Why a Metaverse is Inevitable & Facebook Shouldn’t Run It

These are Raw Thoughts.

The Significance of the Telephone

In the year 1876 the telephone gave humans a brand new analog way to connect “digitally” across unprecedented distances. If you dialed a wrong number, you were magically exchanging utterances with a stranger who may have been previously unknown and inaccessible to you. The telephone took sound directly from one person’s mouth, converted it to bits (a signal) which was sent across a wire to another person’s ear where it was converted back to sound. And by design, such a transaction could only occur at such a time as, and after which, both parties had mutually consented. When the call ended, no artifact remained other than the physical memories of the participants. Importantly, the groundwork which had been established is:

1. Capability: Analog means of instantaneously transmitting digital content between humans; an instantaneous feedback loop between two interlocutors
2. Operational Infrastructure: to make this service ubiquitously accessible to people.

The Significance of the Personal Computer

Just under 100 years after the telephone, in the early 1970s, the first personal computers were released to the public. Personal computers introduced 3 new innovations over the telephone:

1. A Digital Memory: The means to store and retrieve digital signals as artifacts (such as files) on a medium (such as a tape, disk, drive).
2. I/O — Human-Computer Feedback Loops: The means for a human to interface with (both to send and receive digital signals to) this storage mechanism.
3. Compute: The ability for humans (the operators) to create (program, author, encode, record) complex digital signals, both those artifacts which are valuable unto themselves, as well as those signals which may be auxiliary/necessary for experiencing these artifacts (we may call these “programs”).

Presented in this way, the invention seems quite boring. And it’s understandable why/how in the “Ideas” radio program in 1979, producer Max Allen of CBC was unable to imagine World Wide Web visionary Ted Nelson as he explained how a computer could possible be used to enable one to watch a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU62CQTXFI

Terms:

• Digital Artifact — an intentional collection of digital signals
• Program — a type of Digital Artifact whose purpose is to experience/playback, interface with, or create other Digital Artifacts.
• Media — a digital artifact whose primary use is to be consumed/experienced directly or by using a Program.
• Programming — the process of crafting Digital Artifacts either manually or with the assistance of another Program in order to create Media or Program.

The Significance of The Internet & World Wide Web

Just twenty years later, the Internet in 1983 & subsequently the World Wide Web in 1989 gave humanity the ability to use telephone infrastructure to both establish a call and transmit arbitrary Digital Artifacts between computers. Instead of a telephone receiving the digital signal and rending it in a single way — as voice audio — the computer became a special type of telephone receiver which could be programmed to interpret the digital signals in any number of ways that the recipient chooses. Sometimes, peers would mutually agree upon a specific “mode” (protocol) of interpreting these bits which could help ensure that both the sender and recipient ostensibly have the means to faithfully and reliably experience the transmission as intended. As importantly, the Web gave us a way to reference and semantically link Digital Artifacts across computers. With the Internet & World Wide Web we got new primitives:

1. Peer-to-peer transmission of any arbitrary Digital Artifacts (images, text, video), as opposed to just voice.
2. Persistence: A digital memory which spans computers; the ability to save the contents of your enhanced online “phone call” sessions.
3. Multi-media: Advanced protocols/standards for new composite media-types (formats) whose contents span types of Media (e.g. a web page with extensible capabilities like enabling a payment)
4. Digital Identity: The ability for computers (and the people or organizations behind them) to associate themselves (presence/identity) with domain names
5. Collaboration & Public Publications

Sending a document suddenly became as instant as sending an email rather than dispatching a mail courier. A telephone call could suddenly have video and or even a video game attached to it. And much more.

Whereas we once held a receiver to our ear, and experienced everything through a phone receiver as audio, we now had broadened our capabilities to experience rich interactive experiences using our eyes, ears, and other senses by way of peripheral devices like keyboards, mice, joysticks, and eventually touch screens.

At this stage, our ability to touch or smell are either non-existent or implemented proximally through awkward, clunky, abstract interfaces which must be learned as a workaround or band-aid to convert our intention into an action the computer can understand. Our view-port is constrained to a window we call a monitor which neither considers our gaze nor is responsive to auditory signals which may inform the direction of our gaze.

We are compromising.

The Significance of the Metaverse

I remember sitting in an macro-economics class in college and the most important lesson I learned was, while many things are unpredictable, a constant is some advancement of technology. And I think many seemingly prescient future bets can be made using this generally true heuristic (catastrophe can prevent markets from broadly working, in which case we admittedly have other problems to worry about — and I think we certainly do, but let’s save that for another essay).

If we look at the telephone, the personal computer, the Internet, the World Wide Web, the mobile handheld smart phone, we see a clear trend.

Bandwidth is increasing. Latency is decreasing. Technology & technological education and familiarity/adoption are increasing. And we have the advantage of knowing how people are already using current technologies, as well as broadly what people want. We want our Maslow hierarchy of needs to be met. To have a home, food, health, family, financial freedom, love. And we want it faster and better than we have it now.

The problem with predictions is people try to ascribe an implementation (how it will work, what it will look like) rather than what people will be enabled to do.

As technology improves, as bandwidth increases, as latency decreases, as our education and comfort advances, we’ll broadly want 3 things about our solutions:

1. To have complete control over our own computer or technological experience, for it to feel and be safe
2. Computers to be invisible and out of the way
3. For computers to augment our human condition to dissolve artificial physical boundaries and overcome our human limitations

What we don’t want is to look at our phone or watch for a text message. What we want is subtle biofeedback that a message, perhaps an acute warm sensation or a visual overlay over our field of view that a notification of our choosing has been received. And to instantly be able to render it within our mind’s eye, without the knowledge we’re using a computer at all.

We don’t want to go to a doctor and have them guess what’s wrong with us, we want nanobots — or something, a scanner perhaps (again, I’m getting into implementation now so I’m bound to be wrong because if I could imagine it, we’d have it) — in or analyzing our body to tell us immediately when something is wrong, or better yet, to just solve if and give us a report while we’re on the toilet.

What we don’t want is to use a joystick to give someone a hug who is in a different country and who has just lost a family member. We want to give them a hug.

And we don’t want to watch a likeness of ourselves giving a hug to someone else through a 23" LCD screen. See [2], we want to give them a “real” hug. We want it to feel real.

The Metaverse is about the journey to utilize technology to augment and enhance what is real and what is possible.

And this is why I claim it’s inevitable.

A “Metaverse” is simply a way of saying, as technology improves, as bandwidth increases, as latency decreases, and as more people become comfortable with & versed in technology, industries will replace technologies like the telephone with tools which enable us to connect more intimately. Fully immersive technology, which may mean brain computer interfaces, projectors, computer vision, and even more likely (I think) all sorts of techniques we’re not aware of yet.

We went from minuteman on horse, to telegram, to telephone, to world-wide-web bulletins, to video calls and instant messages which fit on a watch or mobile handheld device, and I think it’s not only reasonable to assume, but indeed a foregone conclusion that the next generation of technology (whether we call it Metaverse or something else) will follow the same trend of enabling people to have more intimate & “life-like” interactions than we do now.

And I have no reason to doubt it will include virtual worlds and settings, game mechanics, incentives and Digital Artifacts which we like more than our physical words. It will give a patient a place to be cancer-free. It will give someone who may feels unattractive to have a say in their appearance. It will give the poor a mansion to live in. It will let lovers in a long distance relationship snuggle.

And they won’t use a [expletive deleted] joystick.

Facebook’s Re-Branding to “Meta” & the Metaverse

This month Facebook has been going through the process of re-branding as Meta. On one hand (the less significant of the two), I feel symbolically positive by this change. In the same way that Tesla & SpaceX may bold Elon Musk claims to charge into the world, I think some credit is deserved to Mark Zuckerberg for doing the same. Even if the world he’s leading us towards may likely a dystopian nightmare. I do genuinely strongly believe in giving people and ideas the benefit of the doubt, so I’d like to explore some reasons why/how…

This could be good for the world:

First, Meta is shining light on several aspects of (what I think are) a future “Metaverse” which seem inevitable, important, or true. Meta is presenting a positive [admittedly idealistic, manufactured] spin which I think has the potential to excite people, inspire, and educate. And I think that’s overall a good thing.

I agree with Facebook (or Meta)’s timing and belief that some version of VR / AR / Metaverse (however this actually manifests) will increasingly play a role in the future and help distant people get together. Remote work, gaming, pornography, and various other shared-experience media, e.g. “live events”, will be included among these use cases.

I also independently came to the conclusion that cryptocurrency + NFTs (both which I have very serious, realm and I think justified complaints about use in practice versus in theory) are two classes of primitives which help make virtual ubiquitous identity more feasible (re: identity, international internet finance). I was surprised to then see the literal abbreviation “NFT” in Meta’s promotional movie.

I also strongly agree with Mark’s call for an interoperable Metaverse (your avatar/person moving between services) and its compelling and reassuring to me that Mark decided to use that phrase and at lease vocalize this constraint (i.e. he’s sensitive to its value, even if he has no plans to actually honor this pledge).

Here’s why it’s bad:

Because Facebook is talking about it as if they are designing (i.e. the gatekeepers) of this “interoperable” system. Imagine if any single corporation was responsible for running the World Wide Web. It would be very bad. There may be conflicts of interest, artificial friction to dissuade individuals from taking their preferred actions and instead strategically designed incentives to manufacture consent and long-term outcomes which are in Meta’s interest.

Two concluding thoughts:

1. The Metaverse will come [as a predestined conclusion] and it’s up to us determine how it manifests. As someone who has been tangential to the AR/VR space for a while but more so a relative expert of web technologies, based on the technology I’m already aware of and have tried (e.g. Oculus, google glass) I believe there is some prescience/justification for Facebook to have re-branded as Meta now. We’re early, but not too early for an org with their funding to start planting marketing seeds and making bets. Part of their bet is educating people, which I hope will result in more philanthropic work/competition in the space (like the very early decentralized web in ~2015, but I’m skeptical).
2. It’s bad if society if we let Facebook/Meta design it. And this is a dangerous case because the Metaverse will almost certainly require hardware (which may or may not be open, depending on who creates the underlying standards). And Meta will undoubtedly push for “increased” access by cornering the market on “affordable” hardware at the cost of our personal privacy, data, and non-stop unfettered access to our memories, thoughts, and actions. If you don’t believe Facebook/Meta would go this route, continue they already have tried with Novi (crypto wallet) & Libra (Facebook’s attempt at its own walled-gardened crypto currency).

Call to Action

Just like in 2015, I think there’s a fine line separating the Metaverse, AI, and the Decentralized Web. I think we need more people like Paul Frazee & Bryan Newbold who have the courage to experiment and push the barrier, but also do so in a way which emphatically protects patron privacy, even if it comes at the expense of revenue. Fight to build an open ecosystem. Be a geek and do the thing that’s hardest for a geek to do: invest the time to learn how to defend against sociopaths. Go out and design an open protocol for the Metaverse. The future depends on you.

What are your thoughts? Tweet @mekarpeles