Metaverse: Future Dystopia?

[Tim R]

First off, I think this is creepy as f*ck. Twitter and Facebook alone are already doing so much damage to our societies, to peoples mental health and well-being, I can't imagine what would happen if we actually got a second, virtual reality where you can "meet" people and recreate anything digitally...

This is insane. It's a well known problem that people live in their own bubble, but the Metaverse would make this 1000x worse. If you would literally live in your own digital bubble. 

It's just a matter of time until the Metaverse will become completely corrupted. 

See this is the problem with advanced technology and human beings, we're not wise enough to handle our own creation without turning the whole thing into a dysfunctional mess that has a bad influence on us.

What are your thoughts on this? 

[Preety_India]

I don't see any damage from Twitter or Facebook. 

In fact Facebook has helped reunite missing people. 

I'm all for supporting mainstream social media 

They are doing a great job. 

 

 

[Random witch]

I don't like Facebook/Twitter and all this crap and I think they do crimes against the humanity. 

I don't know if the new Metaverse technology would make it worse because it's already sucks.

I like the idea of the alternative world, I think it can be useful for many people and I see value in it, the main con is that they will be able to collect more information about people which means less privacy and more unhealthy use of our information against us.

[Rilles]

Arrest the lizard overlord now!

[Danioover9000]

@Tim R

1 hour ago, Tim R said:

First off, I think this is creepy as f*ck. Twitter and Facebook alone are already doing so much damage to our societies, to peoples mental health and well-being, I can't imagine what would happen if we actually got a second, virtual reality where you can "meet" people and recreate anything digitally...

This is insane. It's a well known problem that people live in their own bubble, but the Metaverse would make this 1000x worse. If you would literally live in your own digital bubble. 

It's just a matter of time until the Metaverse will become completely corrupted. 

See this is the problem with advanced technology and human beings, we're not wise enough to handle our own creation without turning the whole thing into a dysfunctional mess that has a bad influence on us.

What are your thoughts on this? 

   This is why we need a stronger government to keep the richer business companies more accountable.

[Danioover9000]

   On a side note, when he's able to pull this off, it saves me the time to explain what I can see when I visualize people and locations.

[Carl-Richard]

Bubbles have always existed and will always exist.

[Guest EmptyVase]

*constantly clicks the acid button in the metaverse* ?

[Yarco]

We could talk about all the negative implications until we're blue in the face. But with the amount of money they're throwing behind this thing (10,000 people in Europe working on it), the powers that be are going to make VR finally mainstream.

You can try to fight against the inevitable, or you can embrace it and take advantage of it.

Personally I think I'm gonna start learning 3D modelling and make my millions selling virtual furniture and houses to people. 

Imagine having a factory at your fingertips where all you have to do is design the products and then they print themselves infinitely with no expenses or overhead.

Everybody's looking at NFTs as the next Picassos and Rembrandts but nobody's learning some basic artistic skills to design VR cabinets and countertops.

[captainamerica]

To answer your question in the title.

Metaverse being a dystopia is mostly dependent on Facebook winning the VR customer base. (apart from collective consciousness levels with respect to rise in technological development, which is rapidly rising and will rise exponentially more due to the shift in the education system by highly innovative companies and startups )

I would bet that there is a 90 percent chance that Facebook will fail to do so. IBM was the Facebook of that day, despite that customers went with Apple. Same with Nokia, Motorola and a dozen different mammoths across several industries. At one point people were speculating that a postal company is going to take over the world!  If those speculations were true it would have been the world's first trillion-dollar company a long time ago. Obviously, the postal company started failing despite being a mammoth. 

These things are super-super counter-intuitive to predict.

Edited November 11, 2021 by captainamerica

[nuwu]

Yes, but no. The suffering created by Facebook is insignificant compared to other entities within this current reality (and lets not talk about all the possible realities with much worse outcomes). We will probably have decentralized virtual worlds on crypto which might be efficient competitors against the relatively more centralized corporations due to their larger critical mass of growth. Although the lack of middleman has some upsides, but it also makes the system less coordinated than the ones supported by "benevolent dictators".

Edited November 11, 2021 by nuwu

[Consilience]

@Yarco By the time the technology is that advanced, there very well may be A.I. that can make these designs exponentially more efficiently and at an exponentially higher volume than humans. Not to dismiss your goals! Just maybe a consideration.  

[Emiliano]

I'll lease properties on the metaverse ?

 

 

 

[Wilhelm44]

On 11/11/2021 at 8:49 AM, Yarco said:

We could talk about all the negative implications until we're blue in the face. But with the amount of money they're throwing behind this thing (10,000 people in Europe working on it), the powers that be are going to make VR finally mainstream.

You can try to fight against the inevitable, or you can embrace it and take advantage of it.

Personally I think I'm gonna start learning 3D modelling and make my millions selling virtual furniture and houses to people. 

Imagine having a factory at your fingertips where all you have to do is design the products and then they print themselves infinitely with no expenses or overhead.

Everybody's looking at NFTs as the next Picassos and Rembrandts but nobody's learning some basic artistic skills to design VR cabinets and countertops.

Everything has it's positives and negatives, but I must say I'm struggling to find the positives in this one. Wearing a VR headset the whole day, not getting actual face time with people, seems like less and less connection. At some stage people are going to wake up and realize that this kind of technology really isn't making there lives any better. Steve Jobs said it's the best storytellers that have the power, like Walt Disney for example, but Jobs said he was tired of that bullshit and wanted to create a new narrative. Surely planet earth is capable of creating something a little bit more life affirming than the metaverse.

[integral]

If im able to wear a head set and run/sprint/dodge/exercise in any direction with other people, I'm sold. 

I thinks this will bring us closer together not further apart.

• It will move games away from hand controllers and into full body activities. 
• It will move us away from texting and calling and into more intimate VR interactions
• The technology will progress significantly in the next 20 years, with eventual all senses emersion. 
• Education, there will be better school emerging, actualized.org can have its own virtual school... virtual 3D forums. 

The damage of internet isolation and lack of intimacy is already done. This is a improvement over the current system. 

The future is full emersion VR. This is all just the beginning and Facebook knows it.

Edited November 12, 2021 by integral

[Shin]

 

We're going deeper bois

 

[Yarco]

On 11/11/2021 at 6:00 PM, Consilience said:

@Yarco By the time the technology is that advanced, there very well may be A.I. that can make these designs exponentially more efficiently and at an exponentially higher volume than humans. Not to dismiss your goals! Just maybe a consideration.  

You act like this is really far off. In 5 years, most businesses will be issuing free VR devices to their employees who work from home to attend virtual meetings. In 10 years VR will be as pervasive as cell phones or internet.

16 hours ago, Wilhelm44 said:

Wearing a VR headset the whole day, not getting actual face time with people, seems like less and less connection. At some stage people are going to wake up and realize that this kind of technology really isn't making there lives any better.

My millennial generation has been going further and further down this route since the year 2000. Since covid especially, very few people do face to face any more or have any desire to. Those who do are doing it far less frequently and chatting more online. My understanding for younger Gen Z who grew up with this technology is that it's completely central to how they communicate and socialize.

The lack of connection you're talking about has already been here for years.

I recently bought a VR headset and the one thing that strikes me is the sense of presence. It really feels like someone is there in the room with you. So in some ways, I think this is at least better than current socializing on Discord or similar mediums through just text or even 2D video calls.

[Wilhelm44]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

 

My millennial generation has been going further and further down this route since the year 2000. Since covid especially, very few people do face to face any more or have any desire to. Those who do are doing it far less frequently and chatting more online. My understanding for younger Gen Z who grew up with this technology is that it's completely central to how they communicate and socialize.

 

I hear you, it just seems like on Zoom one could still interact with an actual person's face, now it's going to be some cartoonish version. But I guess you right, it can't be stopped. I'm generation x, my eyes don't enjoy all these screens so much anymore. 

[Rilles]

I just demoed some VR today and holy shit this is amazing but also... Im scared. As if we need to get even more disconnected from direct experience. I dont like this Metaverse idea at all. But then again I know that I would have said the same thing about TV or radio or telephones 100 years ago lmao. 

[Space Lizard]

It looks totally dystopian to me. But I'm fascinated by this drive so many people have to replace reality by simulations and counterfeits, and to live in fantasy worlds. Why are Disneyland, Las Vegas, movies, video games and social media so popular? One explanation is that artificial realities can be controlled, programmed and made to conform to an ideology far easier than reality, which is messy and uncontrollable. Another is that reality is flawed, difficult, limited, unsatisfying, and virtual worlds are an escape. Put these two tendencies together, and you get potential VR tyrants like Zuckerberg, lording over a dystopian world of reality-hating zombies, and eventually the Matrix. It’s terrifying. Fortunately I don’t see how it can succeed; we can’t escape reality, no matter how much we may want to, and how alluring illusionists like Zuckerberg make it.