The Hype Of The Metaverse: Soviet-Style Propaganda

in #hive-1679223 years ago

We all heard about the Metaverse. It is all over the place. After all, Mark Zuckerberg decided to build it. But then so is Microsoft. And Apple. And whomever else decided to throw their hat in the hype train.

The reality about this digital reality is we are light years away from it. As is often the case in technology, the hype far exceeds the capabilities. While we are going to see some amazing things over the decades, much of what people are describing is decades away.

Of course, my opinion on this matter was well expressed. Let us gain a bit of insight from someone who is in the technology field and see how he views it.

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Metaverse = Soviet Propaganda

Well that does not leave much room for misinterpretation.

This is the view of Evernote founder Phil Libin. Growing up in the Soviet Union, the present rhetoric about the Metaverse reminds him of Soviet propaganda.

He states this simply because of the idea the Metaverse is not here, but it is coming. This was the promise that was doled out by the Soviets about Communism. It is not here yet but it is coming.

And oh by the way, it will be utopian. Sound familiar?

While it might seem a bit harsh to make this comparison, the idea makes sense. Hype is a powerful weapon which often leads to disappointment. The challenge with the Metaverse hype-train is people are throwing money at it trying to profit off something that is not going to arrive for many decades.

Here is what Libin had to say about it:

"I went to first grade in the Soviet Union," Libin said. "I was subjected to a lot of Soviet propaganda, and I was told as a little kid repeatedly: 'Communism doesn't exist yet. We haven't built communism yet. We're building towards communism. But it's not communism yet. What you see around you, this horrible, horrible place, isn't communism. We're building towards it. It's going to be great when it gets here.'"

Libin continued: "You know, you can smell a bad idea before it's fully built. So I don't want to hear 'Oh yeah, the metaverse doesn't exist yet. No, no, no, all this stuff, all this stupid, useless, crappy stuff that exists right now, that's not the metaverse. The metaverse is coming — it's coming.'"

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The Metaverse Is Coming...It Is Just A Long Way Off

Libin might be overemphasizing the bad idea aspect. There is no doubt the direction things are heading in. However, we have to be careful since we have a history with what technology does.

To start, we have no idea when the technology will meet up with our demands. The ideas being presented today, even if implemented, will take a couple decades from a technical perspective. We simply cannot do what is desired. One of the biggest issues is going to be the radical upgrade to our communications systems. Forget 5G, we might need something like 8G.

Another experience that we have with technology is that it rarely unfolds how we envision. Like the old saying goes, what did people think they needed in the pre-automobile era? Faster horses.

The Metaverse as a concept is in our future. How that looks when it arrives is going to be far different than what we predict today.

Think back to the early days of the Internet. Did the people developing then envision a day when one of the main uses of the Web would be to send 140 characters in a Tweet? It is safe to say they probably did not see that one coming.

So why do we think that we are any better at predicting the timeline or what the Metaverse will look like.

As I repeatedly stated, we are working on building Web 3.0. If I had to guess, at best, the Metaverse will be Web 5.0. In other words, there is another iteration or two to go through before we can even begin to comprehend what it will look like.

Convergence Of Our Worlds

What we do know is that we are going to see the merging of our physical, digital, and biological worlds. We are seeing more of our world essentially turned into data. This leads to the emergence of entirely new possibilities that are not even on our radar today.

Is this Soviet-style propaganda? Not really. We can forecast the future, within a range of possibilities. Extending out 10 years can give us a pretty good idea of what things will look like. The challenge enters when we try to go much past there. Things can get rather murky since technology can change so much in that period of time.

Truthfully, we have little idea where a lot of this stuff will go.

Nevertheless, the digitization of everything already started. We are seeing sensors put into many more products as compared to two decades ago. Everything is becoming a data generator. This is one thing we know about the future: it will be filled with enormous amounts of data.

As the digital layer of placed over our physical world, we will see things such as digital twins. That is a step in the evolution. Of course, there will be many more just like that. In fact, we can expect thousands of moves along the same lines.

Where we end up in 20 or 30 years is hard to guess. Perhaps at that time we can start talking about the Metaverse. However, if I had to guess, we probably won't talk about something we are operating within.

For now, it is just a bunch of shallow promises, ones that could end up like what the Soviets promoted to their citizens.


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HYPE is as old as human civilization. Sports teams, root root for your local team. Some teams do not get rooted for even by their hometown citizens until they start winning games.
My cousins from New York are all about the Yankees but when it comes to the Mets forget about it!! Why because they suck according to my Cousin Tony.
My Cousin Mike always complains about the bars getting crowded when the Yankees start to win. He calls them Band Wagon Bitches as you do not see them until the Yankees start winning.
This is how Hype works it is illogical and emotional. All of those that jump on the bandwagon, believe the hype, and drink the kool-aid, would jump off of a bridge if their friends do lol.

And a great wave of relief has rushed over me... how I dread the Metaverse and all its promises. Maybe I'm in a small minority, but it just feels too dystopian in many ways. I'll digress for now though, and thank you for highlighting this valuable perspective. Cheers! 😎

Like most things, it is not really dystopian or utopian.

But have no fear, it is a long way out. We are working on Web 3.0 which is a long way from the Metaverse. This stage will take 15 years like most others.

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Is the metaverse really that far off though?

As far as I'm concerned, the metaverse existed since normal people flocked to the internet.

The only difference now is the islands of cyberspace are consolidating and congregating themselves into various "networks". Eventually, we can conduct our daily lives in one or several "places".

It's almost like a paradox of decentralization. People gather into certain spaces under decentralized protocols.

One aspect he is missing is the feasibility. There is now way communism would work. The whole idea goes against both economic principles as well as human freedoms. With metaverse technology, we can at least show a minimum viable product. We already have had projects like VRChat for many years now.

What these lack is refinement. I'm looking forward to see @dlux-io is going to come up with.
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DLUX has great potential.

It will be interesting to see what their add to their platform.

A lot of things going on with Hive.

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Interesting comparison, as I doubt few today view the Soviet Union as a desirable destination @taskmaster4450le. Where in this "timeline" are we? +100 years after the Bolshevik Revolution, are they any closer to achieving their stated utopian objective? Or, instead, is there anyone anywhere who argue that it is never coming? And why that is more truly the future?

To a key point of your post, the utopian projections of what Web 3.0 and the Metaverse will become are in their uhhh ... "infancy." Inherent in its "maturing" is your chosen word evolve.

I for one think there is a related word. Devolve. One implies we are making progress toward a better and brighter future. One implies we are going backward to God only knows what ...

Which will it be? I personally do not think we'll have to wait anything like 100 years to find out ...

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No it wont take 100 years.

But then it will not be answered in a few years like many seem to believe. We are now in the very early stages which will evolve over the next couple decades.

After all, the point we are at with our digital world took 30 years since the World Wide Web was introduced.

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I thought I was the only one who is fed up with this metaverse hype!

I actually wrote a post yesterday stating that we might be witnessing a similar trend like that of late 2017/early 2018 where people FOMOed into blockchain whereby every new project associated themselves with blockchain!

We are witnessing the same now as almost all projects are promising heaven by just attaching the words web 3, nft and metaverse to their brands.

You might be right, for the metaverse take off, might take years!

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In my following of technology I went through at least 2 hype cycles of Virtual Reality, perhaps we are on number 3.

Gartner has a complete technology hype cycle chart that details what happens.

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The metaverse is far off but will it still be called a metaverse in the future? I do not know but everything is going to move towards digital. I don't see any way of avoiding that.

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Do we use the term "information superhighway"?

Things change a great deal over the last 20 years.

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I understand how it looks like now.

Big teeth but no bite

Things move faster than before that we all know and the concept of the meta world is on a different level and high-speed is required for this field, and not many cryptos can accomplish this height yet, so I guess things like this will take years to come, who knows it might not come till God decides to wipe the wicked ones off the earth.

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This kind of reminds of personal computers in the 70's vs the reality we have today. Things tend to be fluid with everyone following their own north star, before consolidating on a singular path.

Guessing for a moment, I could see prisoners sentenced to doing time in a digital world, while their sedated bodies remain strapped to a bed in a prison hospital-like setting. No more violence against the guards or other inmates, with only brief reprives earned in the digital world before being put back under.

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Interesting idea. Not sure how that would fit into human rights but it is one solution.

Of course, in the Metaverse, is there a need for criminal behavior.

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Oh no, I wasn't calling for this, just picturing how politicians and their business partners might try to use the metaverse to make a buck. Sort of like the prison phone scam, where they charge insane amounts for a phone call home.

A family friend was in jail, and two 15-minute phone calls from him cost us $30. Crazy.

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Yeah makes you wonder who the real criminals are.

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