Neal Stephenson on the Future of the Metaverse
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 тра 2024
- When Neal Stephenson coined “the metaverse” three decades ago, his book Snow Crash was found on the shelves of “science fiction”. While the book remains in that category, many of its concepts are now found in reality…
Fast forward to 2022, where numerous companies are now building toward their version of the metaverse, including Neal himself, working on his latest venture Lamina1, drawing on his experience as a builder at MagicLeap, Blue Origin, and more.
While the present metaverses don’t perfectly mimic that from Stephenson’s early imagination, we get the unique opportunity to discuss the various design decisions that he’s making, but also the intersection between the metaverse and gaming, the involvement that AR/VR might play, the evolving role of IP, how artificial intelligence fits in, what he’s building and why, and where he gets all of his ideas from.
Topics Covered:
0:00 - Introduction
1:20 - Tech's highest impact position
4:45 - What is the metaverse?
7:04 - Interoperability
9:17 - Incentive alignment
14:00 - Immersion requirements
17:37 - VR engineering challenges
21:35 - Skeuomorphism
26:07 - Commercial VR/AR applications
29:44 - AI and gaming
33:38 - The value chain
42:02 - Right of refusal
46:25 - Good and bad tech
51:08 - Fighting “free”
54:44 - Building Lamina1
1:05:26 - Neal’s design designs
1:11:48 - Inspiration for Snow Crash
1:18:21 - Looking ahead from 2022
1:21:45 - Science fiction writing
1:23:36 - Carbon removal
Resources:
* Neal’s Twitter: / nealstephenson
* Lamina1’s website: www.lamina1.com/
Stay Updated:
* Find us on Twitter: / a16z
* Find us on LinkedIn: / a16z
* Subscribe on your favorite podcast app:a16z.simplecast.com/
* Follow our host: / stephsmithio
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. - Наука та технологія
Timestamps!
0:00 - Introduction
1:20 - Tech's highest impact position
4:45 - What is the metaverse?
7:04 - Interoperability
9:17 - Incentive alignment
14:00 - Immersion requirements
17:37 - VR engineering challenges
21:35 - Skeuomorphism
26:07 - Commercial VR/AR applications
29:44 - AI and gaming
33:38 - The value chain
42:02 - Right of refusal
46:25 - Good and bad tech
51:08 - Fighting “free”
54:44 - Building Lamina1
1:05:26 - Neal’s design designs
1:11:48 - Inspiration for Snow Crash
1:18:21 - Looking ahead from 2022
1:21:45 - Science fiction writing
1:23:36 - Carbon removal
Was an honor to interview Neal and discuss my favourite quote from Snow Crash, written 30 years ago! (1:11:48)
"Hiro’s not so poor, yet, that he would go and write video games for this company. It’s owned by the Nipponese, which is no big deal. But it’s also managed by the Nipponese, which means that all the programmers have to wear white shirts and show up at eight in the morning and sit in cubicles and go to meetings."
You did an awesome job. Great questioning and follow through. I was thoroughly educated on where we stand with “Thee” Meta-verse.
Thank you
@@gearienoxcuses3936 Thank you so much!
Your questions were on point -- congrats!
Her questions are really, really good. They pretty much got me caught up on where we stand with the meta-verse. When he stated the mind set should be, “The meta-verse and not my meta-verse”. If it’s not 1 inclusive meta-verse it is not thee meta-verse. Brilliantly explained.
Brilliant podcast Steph
In my opinion the metaverse should work like the internet, search engines will be like the Home Screen on PlayStation (each user customises that experience), like they own universe.
Website (or domain) will be each universe in the metaverse.
The whole thing will behave loosely like the nvidia omniverse. A shared language to give users the freedom to shift from one universe to the other.
Fabulous interview, ❤ - Prosper Williams
GitHub Copilot in a few years will allow one hacker to at least 10x (and going up exponentially) the amount of code she can write today, the era of the lone hacker is coming back, not disappearing
Great interview, exciting times we’re in. Thank you!
"We absolutely do not need AR and VR in order to build the metaverse."
Agree or disagree?
Really good talk. I would say that technology will help to make VR and AR more convenient, realistic, tolerable for longer times, and fun. The idea of the metaverse must be valuable if it's going to create adoption, and making something realistic is great but that should just be background noise. The real value comes from function. Creating zoom calls in VR where you are actually making eye contact versus looking at somebody who's looking at a camera.... Making people feel a real emotional connection is key.
Disagree
Agree, no doubt about that
Yes and no. There will be lots of use cases where you could connect to your custom/preferable verse via your private device or your software agent. No need in AR/VR. BUT, for immersive full fledged experience you would need them.
I very much agree with his point of view, for example, there should be only one metaverse, not a bunch.
I get motion sick in VR games where you move as if you were in the world. However it can easily be eliminated. You use a 'blinkered' moving mode, or a smooth teleportation type of movement - which is supported by almost all VR games now. It's a solved problem.
Anybody has a transcript of this?
Do a interview with David Keith, he knows all about engineering the weather/climate.
Wide is the gate to doom and destruction.
Wait, are these things edited so that there's no umms and pauses. The whole 1 and a half hours? WOW.
Neal's talking about what's going on with #Palworld or what should be going on with its tech. #PayTheEngineer
Money money money,
Greed greed greed.
Meta Bandwidth
Who's dumb enough to think a book writer will be able to build anything significant. He's already late if he thinks the "metaverse" will not be built around VR and AR.
Neal has also been a builder for years! He was employee #3 at Blue Origin, worked at Magic Leap for several years, and his work has influenced many real-world applications like Google Earth. I wouldn't discount his perspective. :)
@@StephSmithio as a business model advisor? He's not a builder, just another dude with a big ego and money to spend. Anyway I'm ready to bet his new venture will be a failure like his previous Kickstarter, this dude is out of touch with reality. (Which is probably very useful to be a novel author)
Sounds like you haven’t been hugged in awhile. Here’s a warm hug 🤗
@@metasourcegames While you're busy giving hugs this con-man will take money from users and will probably never deliver anything of value
@@metasourcegames oh wait nevermind, just saw you recommend scams to people for a living, you probably don't give a damn
Neal reminds me of Tim Berners-Lee, just an old timer desperately trying to cling on to relevance in a world that's accelerating away from them.
He coined the term but he's no more qualified to build than Ernest Cline is, advisory work is still biased perspective and Magic Leap didn't exactly deliver anything tangible for the amount of money they received.
I've read the Lamina1 whitepaper, it's as generic as they come sadly.
amazing content. sad to hear he's anti pow, developed by Dr. Adam Back one of the greatest geniuses of our era, the heart of decentralization in crypto protocols. Neil should know better. carbon neutral also as a catch all seems quite silly. if we should grew up and used nuclear power none of that stuff would matter.
Very strange, Neal's manner and the way he speaks resembles (or reverse) Jeff Bezos style. Almost exactly.
Inoperable Games will never succeed as there are so many complications in that.
I was going to say - Finaly, someone with a brain about the Metaverse - When I heard Crypto I saw how delusional He is... A Metaverse only develops with an economy based in utility, not speculation... Second Life proves it since 2003... This guy talks about the Roblox and Fortnight that have 30% Metaverse fearures, He doesn't even know Second Life that has 99% of a Metaverse features... I don't care if He created the Term, He is all about fiction and SL is quite real, since 2003, including a fully fledged economy... He doesn't even touch the real problem with VR - Many people just can't or wont bare the use of helmets and it takes away the inclusivity a Metaverse needs, demanding extra costs anf high end computers...
Lol.... frothy... the Metaverse idea is already dead.... and the terms and conditions spiel at the beginning was physically sick inducing... reminded me of a Snow Crash. I guess that was an unintended tribute lol. Yuck.
I'm happy with the real world we have; I got zero interest in or need for some man-made, corporate-controlled, fake-world "metaverse". WTF is the appeal of this nonsense?
he really loses me at the chicken little environmentalism.
when a doctor talks about how to fix a car 😜