Speaker 1: it illegal. The concept that would go really well with
Speaker 1: this type of thing is the poet terrorism. Concept of
Speaker 1: this applies like perfectly to this idea of how we
Speaker 1: need to funk with these digital spaces that are trying
Speaker 1: to be created, because yeah, like they're like they're pretty bad.
Speaker 1: During one bitcoin consumed all of the electrical energy um
Speaker 1: by equivalent to a country like Argentina. UM. The bitcoin
Speaker 1: network handled like nineties seven million transactions, so this is
Speaker 1: roughly zero point zero one two per cent of the
Speaker 1: worldwide volume of non cash transactions. But bitcoin was responsible
Speaker 1: for zero point five four of global electricity consumption on total,
Speaker 1: which is astronomical, Like that's all, like, that's it's this
Speaker 1: ridiculous on average, that's like, uh, like thirteen hundred kill
Speaker 1: about hours poor per bitcoin transaction, which is so much energy.
Speaker 1: The power consumed by a single bitcoin transaction on average
Speaker 1: could power an average US household for one and a
Speaker 1: half months. It's it is ridiculous how much and how
Speaker 1: much it's getting used. And they're trying to build, you know,
Speaker 1: like the sex City thing. They're trying to build this
Speaker 1: metaverse off of crypto, which they're like, I'm sad because
Speaker 1: like crypto could be really similar to the metaverse. Crypto
Speaker 1: could be really rad Like crypto could be an actually
Speaker 1: super red thing, but the way it's being used right
Speaker 1: now is really environmentally damaging. UM and this this linking
Speaker 1: of Web three, you know, the mythical Web three and
Speaker 1: the metaverse to crypto is showing like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: is kind of like the band Aid solution, where it's
Speaker 1: not it's it's, it's not it's not actually fixing the problem,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of making the problem worse because they're
Speaker 1: so set on linking it to crypto right now that
Speaker 1: it's it sucks like it's it's, it's, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's gonna suck. What you can do is you can
Speaker 1: spam Final Fantasy seven porn, you can spam Son of
Speaker 1: the Hedgehog feet picks. This is this is the only
Speaker 1: tool we have. But save for actual terrorism, which we're
Speaker 1: not gonna talk about on this podcast, you can, but
Speaker 1: we can't talk about poetic terrorism. That is something that
Speaker 1: you can do. You can funk with these systems from
Speaker 1: the inside and make them unusable. And that's that's really
Speaker 1: the only thing. And that's what I'm gonna do in
Speaker 1: my spare time, because it's fine, Yeah, um do do
Speaker 1: poetic terrorism in the metaverse. Um, go funk it up
Speaker 1: for them, um. And maybe in the process, here's my dream, Garrison,
Speaker 1: that perhaps in the process of sucking it up for them,
Speaker 1: we build something that we actually like. That's the thing right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is similar to how the Internet kind of got
Speaker 1: originally created. Of course, now it's turned into this hellscape.
Speaker 1: But that'll probably that will probably happen anyway ten years
Speaker 1: or more for the metal, But we can get a
Speaker 1: little bit of fun out of it and we can
Speaker 1: have some fun with it like we did on the
Speaker 1: Internet for a couple of years. Uh huh, it all
Speaker 1: got real bad. So that is that is the metaverse
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. Um and yeah, so fight against the
Speaker 1: cow may tricks as best as you can do your best,
Speaker 1: pull them out, build the city for the cows in
Speaker 1: the center of the world. Make a cow's eye on.
Speaker 1: It's up to us. This is depressing, all right. That's
Speaker 1: the episode. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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Speaker 1: for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
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