Metaverse - Hype or the reality of the future

[Nysoz]

I think it's the distant future.

Technology needs to be good enough and comfortable enough to wear. The glasses/visuals need to be realistic enough to pass muster. The potential for full body haptic feedback can break into the field which has determined most tech decision trees. Add in scents and you can basically be anywhere. Smart windows can show you any scenery so you can be waterfront or mountainside whenever you want.

As for socializing, you can talk to people, go through experiences together now. Lifelong friendships are made over games all the time. People fall in love and get married. It's different for sure, but it happens even now.

As for things needed to still get done, that's where AI comes into play. Farms can be automated even further. Drones can plant everything and autonomous tractors harvest everything. Fast food all automated. Shopping, shipping, deliveries all automated. Anything that can't be automated then you have people still doing jobs to earn bitcoin to spend in the metaverse on your NFTs to show off to your online friends and to get into the bored ape yacht club.

Or you can go even further and everyone can get a Neuralink chip to control anything telepathically and input signals directly into the brain. Too far fetched? If you go back 5 years and say we can get a monkey to play telepathic pong now people would think you're crazy.

[Tim]

If everyone joins the metaverse how will food be produced?

Green Acres?

[CordMcNally]

As for things needed to still get done, that's where AI comes into play. Farms can be automated even further. Drones can plant everything and autonomous tractors harvest everything. Fast food all automated. Shopping, shipping, deliveries all automated. Anything that can't be automated then you have people still doing jobs to earn bitcoin to spend in the metaverse on your NFTs to show off to your online friends and to get into the bored ape yacht club.

You ever seen the price of a new combine or tractor? They already have some fancy technology on these machines but the price tags are impressive. I don't foresee the average farmer being able to afford even more expensive equipment and I'd guess the average age of farm equipment in the US isn't incredibly new. I guess you could have big companies take over farming but you're going to have to wait out a few generations to get it done.

[Max Power]

Those of you who are parents, how are you keeping your kids away from this stuff?

We have no TV, no screen time, and plan on never getting our daughters “smart” phones. But I’m sure this plan is going to much harder once they become teenagers.

part of it is also getting ourselves off the screens, so that we don’t look like hypocrites. Have any of you had success in reducing your own screen time?

That is quite and extreme and unlikely to to work. Not having a TV is only viable in early childhood years (usually in combo with a stay-at-home parent), and you just have to have boundaries on it after that. As you said, adults obviously use laptops, phones, watch movies, etc. They see that every day. Why wouldn't you let them use the best source of information and entertainment around (internet)... and just teach the its downsides and dark sides at the same time? Would you not allow driving since they might speed or crash or get caught driving in the rain or have a martini and then drive one day? You would probably just teach them to do it in a responsible manner.

Going to extremes on anything is like islam or other highly sex-negative ppl (in America - or even mid east) putting a total ban on their daughter dating or touching boys... the kid will either despise them, sneak around and do it in potentially dangerous situations, or might just go to spring break and do a gangbang some year.

A better approach than tech-negative might be limiting access ("no screens after 7pm so that we focus on reading or family time" or give them a limited data allowance with hard cutoff where the phone won't go online for the rest of the month). People are intrigued by what they can't have or don't understand or can't have. Your kids will want to be YouTubers and have many favorite YT channels and make an IG account just like all of their peers. They will all look at internet porn before they're 12 and most will try virtual sex (if not the real deal) soon afterwards; that is how it is now.

If you try to cut off all access and helicopter them, they will just sneak around and use library, friend house, etc social media to do it anyways. If you go that route, it will drive a wedge between you and they'll act standoffish (even more so than normal teens do). You can bet on that. The smart phone hard ban tactic will crash and burn around age 11 or 12 or 13 when they hit puberty and all of their friends have them... 14-15 at the latest, and you will also likely look incompetent when you finally agree to iPad "for school only," stumble to reverse course, or even get in fights with your spouse/ex about it. You will figure out the balance, but "never getting our daughters 'smart' phones" is lunacy. Knowledge is the antidote to fear.

[resident_1]

Yes technology is moving forward. But it doesnt mean we have to sit like sheep and take whatever big tech pushes onto our society and human interaction.
The innocent days of 1990s/early 2000s with dsl internet, basic websites and AIM chat are gone. We have much bigger issues from big tech facing society. What effect it has on young people and their mental health, what effect it has on countries (how information cam be presented to make major political decisions), how it creates a world for people that deprives them of real experiences.

***You guys want to be in a virtual world interacting with someone in another state/country and all this
being presented to you (along with guiding your urges and desires) be managed by Artificial Intelligence?

It should be a real interaction, two people going to a park, going camping together, working on a project in same room.

None of this is good and it needs to pushed back. Elon Musk makes a strong case for needed to have government oversight for Artificial Intelligence.

**the issues are more serious and cant be fully addressed by limitingscreen time.

As automation ramps up and there are less actual jobs for people to do, and more and more remote jobs people will not do well. This experiment was already done over last 2 years when covid lockdowns went into place.
The path will be more isolation. Lots of lonely adults, lots of alcohol consumption and suicides.
Life expectancy in this country already was on decline due to these factors (drugs/alcohol/suicides) before covid pandemic and it continues to decline. We erased all life expectancy gains from treatment of cancer and other diseases.

[Lordosis]

Is a person who spends their whole day in the metaverse socializing and playing games any worse than someone who sits at home playing video games by themselves all day.

If somebody watches movies for 12 hours a day and doesn't get any productive work done is it less offensive if that person read books for 12 hours a day?

Is it worse to spend a day playing online games with friends or in person playing board games?

Obviously anything can be abused but these newer technologies are easier to become immersed in and abused. But it doesn't make them any inherently worse. I don't see myself getting sucked into it. I do worry about my children but I will make efforts too teach them responsibly use of media.

Like it or not I think that this is going to be the future.

[FIREshrink]

Meta and metaverse seem to be the buzz words these days.

First Facebook changed its parent company's name to Meta and feels that is its future.

Now Microsoft is offering $69B to the maker of CandyCrush to get into the metaverse game early on.

Here is the relevant passage from Planet Money Indicator



As an old foggie, I can't imagine my life entwined and immersed in alternative reality where I work, play and sleep in the alternative metaverses and play games all the time.
But I am not sure if the younger folks or children think it is the way of the future. So is this real or another $69B losing strategy for MSFT, like they did with Nokia and Windows phone.

The Matrix is real.

Have you read your Aldous Huxley?

[FIREshrink]

Is a person who spends their whole day in the metaverse socializing and playing games any worse than someone who sits at home playing video games by themselves all day.

If somebody watches movies for 12 hours a day and doesn't get any productive work done is it less offensive if that person read books for 12 hours a day?

Is it worse to spend a day playing online games with friends or in person playing board games?

Obviously anything can be abused but these newer technologies are easier to become immersed in and abused. But it doesn't make them any inherently worse. I don't see myself getting sucked into it. I do worry about my children but I will make efforts too teach them responsibly use of media.

Like it or not I think that this is going to be the future.

You may think differently about the idea of free will after trying, probably unsuccessfully, to keep your progeny from getting addicted to their screens and online worlds. Check back in a decade when your kids are older and the dopamine rush they get from random stranger in the meta verse is ten times what you can offer them in real life. The large tech companies are deploying tens of billions of dollars in research in AI, addictions, developmental psychology and so forth against four year old brains and their clueless parents. It's not a fair fight.

[Lordosis]

You may think differently about the idea of free will after trying, probably unsuccessfully, to keep your progeny from getting addicted to their screens and online worlds. Check back in a decade when your kids are older and the dopamine rush they get from random stranger in the meta verse is ten times what you can offer them in real life. The large tech companies are deploying tens of billions of dollars in research in AI, addictions, developmental psychology and so forth against four year old brains and their clueless parents. It's not a fair fight.

I may not like it but it's not like I have much choice in the matter. This technology is being invented and it is going to be used. There is money to be made and power to be had. There is no way this would be ignored.

Again I could stick my head in the sand and pretend like the internet doesn't exist and homeschool my children but I don't think this tactic would work. I think the best is role modeling what we would consider appropriate use of media and sitting up reasonable guide rails for them.

[pierre]

Steve Jobs famously did not allow his kids to use an iPad. I wonder if the new tech CEOs feel the same way about the products they are creating.

[pierre]

Isn’t that what they said about technology in general? It will take us away from others? Yet look at how many of us have smart phones?

I think it is inevitable. Going shopping in an augmented world will be real soon.

Information started out as one way:
Phase one: the NET to you in one direction. You just down load information. e.g. DOS/iOS, desktops. Websites.
Phase two: some 2 way communications but mostly still one way. e.g. Smart phones, blogs, tweets, FB, instagram. FaceTime/zoom
Phase three: full 2 way communications. Visit the national art gallery from your home. Try on that coat in Milan, Italy without the plane ride. If you watch Sci-fi shows, it clearly is where this is headed.
And from an investment POV, if you don’t embrace it, you will be left to the ‘legacy’ companies for your slow growth.
My two cents.

I will admit I don’t watch a lot of sci-fi, but dont they all start or end with some dystopian world where the earth is dying or the machines are taking over and small band of humans is trying to win the planet back, or settle on a new planet?

[Panscan]

Isn’t that what they said about technology in general? It will take us away from others? Yet look at how many of us have smart phones?

I think it is inevitable. Going shopping in an augmented world will be real soon.

Information started out as one way:
Phase one: the NET to you in one direction. You just down load information. e.g. DOS/iOS, desktops. Websites.
Phase two: some 2 way communications but mostly still one way. e.g. Smart phones, blogs, tweets, FB, instagram. FaceTime/zoom
Phase three: full 2 way communications. Visit the national art gallery from your home. Try on that coat in Milan, Italy without the plane ride. If you watch Sci-fi shows, it clearly is where this is headed.
And from an investment POV, if you don’t embrace it, you will be left to the ‘legacy’ companies for your slow growth.
My two cents.

But that doesn't mean it is good for society. The value of these companies may go up and yes everyone is addicted to their phone, again I would say to our demise, not our benefit.

It is almost certainly bad for society in terms of interpersonal relationships, socialization, maturation, etc.

[Marko-ER]

Sadly, both hype and slowly (but at an ever accelerating rate) becoming reality. We already have a pretty large fraction of the population being maladapted and non-productive. I don't agree with Jordan Petersen much, but he is right that there is a crisis among young male population in the lower-middle class. Meta and similar platforms will constitute yet another means of escapism and produce unrealistic expectations. Most days I am grateful I have the predisposition of a Luddite.

[Kamban]

Read two things in a recent article that wants me to never get immersed in a metaverse all the time

Researchers have found that people who spend at least two hours outdoors in green spaces every week have better mental and physical health than those who don’t.

More recent research shows that digital connections can be beneficial in certain circumstances (e.g., to stay in touch with geographically distant friends and family), but they cannot replace in-person ones and the value of physical presence and touch.

In their book The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the 21st Century, Harvard psychiatry professors Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz write that an increased focus on “productivity” and the “cult of busyness” is crowding out time for developing meaningful relationships. This may be especially true among millennials. A recent poll from the market research company YouGov found that 30 percent of millennials say they feel lonely and 22 percent said they have zero friends. This is hugely problematic, and a trend we all, together, must work to reverse.

[FIREshrink]

Read two things in a recent article that wants me to never get immersed in a metaverse all the time

Is this forum a mini meta?