Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
For the next two weeks here at Inkwell.vue, Wagner James Au will
discuss his new book, _Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow
Crash and Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For_. 

In the book he writes with authority about the history of the
metaverse concept and the reality vs. the hype regarding virtual
worlds. 

Au has also written about digital culture, especially the metaverse,
for many years. He's been a freelance reporter, a metaverse
consultant, a game developer, and a screenwriter.  He was also a
white-suited avatar named "Hamlet Au," the first embedded journalist
in a virtual world, Second Life, beginning in 2003.

I'll be leading the discussion. I'm Jon Lebkowsky, co-host of the
Plutopia News Network podcast. I'm a digital culture maven,
podcaster, writer, and Internet wrangler. On The WELL, I cohost the
VC (virtual communities), Media, and (contemporary) Civil War
conferences.
  

    
Welcome to Inkwell, WJA! The obvious first question for you is about
the definition of "metaverse." What is it, and how does it differ
from virtual or mixed reality, video games, etc.?
  

    
The definition is literally the first line in the book, because
there's been so much confusion around the topic! Here's how I
express it:

"The Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that's
simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly
customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are
integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and
external technology."

Right now there are many platforms which have all/most of these
feature, and are striving to become the dominant one. 

Virtual reality headsets are only one way of accessing the
Metaverse. 

Mixed reality integrates the real world with the virtual one, but so
far, no metaverse platform has succeeded at doing that. Pokemon Go
is the most popular mixed reality game, but it's not (yet?) a
metaverse platform.

Many games are highly multi-user and immersive, but they don't have
those other features. However we're seeing some top games, like the
Grand Theft Auto franchise, become more and more metaverse-y.
  

    
Do you consider multiuser online games to be part of the metaverse?
  

    
No, not unless they have all the features outlined in the
definition, or are striving to add them.

A perfect example here is Fortnite, which began as a multi-player
online game, and gradually evolved to have more and more metaverse
features -- there's now a Fortnite Creative mode, where players can
create completely new experiences, and also make real money from
them. Also the real world economy started coming *into* the
Fortnite, in the form of top recording artists like Travis Scott,
and major brands like the Marvel Comic Universe.

None of this was an accident: Tim Sweeney, CEO of Fortnite publisher
Epic, has been inspired by the Metaverse of "Snow Crash" since the
start of his career.
  

    
Speaking of "Snow Crash," that Neal Stephenson novel from back in
1992 was the origin of the term "metaverse." Is there any difference
in the current thinking about what constitutes a metaverse, and the
metaverse that he described back then?

Someone asked Stephenson at SXSW a couple of years ago what he
thought of the meta craze, and my recollection of his answer was
that he thought it was hype, all about figuring out a new way to
make money. You've talked to him since then, and I know he's
launched his own metaverse project. Is he buying into the buzz, or
is he trying to present an alternative that's more in line with what
he was envisioning back in '92?
  

    
Yeah! I devote a whole chapter to what Neal is thinking/doing about
the Metaverse now, versus what he wrote in "Snow Crash". 

It's actually something of a scoop of my book: Neal Stephenson
himself is building the Metaverse based directly on his novel, via a
startup he co-founded called Lamina1. Meta dominates the Metaverse
conversation so much, many people ironically miss that! 
  

    
How will Laminal differ from Meta? (And for that matter, is Meta
still doing Metaverse, or has it abandoned that part of its planning
for the future?)
  

    
Meta still insists it's working on the Metaverse but it's very
unclear if the company has a specific working definition/roadmap.
When I pointed out on Twitter that their vision statement for 2023
didn't mention the Metaverse once, Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth
started tweeting angrily at me that of course they are! But the
vision statement said very little about core metaverse concepts like
virtual worlds and avatars.

Lamina1 is starting with a blockchain layer to track payments and
developer credits across multiple virtual world projects, with the
ultimate goal that they'll eventually build the Metaverse depicted
in "Snow Crash" on top of that layer. So it's starting on the
protocol level, whereas Meta is starting with the VR headsets.

TBH I'm skeptical either approach will work, even though Neal
Stephenson himself co-founded Lamina1!
  

    
This conversation is world-readable, i.e. can be read by anyone on
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This conversation will last for at least two weeks, through October
2. In order to read the whole conversation, we encourage you to
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I had the sense, when Facebook announced Meta and talked about
building a metaverse, that they were thinking VR could experiencing
a mainstreaming effect, with widespread adoption as we eventually
had with the Internet. You don't seem to agree. To what extent do
you think we'll see adoption of immersive VR technologies? What are
some of the barriers to adoption?
  

    
The biggest barrier to VR adoption relates to a revelation that I
think is one of the most important in the book:

There is strong evidence that biological females tend to get
nauseous using VR headsets. danah boyd, a leading tech academic,
pointed this out when Facebook/Meta acquired Oculus in 2014. But as
far as we know, Meta DID NOT RESEARCH THIS FURTHER AT ALL.

I was shocked, asking danah about this in 2022. Hardly anyone in the
industry contacted her about it, even after 2 subsequent academic
studies validated this.

So that's one major reason why VR won't be broadly adopted. Kinda
hard to make that happen when it tends to make half the population
literally puke!
  

    
That mostly pertains to 3D VR via headset, which I never thought
would catch on, for the same reason that 3D television went away,
and the audience for 3D films is limited (some people hate to see
films in 3D for whatever reasons).

But there's also 2D VR like Second Life, which wouldn't have the
effect of causing nausea or even headaches, necessarily. But Second
Life and similar systems have never become mainstream - why do you
think that is?
  

    
I'll pipe up and say I'm enjoying this book, but am not done yet!

I was very intrigued by the report of danah boyd's experience. But
I wonder to what extent Meta may be relying on (or swayed by)
prior research into VR sickness -- or perhaps 'motion sickness' in
general. Are there any similar correlations to be found there?

I'm also thinking about other, mature activities that have a 'nausea'
barrier for some: sailing, flying (and, for me, progressive lenses!).

Which also touches on the question of motivation!
  

    
"whatever reasons" being largely that 3D viewing on a screen doesn't
work well for everyone. A VR headset can do a much better job of
rendering 3D.
  

    
> But Second Life and similar systems have never become mainstream -
why do you think that is?

They're actually mainstream, but tend to be used mainly by kids at
the moment. Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Rec Room, and many others
have the same essential qualities to make each a metaverse platform
-- immersive virtual world with user creation tools integrated with
the real economy-- and they count well over *500 million active
users*. Roblox alone has upwards of 300 million of that -- almost
the population of the US!
  

    
> I was very intrigued by the report of danah boyd's experience. But
I wonder to what extent Meta may be relying on (or swayed by)
prior research into VR sickness 

Meta did research VR motion sickness in general but didn't look into
varieties of reaction based on biological sex. I've asked several
Meta engineers about the motion sickness issue, and they started
talking about correcting motion sickness with better frame rates,
graphics quality, etc. 

But then when I asked about a sex difference, they drew a blank. 

Except when I asked Cory Ondrejka, who got Zuckerberg to acquire
Oculus -- he said yep, that's an issue Meta should look into! (But
hasn't.)
  

    
You were an embedded journalist on Second Life, as "Hamlet Au." How
did you get the gig, and what did it entail?
  

    
Actually the WELL sort of played an indirect hand in that happening
-- before it launched, Linden Lab (the creator of Second Life),
brought in online community pioneer Howard Rheingold (hlr) to
consult. 

At some point, Howard suggested that Linden hire a "chronicler" to
document the emerging user community. And since I was writing about
MMOs on Salon.com at the time, one thing led to another.

It really was an "embedded" role -- I created a reporter avatar in a
white suit as a tribute to Tom Wolfe and spend a *lot* of time
wandering the world, talking to people, writing about the weird and
wonderful things they were doing and creating.

I still do that embedded journalist thing part-time, not just in
Second Life but VRChat, Roblox, etc. Hopefully more often!
  

    
Where did you publish your reports?
  

    
> There is strong evidence that biological females tend to get
 nauseous using VR headsets. danah boyd, a leading tech academic,
 pointed this out when Facebook/Meta acquired Oculus in 2014. But as
 far as we know, Meta DID NOT RESEARCH THIS FURTHER AT ALL.

I'm suddenly much more interested in this topic after learning this!
  

    
Thanks (frako)! I adore and admire danah so much. Amusingly, she is
very much *not* a fan of VR or the Metaverse, but still gave the
book a nice write-up: 

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2023/08/06/still-trying-to-ignore-t
he-metaverse.html
  

    
> Where did you publish your reports?

New World Notes. After I left Linden Lab to write the book, they
very coolly gave me the rights to continue the blog, which I do to
this day:

https://nwn.blogs.com/
  

    
Danah Boyd is a good sport!
  

    
yay danah! and yay andy van dam!
  

    
If only Meta and the Valley had listened to her! 

I think it's the most disastrous examples of self-destructive gender
bias in the history of technology. Easily $100 BILLION has been
spent (and then mostly set on fire) in a demographically futile
attempt to make VR headsets the successor to the smartphone.