2k20, what's the worst enormous tech company?

a friend just sent me this photo from #SXSW of a facebook/@Meta VR booth there. starting to suspect this *may* not be the best company to hold a near-monopoly over our shared digital future... hmm... pic.twitter.com/OtQVhp0fdD

— Dave Infante (@dinfontay) March 15, 2022

uh

mh otm

Eh. It beats Warhol's longest by a couple of hours.

IDGI? Are they actually enticing people to see what it’s like being trapped alive under the collapsed towers?

Found a new one

https://www.palantir.com/in-defense-of-europe/en/

SCOOP: Facebook is exploring the creation of virtual currency (dubbed 'Zuck Bucks' internally) for the metaverse, "social tokens" & lending services

Its finance push comes despite the collapse of its Diem/Libra cryptocurrency project earlier this year 🧵https://t.co/1sCAQkEtZG

— Hannah Murphy (@MsHannahMurphy) April 6, 2022

this sounds fairly benign to me. it's not some crypto currency, just some bullshit points you get in FB that are meaningless outside of FB/Meta.

That explains my failure to pay for groceries with Reddit karma yesterday

https://i.imgur.com/z076uR1.png

Last year, former Oculus CTO (and current Meta "executive advisor") John Carmack threw down the gauntlet for Meta's near-term metaverse plans. By the 2022 Meta Connect conference, Carmack said last October, he hoped he'd be in his headset, "walking around the [virtual] halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people getting the feed across multiple platforms."

Carmack's vision didn't come to pass Tuesday, as a jerky and awkward Carmack avatar gave one of his signature, hour-long unscripted talks amid a deserted VR space, broadcast out as plain old 2D video on Facebook.

"Last year I said that I'd be disappointed if we weren't having Connect in Horizon this year," Carmack said by way of introduction. "This here, this isn't really what I meant. Me being an avatar on-screen on a video for you is basically the same thing as [just] being on a video."

That set the tone for a presentation in which Carmack said that "there's a bunch that I'm grumpy about" regarding the state of Meta's current VR hardware and software. While that grumpiness was somewhat tempered with talk of recent improvements and hope for the future of virtual reality, Carmack seemed generally frustrated with the direction Meta as a whole is taking its VR efforts.

VR will be like 3D movies have been for the last 65 years - they periodically keep trying to get us all onboard, and everybody's like 'eh no, I'm good, 2D is fine thanks'

VR headsets are a cool novelty but they also make me super dizzy. I can't imagine anyone wanting to wear one for more than 15 minutes

even the plausible use cases they seem to have for it are kind of really bad ideas. for example, carmack brings up a couple things: 1) VR meta world could be a costsaving thing for conferences - "you could just give them a free headset and it comes out cheaper than the rest of the expenses", and 2) there's a debate going on between whether to improve the quality of the avatar graphics, and he (Carmack) is on the side of going for quantity by keeping the quality at a minimum and optimizing for smooth performance and greater numbers of users instead.

makes sense. now imagine the conference whenever several dozen professional asskissers follow the CEOs around

https://i.imgur.com/4jCiqVZ.jpg

“should we be apex legends or minecraft” these guys are such visionaries

in the conference of the near future, as soon as you enter someone runs up to you and crouches and stands and crouches and stands, repeatedly

so the thing about that is virtual conferences already exist

but can I walk up to you and crouch and stand up repeatedly? on facebook? with a free headset?

i'm starting to talk myself into this honestly

honestly it's wild to see billions and billions of dollars poured into this thing and the only use cases they can come up with are reproducing experiences that people hate

i think VR makes sense for (some) (parts of) (some) video games. and for specialist applications like CAD. for meetings, conferences… who cares?

I take it back shopping in the metaverse looks awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w262elaqhI

It's fascinating and also sad - but happy, and mildly erotic - to follow the career of the people who wrote Doom. They all got sick of each other when they were making Quake and left Id, except for John Carmack, who eventually got sick of everything after Rage flopped. And left Id.

John Romero still comes across as a dude. He has about four ex-wives, but he speaks to people on Twitter and still has a lustrous head of hair. He still looks like a hitman from a late-1990s action film. Is that because he actually used to watch action films, and he modelled his look on Antonio Banderas etc? Who knows. Sandy Petersen has a fun YouTube channel. John Carmack is still very angry.

I'm precisely the kind of market for the Metaverse, and I don't want it at all. I remember being wowed by Doom. I can think of a bunch of tech products that I wanted. That people wanted. Netbooks. People wanted netbooks. SSDs. The original PlayStation. DVDs. People wanted them. I wanted them. I had them! I might not be rational, or reflective, but I have the same instincts as a regular person. The same guts, the same fluids, the same cran, the same sisu. I can think of several times when "the industry" pushed things at me that I didn't want. 3D television. Blu-Ray. Pre-iPad tablets. Early-1990s pen-driven tablets. Any audio codec that wasn't MP3. Any type of memory stick that wasn't Compact Flash and latterly SD. Clear colas. Supersonic airliners. I'm still on the fence with crossbows.

Curved televisions. 3D televisions, which I mention twice. Because it's a great example of something that the industry pushed at people. 3D TV made a certain amount of rational sense - people loved Avatar, didn't they? - and the TV industry wanted a boost after people had all switched from CRT to LCD televisions. But I didn't want a 3D TV. All the people I knew who bought one weren't massively keen; they were just replacing their TV and thought "why not". I am embedded in the same culture as everybody else - but not tech executives, who live in a different word - so I know what people want. Some people. My people, which includes all of you here on Ilxor. I am within you. I know what you want. Even you. Especially you.

And I don't want to wear a VR headset. I loved Half-Life 2 but I'm not buying a VR headset just so I can spent seven hours playing Alyx. Even if I did, it would be like owning a joystick for the few times I boot up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 - an indulgence, a luxury. It's not something that hundreds of millions of people are going to flock to. I have no desire whatsoever to buy a VR headset so I can pretend to stand in a room talking to people. "But what about VR sex?", to which my response is that I'm not stripping off and coating myself with butter while wearing a headset that blocks my eyes and ears! What if someone else wants to use the shower?

I have faith that the market has a mind of its own and will reject nonsense and flim-flam. Marketing people always claim that they can shape public opinion and make people buy things they don't want, but that's meta-marketing. It's marketing people marketing themselves. In reality their power is limited.

otm

AR on the other hand i think could be wildly successful tbh, they just need to get the tech light enough

On the other hand, there's a double embarrassment when people barge into the office store cupboard room while you're wanking to porn. There's the embarrassment of people seeing you wanking, and the embarrassment of people seeing what you wank to e.g. Carol Vorderman's Twitter account, the naked athletics at the beginning of Triumph of the Will etc.

Wearing a VR headset halves the embarrassment factor because people can't see what's on the screen. But "it halves the embarrassment of being caught wanking" isn't the kind of thing that tech giants want to talk about, is it? "You can watch Alex Jones without anybody knowing about it and you can also move your head around and examine the rest of the studio" isn't good optics nowadays.

And on further reflection why would I want to look around the environment when I'm watching porn? I mean, porn and pirated movies drove the adoption of broadband internet. That's another thing people wanted. Cracked copies of PhotoShop CS4. Good-quality rips of the first series of Heroes etc. VR doesn't fit in with this at all.

AR on the other hand i think could be wildly successful tbh, they just need to get the tech light enough

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, October 13, 2022 12:34 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the Google Translate app has this cool thing where you can put the camera on anything and it'll detect and translate any text it sees and then superimpose it onto the image in a way that looks somewhat natural - it detects the font & background color and all that. I thought that + Google Glass would be a huge deal, you could walk around in any country and at least read all the signs, which seems pretty damn useful. But it hasn't materialized yet. maybe it's harder to do than I'm assuming.

Ashley Pomeroy i enjoy your writing

and otm, at least it captures my own feelings. i notice that VR is kind of awful for social situations when, irl, there are multiple people. because once the person is in VR, they are no longer accessible irl. instead, you are viewing a person waving around in space, probably with their mouth slightly open, and often laughing to themselves and referencing a dimension that you're not in. to be there, but to not have a VR headset of your own, forces you into observing only one side of a telephone conversation, all in the hopes that you will eventually get your own turn inside the box while everyone else waits. i have a friend who repeatedly tries to get everyone to play VR when there is a social gathering in the backyard. i can't overstate how annoying it is, for a person who doesn't hang out with a lot of people or very often, to FINALLY be in a situation where it is happening, and then suddenly everyone is summoned to a room to watch someone in a box for an hour until bored people inevitably start leaving the building

xposts to ashley's first post

(also, i realize that most VR setups allow for a separate monitor which mirrors the VR so that people irl can view the action. i believe that this mirrored display mode is one of the most unpleasant audio-visual experiences you can subject yourself to)

VR has some valuable educational applications, many of which are already in use - teaching surgical procedures, complicated mechanical processes. But they're niche and not direct-to-consumer, so of course Meta isn't focusing on those types of actual applications

every time i see a meta commercial im just like...please let this bankrupt you

I think VR has definite value for people who are housebound, or paralyzed, or stuck in the hospital - maybe even for people in prison who want to visit Tibet

But right now it all looks like Second Life circa 2002

I have faith that the market has a mind of its own and will reject nonsense and flim-flam. Marketing people always claim that they can shape public opinion and make people buy things they don't want, but that's meta-marketing. It's marketing people marketing themselves. In reality their power is limited.

― Ashley Pomeroy, Thursday, October 13, 2022 1:30 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago)

I'm inclined to argue against your first sentence for political reasons, but that's probably unnecessary & maybe futile. This thread has some evidence that the market doesn't have a mind of its own, or, if it does, it's kind of dim and short-sighted: Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

But the potential threat of Meta's VR is that some of the use cases being floated would be marketed to other businesses, and the biggest marks in the history of capitalism are corporations, who often are exactly the kind of gullible saps that marketers pretend all consumers are. Personally I'm also inclined to believe that VR will once again be rejected as a mass consumer product, but corporations still give employees Myers-Briggs tests to this day, so I'm not completely sanguine that there won't be mandatory VR meetings in the future. The open-plan office was also a bad idea.

https://www.garbageday.email/p/finally-a-conference-call-with-legs

Think back to why you last opened up Facebook. And now imagine that instead of pulling it up on your phone or opening a new tab on your desktop, ask yourself if you would still feel the urge to check Facebook if it meant sliding on a bulky (and weirdly heavy) plastic helmet to do so.

interesting thread with this obvious problem in mind

I've worked on a number of high-profile failures:

- Lytro lightfield cameras
- Google Glass head-mounted computer
- Google Clips automatic photographer

They all had a fatal flaw. Everyone saw the flaw. But the culture that arose in these teams purposefully ignored the flaw. 1/n

— Warren Craddock (@warren_craddock) October 10, 2022

yeah when i watch something on my tv i want to get away from my body. escape. not be like, using it all the time, craning my neck around etc. i know you can mimic the body movements with hand controls etc but at that point the only real diff with a 4K TV is that you have an all-encompassing head-clamp wrapped around your face. is that really such a game changer?

but just think, you could simulcast your VR experience to the living room as well

yea I remember that commercial where that lady is like "ooOoooOOOoh you think VR is just for gamer nerds??" which cuts to her getting an intense VR workout and I always think who fucking wants to do that. workouts may feel good but one thing they are not is "fun". and they never will be!!! sorry!!!!!

also who wants to move around that much when you don't know where you are in the room? cmon Suzie

Hey blu-ray is way better than dvd don’t mix that up with all this other useless stuff

the thing about the metaverse via headset is that kids these days are always multitasking. how do I get on Discord while also in the metaverse? do I walk up to a computer in the metaverse to check on the chat?

to return to the thread caek linked, lmao

Google Glass actually had *two* fatal flaws:

- It didn't really do anything very useful.
- You looked stupid while wearing it.

The culture in the Google Glass team grew to completely ignore these flaws, too. 7/n

— Warren Craddock (@warren_craddock) October 10, 2022

strong "oh my god, he say it!" vibes here

it's a great thread! what a fascinating career!

mh otm about multitasking

i’m pretty sure horizons actually does have a thing where you can look at a virtual “tablet” that does remote desktop to your actual laptop so that you can rudely answer emails even during your VR meeting but come on, the pure faff of it

My outsider view is that the whole Meta rebranding is simply to make Facebook look like it is capable of innovation and VR can be sold to market analysts as the Next Big Thing, and proposed as evidence that FB can continue to expand its revenues into the future. Whatever comes of it, if anything useful, won't look much like what we are now being told it will look like, which is just silly and needlessly cumbersome.

C'mon, if Brainstorm is any indication, the headsets are gonna seem like Viewmasters in a couple years, when they start mainlining content directly into THE MIND:

https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/brainstorm1983.69568.jpg

wtf that Twitter thread. Yeah, build a culture where you can say to your boss, hey how about canceling this junk and firing us? Notice the protagonist never dared suggest this. Because who would?!

I'd never seen the Google Glass spread in Vogue. That really didn't help matters.

In the Future, we will all be Christopher Walken

Hey blu-ray is way better than dvd don’t mix that up with all this other useless stuff

I agree blu ray rules, but think it's a fair example of something people didn't want regardless. At the time I think the general reaction was "well fuck I already have all these movies on DVD, now you want me to rebuy them?". Turned out what ppl actually wanted was no physical media at all and, instead of that, streaming services that give you access to like five movies made before 1990 and The Big Bang Theory.

crazy remembering the HD-DVD vs BluRay beef

what was it, just 8 or 9 years ago? and i'm now getting UHD content streamed to me in 4K

https://kotaku.com/zuckerberg-facebook-meta-legs-feet-video-vr-staged-fake-1849656315

it's fun to imagine the heady early days of internet and the abstraction of social communication, away from in-person speaking and gesturing, away from penmanship or typed letters and sealed envelopes and mailboxes, and toward the near-instant transfer of data, a name or a class or a field standing in for the visual information. abstraction. and then, snap forward to the present and we are desperately trying to add some legs onto shitty cartoon avatars