Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".
In fact the very opposite is the case. Now, we go into nature to isolate ourselves.
In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you'll take the goggles off to isolate yourself.
There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:
- your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else
- you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost
- you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required
- you spend zero time on travelling
- you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa
As long as the technology is good enough (and please remember that qualifier, because people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is not good enough) - as long as the technology is good enough VR is strictly better than current reality.
> There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:
> - your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else
Except it isn't.
> - you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost
Except you can't.
> - you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required
Except you can't.
> - you spend zero time on travelling
Except you don't.
> - you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa
Except you don't.
This is an incredibly dystopian view.
Let's not kid ourselves that VR will not be monetized to the breaking point just like any other platform. Enshitification is inevitable.
In other words, corporations will do what they already do, sell lies, create demand for those lies and in exchange demand more of the irreplaceable things like time, land and resources.
Some of these objections sound like saying we're not really listening to music on our phones, I guess because there's not really a band playing, or because of the lossy sound encoding or something.
In fact, we _are_ listening to music, in a way that people seem to enjoy and which has been democratized far beyond previous possibilities for listening to music.
First of all, people still go to concerts and will not stop anytime soon. Even if people enjoy music in a variety of ways, people very much still enjoy live music for being live. So it is a bad counter example.
Secondly, all of the examples above were examples of trying to avoid reality. A pathological form of escapism. Why push so hard for such a shitty future where escapism is the only option? Black Mirror is a warning not a manual. Are you really that unimaginative that you can not imagine a better future than the shittiest of dystopias? Also, good enough technology is not an argument. More optimistic scifi like Star Trek has the holodeck with a realism level of ~100%. Yet people don't just spend all of their time in it because reality is amazing in it's own way. Why bring about a future where reality is so undesirable?
Also, as I said, there is absolutely no way VR spaces will not get enshitified the same way all current platforms are. In all VR spaces you will absolutely be the product while also being milked for every single micro-transaction you can pay.
I will not dignify your questions with an answer because they are a philosophical derailment. And turning the conversation into one about solipsism and epistemological nihilism is a dead end. Related to this, the simulation hypothesis is nothing but repackaged theism. Many have treaded this territory and nothing of use was discovered.
Besides, I was the one who asked first the much more pragmatic question of why some people consider such a dystopian future to be desirable.
More like "we're not really listening to music on our phones for free". These days everything is a subscription. Then games are released where every cosmetic change is paid for, so you can be max level with the best gear but you'll still look like a beginner character because you haven't paid for the cosmetic upgrades to go along with the extra gear you won along the way.
Change the wallpaper in your virtual apartment, huh? You'll absolutely be paying for that. Some people will save money by just coping with the walls being non-stop ads for anti-depressants and pills for erectile dysfunction. Perhaps they'll take their headset off and do everything through command lines. Pity if the headset eventually evolves into implants that pump images and sounds directly into your brain.
Talking about wallpapers is derailing the conversation. The point was that just as we see the social networks of today and the games of today getting enshitified so will every VR experience get enshitified.
As for writing it yourself, care to talk about the price of the developer account, the approval process, the risk of getting banned, the ever changing API surface, the time you use for all of this, etc. etc.? You are NOT the owner of anything in the "metaverse". You are just allowed the privilege of playing in the platform owners sandbox as long as you pay. When the platform owner will decide it is profitable to exploit users ability to set wallpapers there is nothing you as a user or as a developer on top of the platform will be able to do to counter that.
Here, read this (1) and watch this (2) and tell me you feel confident the same will not happen to any "metaverse".
Your app does not need to get approved if you are the only one using it - in fact you don’t even need to have a developer account if you’re the only one using it and are ok resigning the app occasionally.
With regards to enshittification: all the examples listed were software companies or service companies. I don’t see any hardware companies on there, and I’d go so far as to say hardware companies that sell with high margins do not undergo enshittification.
From the article: “… they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers …” Apple doesn’t have business customers. Their core business strategy is not to sell ads, or data, but rather hardware.
Your first paragraph misses the point. The argument was not about the current rules of any current platform. It was about the potential for abuse on future VR/AR platforms by platform owners. The platform owners are the rule makers and can change the rules at any point. Others platforms like the gaming consoles are proof the rules can be a lot tighter.
Apple is in no way excluded from enshitification.
Apple refusing to support more than one external monitor on non-Pro or non-Max M* laptops is an example in hardware by virtue of being intentional market segmentation.
On the software side, ads are slowly encroaching previously ad-free spaces on Apple software too. Apple is also a services company providing everything from an ads platform to apps marketplaces to media to payment services to banking services and leveraging their position in anticompetitive ways. It's platforms are subject to the same pressures of enshitification.
The part you quoted is just one of the steps. The strategy for a platform is to act as an indispensable middleman and abuse everyone both upstream and downstream.
Either you left off the "/s" or you're missing their point. Who will be doing the space and resource management?
This is not a future where individual consumers have control. This is a future where corporations give consumers enough of an illusion of control that they don't notice how much they've actually given up.
In the future it won't be possible to have a life as it is like now and it's only possible in virtual realities. The scenarios that are normal and natural for people can only be offered in those pods.
You might not even be able to tell any difference when you are in a pod. In fact you could be in the pod right this very moment and you could be the main player where all scenarios are created and catered specifically for you to throw various challenges at you which might feel stressful, but you'll be able to surmount them. These scenarios give meaning to your life.
As I expected you do not want to engage in actual dialogue and answer the question I asked. You are just posturing that it is inevitable and therefore do not want to answer why you favour this dystopia to the detriment of any other possible future.
Moreover you are also steering this towards the simulation hypothesis which is a dead end for a debate.
I haven't said I favour that. It does seem inevitable however. How would you expect humans to end up? In 10 years? In 50 years? In 200 years?
People are already out of their natural habitats, and they will be even more. Is there going to be some sort of magical future moment where people achieve what they wanted to achieve and will they be happy?
How could it happen if environment is going to completely change? What once gave rewards to humans, in the future can not, since there wouldn't be similar events that have built humans throughout the evolution.
People are already addicted to smartphones, people are depressed and have issues with their mental states, despite World being more comfortable and safe to navigate than ever before, people are overall not necessarily more happy.
It doesn't right now, but it's debatable whether it should or should not.
E.g. if you are able to produce a method or substance to produce heroin like effects in people without tolerance build up, should people be allowed to consume that?
Asimov kind-of wrote about this phenomenon in 1956's "The Naked Sun", the second of his Elijah Bailey series. I won't give plot spoilers, but the main connection is that a group of people on another planet have grown accustomed to virtual holographic "viewing" being the main mode of interacting with other people, while physically being in their presence is deemed unwholesome, embarrassing, or otherwise uncouth, causing people to go to great extents to avoid it.
I don't know that Vision Pro is necessarily taking us on that sort of path; I'll probably hold my judgment until they've proliferated enough that I actually know someone who has one. But your point that the virtual world is becoming where we go to interact with other people while physical spaces are used for individual isolation is a good one, and my contribution here is to tie it to a book that is over 65 years old to show that it's not even a particularly new idea.
"while physically being in their presence is deemed unwholesome, embarrassing, or otherwise uncouth, causing people to go to great extents to avoid it."
I would argue that the ancient man living in the woods is absolutely right about cities—a person in a concrete jungle is dangerously isolated from reality. We know the negative effects of too little sunlight, we know the positive effects of exposure to nature. We know the negative environmental effects of the infrastructure that makes the concrete jungle possible, but those effects are invisible to the resident of the jungle.
Also, it's pretty clear that cities are too large for our social apparatus. The ancient man living in a tribe has a deeper personal connection with his fellow villagers than anything we develop in a city, much less in the worldwide city we call the internet.
Given all that, I think it's reasonable to take a backwards-looking approach to this. Evolution happens on the time scale of millennia, and our biology has had only had a few hundred years to adjust to the modern city. Rushing headlong along the same path into full, always-connected VR is hazardous.
Taking the Roman Empire as an example: Rome was by far the largest city in the empire at a total of ~1 million people. The others were estimated to have 500 thousand or fewer, with only 25-30% of the population living in a city at all.
Modern cities are enormous by comparison and our urbanization rate is completely flipped. 80% of people in the US live in a city, and we have 50 metro areas with a higher population than Rome had during the empire. Our largest metro area is New York/Newark/Jersey City at 20 million people, 20x that of imperial Rome.
And remember that Rome itself was an anomaly in its day, and the Roman Empire in general was an anomaly in European history.
At an extraordinary cost to human health. Sewage problems spread disease. Malnourishment due to only eating bread. The average height of a Paleolithic man far exceeded the height of a Neolithic man.
This is Berkson's paradox - Neolithic men may have been less healthy, but that could be because the hunter-gatherers died or stopped having children when they ran out of food rather than living off bread.
With that framing, I agree. However, I don’t think it needs to be. I’m hoping it’s more that virtual reality is where to go to interact professionally and you’ll take off the goggles for your personal time.
If, instead of needing to live in close proximity to work opportunities, often in an expensive and crowded city with a long commute, people could live wherever they want and commute virtually, that would be a huge positive in my book. That is already possible for some professions, such as software development. But good VR/AR will open the door to other professions that still require in person collaboration today and will improve those that are already remote capable. Then, at the end of the day, you take off your headset and live your life wherever/however you choose.
Yeah I agree that work is by far the most optimistic use case here. Still though, I work remotely, and it kinda sucks, for exactly this same reason. It is certainly a huge advantage to be able to live anywhere and not be tied to any specific location to get work done, but there are huge disadvantages too. I haven't personally figured out what I think the right way to square the circle is, but I think it might be more like the trend toward 2-3 hybrid work weeks rather than total isolated remote. At least for most people.
We're already texting far more often than talking, in person or on the phone. Perhaps you're used to that and don't feel strange, but I bet there are people who consider that shitty.
Yes, that is also strange and shitty. (But actually no, I talk in person a lot more than I text. I have to make an effort to see people that way, but I think it's worth the effort.)
We'll make cars so cheap only the rich can afford horses.
We'll make air travel so cheap, only the rich can afford travel by ship.
We'll make AR/VR so compelling only the rich can afford travel.
> people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is not good enough
Because it's not good enough and there's no real plausible means by which it will be good enough.
I mean this was a core argument in the Matrix, and many agreed that it wasn't worth doing even when the virtual reality was absolutely flawless and a land of limitless bounty.
And there's no tech in progress that has a path to that kind of immersive experience. Even if that kind of thing is possible which I have doubts about my great-grand-children will be long dead by the time it shows up.
You're not going to hang out with friends in foreign countries for free you're going to be isolated in your house with a piece of plastic on your face.
We're hanging out with friends in foreign countries for free right now on this website, many people have friends they only communicate with via text, and some only with voice, and others with video, and others physically
Wow..... I have to completely disagree with you and feel quite sorry that's the way you feel about your life. You sound similar to the Japanse Hikikomori men that I read about.
1. People do not really go into nature to "isolate" themselves. As you said, you can do that in your own house. There's a plethora of reason nature is good for.
2. Everything else you're listing as "advantages" are less equivalents of what can be done in real life already.
3. Hanging out with friends virtually is no where near the same emotionally or physically. This has been scientifically proven. You NEED to be talking to people in person and interacting with them. Otherwise, you will be emotionally stunted.
I hike for days to get to parts of the wilderness that no one else is in. I do not go to nature to hear or see other people. Gp is spot on with that.
I'm very normal and sociable and well adjusted. But our relationship with our surroundings and each other is changed due to technology. And will continue to evolve.
I meant to say "just to isolate themselves". Yes that's sometimes part of the reason but typically it's not the only reason, as you can isolate yourself inside your own home quite easily.
It will evolve into a mess of mental illness and likely the end of our race in my opinion if that's the way we go. We can already see this happening. Less people are reproducing, more people are mentally ill than ever, a lot of people see the human race as a blight on the planet etc. We will not evolve, we'll just die out or be something so far removed from what we are it won't be recognizable. It's obvious that digital communication doesn't meet our emotional and physical needs.
Also, did you ever think about the reason why you're "isolating" in nature? It's likely to get away from the modern technical world that's stripping you of something. Sort of ironic in regard to your stance on wholeheartedly accepting every facet of VR into our daily lives.
> Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".
Forest man is on to something. Can I live in his family’s hovel and keep my antibiotics? Thanks.
If this is the future I do not want to live in it. No VR is ever going to match the actual experience of travelling to a place unlike any you've ever been. No emulated persona is ever going to match looking into a loved one's eyes. I can see the benefits of AR/VR for productivity or for niche consumption, but it could be 'strictly better than current reality' only with the narrowest of cherrypicked definitions. No thanks.
>Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".
A city is literally millions of people all wanting to live in the same place to be close to other people. I couldn't wait to move from the countryside to a city in order to be near more people like myself.
Communications technology is great, it helps me connect with even more people with common interests, as right now, and with my family while we are apart. It is in no way shape or form a substitute for being physically with people. There's something primally satisfying and emotionally anchoring about actually being together. That's why online discussions can so easily escalate into verbal knife fights and abuse. It's emotionally disconnected and I suspect the same will be true of VR.
No, this idea was stupid when Zuckerberg promoted it, and it's still stupid with Cook promoting it. VR goggles are a dead end. Invisible VR or AR has lots of applications, but the technology is years away.
Your comment is such a great bait :D
As much as things could be really cool in VR, the simplest argument here is that as a human you can do much more than just look at things and listen to things...
Weren’t they trying to sell high priced virtual real estate in the metaverse next to snoop dog? Would decor not be monetized just like skins and items in gaming?
Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".
In fact the very opposite is the case. Now, we go into nature to isolate ourselves.
In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you'll take the goggles off to isolate yourself.
There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:
- your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else
- you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost
- you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required
- you spend zero time on travelling
- you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa
As long as the technology is good enough (and please remember that qualifier, because people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is not good enough) - as long as the technology is good enough VR is strictly better than current reality.