Is the future of the internet in the metaverse?

[Memory]

I think the idea and marketing ideal "metaverse" is very different from what the "metaverse" actually is.

The idea, an interconnected virtual world where we all "live" in customizable spaces, play all our games in the same "canon", show off our creations, interact with friends seamlessly as we do different things alongside one another, build and decorate our virtual house, blah blah, it is an idea as old as computer games. Countless novels, good and bad, have been written about a virtual second world like that. Just think of Ready Player One, or cyberpunk as a whole genre, like Virtuaverse. Actual implementations of these exist, like Second Life, VRChat, various roleplaying games, or even Microsoft Bob if you want to stretch the definition a bit.

But what the metaverse actually is in reality is a bunch of empty hubs created by finance startups to gamble on crypto currency on, buy and sell worthless tokens to speculate on their value, and play terrible, terrible minigames in whose only real appeal is that you can earn more crypto in them. All while interacting on data hawks like Facebook with friends, coworkers and family, in corporate-friendly, non-stylized, flat environments. It's a glorified storefront.

An actual non-commercial "metaverse", as in the idea, would be super cool, if developed by someone with an actual playful and social-first vision of what it can be, somewhat like the old Nintendo magic when they were still all about Miis. But that won't exist, because it is not profitable.

[nemmoue]

I think the idea and marketing ideal "metaverse" is very different from what the "metaverse" actually is.

The idea, an interconnected virtual world where we all "live" in customizable spaces, play all our games in the same "canon", show off our creations, interact with friends seamlessly as we do different things alongside one another, build and decorate our virtual house, blah blah, it is an idea as old as computer games. Countless novels, good and bad, have been written about a virtual second world like that. Just think of Ready Player One, or cyberpunk as a whole genre, like Virtuaverse. Actual implementations of these exist, like Second Life, VRChat, various roleplaying games, or even Microsoft Bob if you want to stretch the definition a bit.

But what the metaverse actually is in reality is a bunch of empty hubs created by finance startups to gamble on crypto currency on, buy and sell worthless tokens to speculate on their value, and play terrible, terrible minigames in whose only real appeal is that you can earn more crypto in them. All while interacting on data hawks like Facebook with friends, coworkers and family, in corporate-friendly, non-stylized, flat environments. It's a glorified storefront.

An actual non-commercial "metaverse", as in the idea, would be super cool, if developed by someone with an actual playful and social-first vision of what it can be, somewhat like the old Nintendo magic when they were still all about Miis. But that won't exist, because it is not profitable.

c i think the thing that's always salted me so hard about SL is that even though SL is supposed to be, in essence, a "free metaverse" or "free virtual" environment (no cost of entry barrier & actual ingame need for currency outside of cosmetics is minimal) is that despite the framework being good for innovation in actuality most of what SL has been used for is very lowbrow. not that I personally exactly was able to jump on SL with the mindset of "this can be radicalized as a tool!" but i think that it was a poor first testing experience of what I was able to witness as an attempted transition from 2d/text based virtual worlds to 3d ones.  however since i have not tried VRchat, which seems in a way to be a direct improvement over SL, maybe it's not fair for me to judge what these types of communities are capable of.  There is someone earlier in this thread who talks about going to VRchat raves and I have had atleast one roommate in the past who was into that, so maybe that is proof that there can be an acting philosophy or direction that plays out in these types of spaces.  The mention of minecraft is interesting as well because the way minecraft is currently used as a social hub over it's original purpose as a game is essentially the inverse of what happened with SL: independent structure built on top of a platform not intended for independent structure vs. a platform intended for independent structure not utilized.  maybe it is time for me to try minecraft again-- i feel really out of touch with what interesting things are happening with the progression of virtual spaces as a tool for communication. 

is anyone willing to share or volunteer experiences w 3d virtual environments that lent a positive spin towards the direction of these spaces?  i am curious.  (do not intend this post as direct bashing of second-life by the way, just speaking on what i have personally witnessed of its community)

~Admins note; some references have been removed to stay in line with forum guidelines.

[Memory]

is anyone willing to share or volunteer experiences w 3d virtual environments that lent a positive spin towards the direction of these spaces?  i am curious.

Interestingly enough, there's an entire genre of "roleplay" video games, usually mods for Grand Theft Auto, that seek to create an immersive, fully player-driven and player-simulated world where we all collaboratively tell plausible stories and simulate life with our characters in a 3D world.

I have spent almost a decade now on these RP servers and I am still regularly blown away by its quality and the sheer novelty hidden in its communities.

Basically, you take the framework of a GTA game (the map, the models, the characters, the animations, the driving and shooting physics, ...), build an extensive life simulation script on top of it, and then unleash hundreds of players on it who are supposed to simulate unique characters on it. You have to act out your character realistically 100% of the time and that is enforced by the rules and online administrators. It is text based, meaning that you write out your character's actions in proper English using /me and /do commands if the game itself is not sufficient. You can be literally anything.

Imagine being a taxi driver who gets an innocuous call to drive a young man from A to B. During the ride, you get pulled over by the police; they are apparently a wanted person and they ask them to step out of the vehicle. The person gets arrested but not before throwing a punch, a police officer goes down. EMTs arrive and attempt to give medical attention to the cop as the guy is ferried away, protesting.

All of these components were players putting in time and development into their unique characters. The EMT, the person, the taxi driver, the cops, the people in the hospital later on, even the governor making the laws are real people's characters who have a life outside of this scene. The cops might decide to go drinking after their shift. The judge is actually a person who uses the out-of-character forums to formalize the in-game laws and often rules on criminal trials for fun. You might meet the boy you ferried around the block later and ask what he did. Maybe someone decides to enact revenge on your character, or perhaps you will be thanked by the city for your service.

You can be anything - a gang member, a businesswoman, a cop, a truck driver, a taxi driver, a dock worker, a homeless guy, a mafia member, a nightclub owner, a prostitute... It's what I wanted Second Life to be. And it's all without real money involved (unless you want to donate).

Here's some example screenshots I took off GTA World:

Spoiler

[close]

If you like this and own GTA V, check out https://gta.world ; they're by far the biggest server on GTA V with over 800 players on regularly at the same time. It's insane.

Negative I can only say that these communities have a very... alt-right cishet teenage guy tendency with a lot of drama. It's better on GTA World as opposed to the older San Andreas servers, but it sometimes needs thick skin.

[Misanthropic Monster™]

Dang this thread was super interesting to read!

[worldleaderpretend]

Hopping on this insanely late, but it caught my eye since it got put back on the main page by the last comment...

I think y'all hit most of the points I thought of while reading through, but I'd like to add on to the Roblox bit:

I made like 150$? building roblox games at 15-16. The pocket money was nice and i enjoyed the work (at first) but I've come to really dislike roblox for it since. Being on that end of it makes it veeery clear that their whole platform wouldn't be able to function if the actual roblox corporation made the games and avatar clothes. A large chunk of their economy is just exploitative. And they're super dodgy when people question the legality of them making money from games made by literal children...

That said, I don't think it's any different from the economics of the rest of (mainstream) social media. Insta, YT, TT, Twitter, etc., they all make their money by hosting "content" and profiting off of all of it. They would all collapse if it weren't for the people creating it, and they all profit off of people's work without sharing it with the people who made it possible so...

In some ways the web is almost a metaverse as it is? so many people are pushed to have a "personal brand" with their accounts, and it's so normalized that it's almost subconscious in those spheres. A personalized avatar ends up serving the same purpose of a color-coordinated insta feed or an aesthetic tiktok account.

point being, the user experience may be very different, but to the companies it's the same product in different packaging. a more recent development (to this thread) is the same companies all shifting their attention slightly from metaverse to AI... but maybe that should be a different thread of it's own?

IDT I have anything else to add that wouldn't just be redundant, but maybe this thread is worth reviving?

[SmollGnome]

I mean, I think so the inventor of AI said that AI would take over eventually and the Metaverse is AI so I assume that the Metaverse is where our future is headed....

[Melooon]

I mean, I think so the inventor of AI said that AI would take over eventually and the Metaverse is AI so I assume that the Metaverse is where our future is headed....

⚑ Moderators Note ⚑

~Please read and research a little before making posts

• There is no "inventor of AI"; AI (as we use it today) its a marketing term used to refer to a collection of machine learning and other technologies.
• The "Meterverse" has nothing specifically to do with AI at all, its an idea, that refers to interconnecting all virtual worlds and making them more immersive with virtual reality tech.

[worldleaderpretend]

1. AI is already extremely embedded in the modern internet, and it's really nothing new at this point. the real question is what form it will take, and how much will be software like chatgpt. AI and Metaverse aren't at all interchangeable, my point bringing them together here is specifically that they're both discussed a lot as the foundation of the next stages of the internet's evolution. and both equally pushed by the companies developing them.

2. so AI is certainly not a dead end, the modern web has already reached a point where it would be unrecognizable without it. As for metaverse stuff... i'm unsure. In gaming it's already somewhat present, as per above, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the form that silicon valley types say it will take. my question at this point is if that's the future that users want, and so far the answer seems mixed. (not necessarily mixed in this thread, but ofc this forum will have a sampling bias, as meloon said research is important.)

[Dreamwings]

Funny how this thread is coming back up (probably on accident) and I can see all the opinions of people living in the time when this was the major thing in culture and remember the horror of it all. Also now makes me realize how full of shit big tech is that the beautiful grand future of VR headsets they were promising they completely forgot about as soon as the new shiny toy dropped (now its the silly talking robots). Really was a dreadful idea but I think we can see with hindsight now that the idea was fairly shortsighted since... well... we aren't all strapped in like we were supposed too, nor are all of our houses NFTs, nor are we using crypto to pay for groceries, etc.

1. AI is already extremely embedded in the modern internet, and it's really nothing new at this point. the real question is what form it will take, and how much will be software like chatgpt. AI and Metaverse aren't at all interchangeable, my point bringing them together here is specifically that they're both discussed a lot as the foundation of the next stages of the internet's evolution. and both equally pushed by the companies developing them.

2. so AI is certainly not a dead end, the modern web has already reached a point where it would be unrecognizable without it.

What do you mean "unrecognizable without it"?? If anything it's the most tacked on thing about it. You could just rip it off like a sticky note tacked onto the wall. It just gets shoved into places where it isn't needed, like Twitter (with Grok, though I guess all the bots are also that but those wouldn't really be missed) and Google and other things. If you mean in culture then I guess, sort of?? Though I think OpenAI could blow up tomorrow and we'd all be fine and then society would go back to whatever it was before. It's not like, idk, electricity or something.
Also, I'm going to be completely real, since AI has taken over the conversation I haven't heard a single word from all of the previous companies talking about the oh-so-great metaverse, not even the word metaverse. It's like they completely forgot that was supposed to be in the cards of the supposed "future" or whatever (even though, to be honest, you would think that would be part of the plan. Every fake million dollar etherium penthouse needs an awesome virtual anime waifu to welcome you back home when you put the headset on). So I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they have been talked a lot about as the evolution? Both have been talked about a lot, and maybe in the earlier days they were mentioned together, but it seems much more like AI has taken everything else and the metaverse idea got left in the dust. Also, without the development of said supposed metaverse, we aren't getting that internet evoltuion.

[Melooon]

I think maybe people are getting lost in the now and forgetting the wider view; Metaverses are not and do not have to be a buzzword ~ we do not have to participate in buzzword culture and we do not have to allow corporations to steal our words.

Metaverse is an indie idea of an indie space that has existed since the dawn on the web in the early 90s. It's come around a few times but it has never really taken root; that does not mean it will never take root though.

Assuming technology continues to develop at a reasonable pace; at some point within the next 100 years, practical and usable multi-sensory technology (Aka technology that integrates with your various senses more deeply) will be developed ~ (I say this because the alternative is that we continue to make regular PC/Laptop/iPhone style computers for the rest of history, and I don't think that's a reasonable suggestion). That future technology will allow people to access complex 3D spaces in ways that's far more natural than whats available today; and a metaverse-like web is an inevitable outcome in that situation.

Its pretty obvious that the tech we have today is not anywhere near ready yet; even the Apple Vision Pro (as of writing the most advanced and certainly most expensive VR headset from one of the most well funded companies in the world) is essentially a novelty. However portable computers were essentially a novelty 40 years ago too.

My suggestion for people reading this thread is to step away from allowing companies to define the words that create your world, and define those words yourselves. The word Metaverse can be ours; we can take it back; and we can turn it into our vision.

Is our vision going to be around in the future? That entirely depends on us and what we choose to do with the time and tools available to us today 

[Dreamwings]

I think maybe people are getting lost in the now and forgetting the wider view; Metaverses are not and do not have to be a buzzword ~ we do not have to participate in buzzword culture and we do not have to allow corporations to steal our words.

Metaverse is an indie idea of an indie space that has existed since the dawn on the web in the early 90s. It's come around a few times but it has never really taken root; that does not mean it will never take root though.

Assuming technology continues to develop at a reasonable pace; at some point within the next 100 years, practical and usable multi-sensory technology (Aka technology that integrates with your various senses more deeply) will be developed ~ (I say this because the alternative is that we continue to make regular PC/Laptop/iPhone style computers for the rest of history, and I don't think that's a reasonable suggestion). That future technology will allow people to access complex 3D spaces in ways that's far more natural than whats available today; and a metaverse-like web is an inevitable outcome in that situation.

Its pretty obvious that the tech we have today is not anywhere near ready yet; even the Apple Vision Pro (as of writing the most advanced and certainly most expensive VR headset from one of the most well funded companies in the world) is essentially a novelty. However portable computers were essentially a novelty 40 years ago too.

My suggestion for people reading this thread is to step away from allowing companies to define the words that create your world, and define those words yourselves. The word Metaverse can be ours; we can take it back; and we can turn it into our vision.

Is our vision going to be around in the future? That entirely depends on us and what we choose to do with the time and tools available to us today 

At first my reaction was to laugh when you started talking about multisensory peripherals and all that and then I immidiately stopped when I realized that would probably have been the reaction of people in the time periods prior. Nobody would think, for example, that computers would ever be powerful enough to make entire visuals that look near-indistinguishable from real life, or create images on their own (Hell, you told me just a few years ago that a computer could make images on its own and I would probably laugh at you then but uhhh... we live in the modern day). I feel like that would be in whatever era we get brain chips or something like what YU from the movie Belle and all of that fun stuff working because right now mounting screens to your face on the regular is a bit impractical. Though I don't want some goofy metal thing in my brain projecting me things in ANY reality, proprietary, open source, whatever lol. So ey, yeah, I guess that is a possibility. I mean, sure flying cars can physically never be possible just due to their nature but I don't think computers have reached that point where the thoughts of what can be possible and what is are seperate (long winded way to say they aren't at the apex, as you said).
Definining it as a community would be nice (though in my personal opinion, "metaverse" is goofy and sort of tainted and I prefer the more old fashioned "virtual world"), but I guess it is also a bit of an issue of resources. Usually, in most cases, with these high end theoretical technologies, only those who can afford to obtain them, like those close and in the know, have the resources to make said things. Then progressively it trickles down as common technology catches up. For example, a long time ago you needed an entire, bulky, dedicated machine to do 3D graphics. Machines that had to be specially built and sent for the express purpose of doing that one task. It was niche, it was janky, and it looked horrible. Eventually it changed to still needing a high end machine, but that could be a windows computer. But you needed very expensive software. It was still fairly rare and special but more common in comparison to before when t it was a theoretical. Nowadays, you can run 3D in your web-browser no problem. You can make 3D models with freely avaliable and open source software. 3D is used in everything. The issue with getting in on the ground floor with those sorts of things is it is very hard unless you are somehow very rich to get in on the ground floor where said innovation and definitions are happening or if you are a college student because for some reason college students are in on all of the new technology stuff. I have no idea why. Like 75% of all the internet and early computer innovations were college students. Anyways, you can see this with everything. There are very, very few innovations that didn't intially start as proprietary. Those that are open source now were probably previously proprietary when they were first invented. And that is sort of the issue with the metaverse. Unless that evolution and the lowering happens at the same time, which it may or it may not, there isn't really a way to get that definition changed nessicerily untl it is too late. Now it has happened such as with the internet with the .com bubble, where once all of the companies left then it became more wild and free and we got the internet we idealize today (and then it slowly got re-corpo-ed again lol). And maybe that could happen again, but that happened because the threshold was lowered at the same time there was a window to redefine. The internet was commonplace enough by then to be accessible to a layman for said community, the skill barrier was lowered, and most of the companies had left which meant there was no one there to moderate like it is today. By then it was considered a fad again, like what we'd consider the metaverse today.
So, earlier in the thread you mentioned people creating metaverses themselves, and thats why you wanted to get people on putting 3D on their websites and making virtual worlds and stuff. I think that IS something buttt.... I don't know if we're quite at that acessibility point yet. Currently metaverses still require heavy moderation and ideas and IMPORTANTLY, people. People need to make things for this supposed world to exist constantly. Issue with people is they're also crass and edgy, so you need moderation (even if you wanted the people to govern themselves like a pecking order or something, people aren't going to step up initially), moderation costs money. You know what else costs money? Servers. And the more people, the more or the bigger servers you'll also need. It's very expensive. And I think that is the main issue is expense. Not just to get it off the ground but to run it. Major reason why so many children's mmos back in the kids mmo boom shut down. The only ones from back then that are left today (Animal Jam, Wizard101, Pirate101, Star Stable) are the ones heavily derided because they pushed memberships so hard (minus Club Penguin. They ALSO did that but it was Disney that took them out for the funne replacement that wasnt as popular). Yet those memberships were what kept the game alive all these years while contemporaries who didn't do that fell to the wayside. Mayhaps some sort of membership system woudl be needed for something like this, I don't know. Thing is, just in general, it is  A LOT more currently to do that than to run a website (especially in this day and age when the knowledge is far more accessible). Even in the information age, the threshold is a bit too high for a common person to really just... start a metaverse like that and change the game. Not without either a crazy investment or said threshold lowering.
Anyways, point in me saying all this is not that I am saying it is really impossible, just that at the moment its tricky to do that because said wild west of potential like the early internet doesn't exist yet for the idea of the metaverse, since technology hasn't lowered quite yet to do that.
Hopefully my ramblings made sense. I am a little sleepy soooo I might be a little bit wrong idk lol. I didn't really have much of a point I just wanted to say thoughts.

[worldleaderpretend]

  Too busy to reply to everything but I'll at least answer your direct question before the conversation moves too far beyond it, I think you're misunderstanding what AI I'm referring to. The majority of algorithms are dependent on AI. Search results on most browsers use AI. A lot of content filtering is AI powered. There are plenty of things used very frequently that aren't specifically word processors that are some form of AI. Maybe the modern internet isn't impossible without it, but it would definitely be different.

 As far as the rest, I definitely get what melon's saying.

 The rest of the thoughts I can fit into my time crunch here are just:

  Our perception of what these things actually do has been very largely affected by (bad) marketing & If we want the future of the internet to reflect what people actually want then people need to have at least some understanding of what's happening and how it works. Tech bros are going to keep proposing new tech, that's what they do. At the end of the day, I don't think they actually have the power to force it to work if the users aren't on board. I think this very quickly turns back into "so then, what is the future of the internet, what do you want it to be, etc" that gets brought up on here fairly often, so I'm just going to stop here before I derail it further.

 
 

[Melooon]

AI. A lot of content filtering is AI powered.

Yep! Machine learning (the bulk of what is now being buzzworded as AI) has been in use for decades in many places! Chances are if you or someone you know has been in a medical scanner in the last 40 years; your scans have been processed by some sort of machine learning program. Its a tried and tested technology; there's very little new or unknown about it    What's new is the way its being stuck into everyday life ~ how much of that actually sticks is, as you say, upto what the public ends up wanting. A lot of the time, the companies jumping on a bandwagon like AI or Metaverse just want to sell something to you quickly, before you figure out what you actually want and if the product can actually exist (aka Tesla's entire business strategy  )

(though in my personal opinion, "metaverse" is goofy and sort of tainted and I prefer the more old fashioned "virtual world")

SO Im gonna setup some important definitions here since there are so few practical keystones for this subject:

• A Virtual World is a single simulated reality ~ e.g. When you play Super Mario 64, you are playing in a virtual world. (some people argue its only a virtual world if its multiplayer and continues to exist when you are offline, but I'm less pushed about that point)
• "A metaverse" is a collection of virtual worlds that are interconnected in some way ~ e.g. Virtual worlds with multiple independent servers like Minecraft.
• "The Metaverse" is a theoretical time where the majority of virtual worlds are interconnected in some way. ~ e.g. The Oasis from Ready Player One.

I'd also like to introduce the idea of shallow metaverses and deep metaverses.

• A shallow metaverse is one where only a small amount of interoperability exists ~ e.g. In minecraft, when you join a server, the only things you can take with you are your Name, Your Skin and your games settings; this is a shallow metaverse ~ most metaverses today are shallow.
• A deep metaverse is one where there is a very large amount of interoperability ~ e.g. Minecraft would be a deeper metaverse if you could also take items, mobs and buildings with you between servers.

As you can imagine; a shallow metaverse is quite easy to make, but a deep metaverse becomes extremely complex because the more data you move from one server to another, the harder it becomes to verify the authenticity of that data   (This is why blockchain and crypto stuff was such a big deal for a moment; because it offered a potential solution, even if it was a dumb solution that had huge drawbacks)

On the indie web we do have an answer though and its called ActivityPub! Software like Mastodon provides verified-multi-server data exchange, using free and open source code ~ that alone is proof that its possible to do the same for more complex data from virtual worlds. (Facebook know how powerful this is and that's why their Threads site supports ActivityPub ~ they don't want to be left behind)

Usually, in most cases, with these high end theoretical technologies, only those who can afford to obtain them, like those close and in the know, have the resources to make said things. Then progressively it trickles down as common technology catches up. For example, a long time ago you needed an entire, bulky, dedicated machine to do 3D graphics.

So this is the other part of the metaverse debate; and that's the assumption that a metaverse needs to be a complex and immersive 3D world.

I think people make this assumption for two reasons:

• Because 3D virtual worlds are hella cool!
• Because we have proven that on a 2D screen, 2D content will always be more accessible and efficient ~ 3D worlds require 3D hardware.

Both are perfectly valid in my mind And I think you're correct; there is no way the indie space can develop the hardware as effectively as corporations can; we need them to do it for us! However what we can do is demand that the things they develop work in our favor. We can demand that they provide support for open software and that they do not build walled gardens.

The job of companies is to sell products, so if there is a market for affordable, high quality multi-sensory computing devices that allow connectivity to an indie-run metaverse; they will have no choice but to make it for us, because if they don't, another company will.

The secret is that a metaverse does not need to be a 3D world at the start; there is no reason why it cant start with pixel art based virtual worlds; there's no reason why those virtual worlds cant be hosted on indie websites ~ the groundwork will apply regardless of the technology it will later run on.

[Dreamwings]

  Too busy to reply to everything but I'll at least answer your direct question before the conversation moves too far beyond it, I think you're misunderstanding what AI I'm referring to. The majority of algorithms are dependent on AI. Search results on most browsers use AI. A lot of content filtering is AI powered. There are plenty of things used very frequently that aren't specifically word processors that are some form of AI. Maybe the modern internet isn't impossible without it, but it would definitely be different.

 As far as the rest, I definitely get what melon's saying.

 The rest of the thoughts I can fit into my time crunch here are just:

  Our perception of what these things actually do has been very largely affected by (bad) marketing & If we want the future of the internet to reflect what people actually want then people need to have at least some understanding of what's happening and how it works. Tech bros are going to keep proposing new tech, that's what they do. At the end of the day, I don't think they actually have the power to force it to work if the users aren't on board. I think this very quickly turns back into "so then, what is the future of the internet, what do you want it to be, etc" that gets brought up on here fairly often, so I'm just going to stop here before I derail it further.

Yep! Machine learning (the bulk of what is now being buzzworded as AI) has been in use for decades in many places! Chances are if you or someone you know has been in a medical scanner in the last 40 years; your scans have been processed by some sort of machine learning program. Its a tried and tested technology; there's very little new or unknown about it    What's new is the way its being stuck into everyday life ~ how much of that actually sticks is, as you say, upto what the public ends up wanting. A lot of the time, the companies jumping on a bandwagon like AI or Metaverse just want to sell something to you quickly, before you figure out what you actually want and if the product can actually exist (aka Tesla's entire business strategy  )

I did misinterpret what you were saying actually. I apoloigize. When you said AI I thought you were talking about the sort that has been being marketed to us, LLMs and the like. But yes, true, AI in general has beeen used for ages before then. And that more traditional version of AI is generally inseperable.

SO Im gonna setup some important definitions here since there are so few practical keystones for this subject:

• A Virtual World is a single simulated reality ~ e.g. When you play Super Mario 64, you are playing in a virtual world. (some people argue its only a virtual world if its multiplayer and continues to exist when you are offline, but I'm less pushed about that point)
• "A metaverse" is a collection of virtual worlds that are interconnected in some way ~ e.g. Virtual worlds with multiple independent servers like Minecraft.
• "The Metaverse" is a theoretical time where the majority of virtual worlds are interconnected in some way. ~ e.g. The Oasis from Ready Player One.

I'd also like to introduce the idea of shallow metaverses and deep metaverses.

• A shallow metaverse is one where only a small amount of interoperability exists ~ e.g. In minecraft, when you join a server, the only things you can take with you are your Name, Your Skin and your games settings; this is a shallow metaverse ~ most metaverses today are shallow.
• A deep metaverse is one where there is a very large amount of interoperability ~ e.g. Minecraft would be a deeper metaverse if you could also take items, mobs and buildings with you between servers.

As you can imagine; a shallow metaverse is quite easy to make, but a deep metaverse becomes extremely complex because the more data you move from one server to another, the harder it becomes to verify the authenticity of that data   (This is why blockchain and crypto stuff was such a big deal for a moment; because it offered a potential solution, even if it was a dumb solution that had huge drawbacks)

On the indie web we do have an answer though and its called ActivityPub! Software like Mastodon provides verified-multi-server data exchange, using free and open source code ~ that alone is proof that its possible to do the same for more complex data from virtual worlds. (Facebook know how powerful this is and that's why their Threads site supports ActivityPub ~ they don't want to be left behind)

Soooo... I think I get what you're saying. That something like the fediverse could be expanded to more than just alternative social medias with their own governance and such. And that does make sense, I didn't think of it like that.
I guess then another issue would be just getting them all to collaborate as a whole. Like, for example with the whole crypto  game boom, even though they said they would be interoperable in the future, a lot of the games were kept completely seperate from one another. Not because them being interoperable was impossible but because the other developers didn't want to include things from the other games so they didn't. And when everyone was doing that, then there was no interoperability and therefore no singular centralized metaverse like the idea. And you also kind of see this in the fediverse where instances are defederated for various reasons (sometimes it's illligal content, sometimes its politics of the others don't align with the politics of the one defederating, sometimes it is because the instance is too small, and sometimes it's something petty like the owner got into a fight with the owner of the other or the other doesn't defederate from an instance that they defederated from and they decide to enforce that ruling on everyone beneath them.) Whatever it is, it does kind of lead to the fediverse, depending on what instance you're on, feeling a bit seperated and on the stricter instances more like the same as regular social media.
Also, another issue I believe would be the idea of interoperability as a whole. Of course ActivityPub exists, but netcode for games is already tricky to write. Making said netcode also be able to be compatible with everything else AND secure? A bit tricky. But that also might just be me. I've never been able to quite grasp netcode and admittedly my methods of storing information are usually very insecure because good encryption is very hard to do. So maybe other people, like the smart-as-hell people behind Mastodon and ActivityPub, would be able to pull something like that off much easier than whatever I could come up with. But that would all have to start with transfering more data than just text, images, videos, likes, and comments like ActivityPub (though its open source so I don't see how it couldn't be expanded for more than that).
Also, on the topic of Facebook, I feel like it also might be less to do with being left behind (though that certainly also would be helpful) and moreso to do with the way they're trying to present themselves now that it is hip and cool to do so that they are like, friendly to developers and cool and super open about themselves and they definitely did not sell all of that information back in the day and they definitely are not trying to recapture the young people. They've kinda done a similar thing with VR and such. They made developing on Oculus and the Oculus Quest VERY open to people. It's kind of the same strategy they did back in the day with Facebook Games too back when those were popular.

So this is the other part of the metaverse debate; and that's the assumption that a metaverse needs to be a complex and immersive 3D world.

I think people make this assumption for two reasons:

• Because 3D virtual worlds are hella cool!
• Because we have proven that on a 2D screen, 2D content will always be more accessible and efficient ~ 3D worlds require 3D hardware.

Both are perfectly valid in my mind And I think you're correct; there is no way the indie space can develop the hardware as effectively as corporations can; we need them to do it for us! However what we can do is demand that the things they develop work in our favor. We can demand that they provide support for open software and that they do not build walled gardens.

The job of companies is to sell products, so if there is a market for affordable, high quality multi-sensory computing devices that allow connectivity to an indie-run metaverse; they will have no choice but to make it for us, because if they don't, another company will.

The secret is that a metaverse does not need to be a 3D world at the start; there is no reason why it cant start with pixel art based virtual worlds; there's no reason why those virtual worlds cant be hosted on indie websites ~ the groundwork will apply regardless of the technology it will later run on.

Oh no, I wasn't saying that it NEEDED to be 3D with the analogy. I was just trying to make a point of how things sort of slowly drop down from being top end to commonplace enough for the public and 3D was the first thing that came to my mind. I was thinking actually as I was writing out the section after about the costs of making a metaverse being higher than what a common person could do about how it could be possible in 2D. It has happened in a strange way. I remember watching a video about this doll site that used to have this whole makeshift economy. The kids were just supposed to "make clothes" with existing PNGs of dresses and shoes and things like that plus some stickers but the kids found a way to turn those into hair and other ornate things (and even how to do shading and highlights with such limited options, its absolutely fascinating. A highlight of limitations breeding creativity.). They then sold them to each other to wear, just back and forth like that. I guess that is sort of the ideal of the metaverse. Though again you still run into the issue of needing lots of people to do that lol.

[Melooon]

I remember watching a video about this doll site

Off topic; but I'm halfway through this video and I already have about 10 years worth of ideas for things to add to this forum Thank you for the link!!

Oh no, I wasn't saying that it NEEDED to be 3D with the analogy.

Oh I wasn't referring to you specifically; its a common and fairly universal assumption that metaverse means 3D; I was referring to the wider worlds idea of what metaverses should look like ^^

Making said netcode also be able to be compatible with everything else AND secure?

Soooo there is a different kind of data transfer that I didn't mention in my post; and that is socially agreed data tranfer! A really good example of this is 88x31 buttons in the web revival! There is no fixed rule or code that enforces the creation and properties of these buttons; they are an idea that is socially enforced and maintained because they make linking easier, are easy to understand and personalize, and they provide social cohesion for web revival sites.

There is no reason why a metaverse could not start as a series of social agreements between virtual world crafters; eventually snippets of code would evolve to smooth those social agreements, and eventually still those snippets of code could evolve into or inform a protocol for metaverse worlds. I think that natural evolution could be one path to solving the very complex issues as you say!

you also kind of see this in the fediverse where instances are defederated for various reasons

I said it might be a solution for connecting virtual worlds; not changing human nature People will be petty, and get scared, and make mistakes, and get into fights ~ what matters is giving them the autonomy to be separate when they need it; then giving them good reasons to want to come back; and then being forgiving enough and willing to change in order to allow them to rejoin.