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The metaverse is a new word for an old idea

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3 years ago

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The metaverse is a new word for an old idea


I have spent a lot of my career, both in Silicon Valley and beyond, insisting that all our technologies have histories and even pre-histories, and that far from being neat and tidy, those stories are in fact messy, contested, and conflicted, with competing narrators and meanings. 

The metaverse, which graduated from a niche term to a household name in less than a year, is an excellent case in point. Its metamorphosis began in July 2021, when Facebook announced that it would dedicate the next decade to bringing the metaverse to life. In the company’s presentation of the concept, the metaverse was a thing of wonder: an immersive, rich digital world combining aspects of social media, online gaming, and augmented and virtual reality. “The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence—like you are right there with another person or in another place,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote, envisioning a creation that would “reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.” By December 2021, a range of other large American technology companies, including Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, had all articulated metaverse plans of their own. And by the time the Consumer Electronics Show rolled around in January, everyone seemed to have a metaverse angle, no matter how improbable or banal: haptic vests, including one with an air conditioner to create your own localized climate; avatar beauty makeovers; virtual delivery vans for your virtual home. 

There has been plenty of discussion about the involvement of Meta (née Facebook) and its current complicated position as a social media platform with considerable purchase on our daily lives. There have also been broader conversations about what form the metaverse could or should take, in terms of technical capabilities, user experiences, business models, access, and regulation, and—more quietly—about what purpose it would serve and what needs it would fulfill.

“There is an easy seductiveness to stories that cast a technology as brand-new.”

These are good conversations to have. But we would be remiss if we didn’t take a step back to ask, not what the metaverse is or who will make it, but where it comes from—both in a literal sense and also in the ideas it embodies. Who invented it, if it was indeed invented? And what about earlier constructed, imagined, augmented, or virtual worlds? What can they tell us about how to enact the metaverse now, about its perils and its possibilities? 

There is an easy seductiveness to stories that cast a technology as brand-new, or at the very least that don’t belabor long, complicated histories. Seen this way, the future is a space of reinvention and possibility, rather than something intimately connected to our present and our past. But histories are more than just backstories. They are backbones and blueprints and maps to territories that have already been traversed. Knowing the history of a technology, or the ideas it embodies, can provide better questions, reveal potential pitfalls and lessons already learned, and open a window onto the lives of those who learned them. The metaverse—which is not nearly as new as it looks—is no exception. 

So where does the metaverse come from? A common answer—the clear and tidy one—is that it comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, which describes a computer-generated virtual world made possible by software and a worldwide fiber-optic network. In the book’s 21st-century Los Angeles, the world is messy, replete with social inequities, sexism, racism, gated communities, surveillance, hypercapitalism, febrile megacorporations, and corrupt policing. Of course, the novel’s Metaverse is messy too. It too heaves with social inequities and hypercapitalism. Not everyone finds their way there. For those who do, the quality of their experience is determined by the caliber of their kit and their ability to afford bandwidth, electricity, and computational horsepower. Those with means can have elaborately personalized digital renderings. Others must make do with simple flat sketches, purchased off the shelf—the “Brandy” and “Clint” packages. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that many who read the book saw it not just as cutting-edge science fiction but as a critique of end-stage capitalism and techno-utopian visions.

In the three decades that have passed since Snow Crash was published, many of the underpinnings of Stephenson’s virtual world, such as social networks and artificial intelligence, have materialized. And the metaverse, like other ideas foreshadowed in the cyberpunk tradition, has persistently found its way into broader conversation. It has featured in recent movies such as Ready Player One and Free Guy. And it has shaped much of the digital landscape in which we now find ourselves. However, I think there might be more to the metaverse than just Snow Crash and its current re-instantiation.

In fact, today’s conversations around the metaverse remind me a lot of the conversations we were having nearly 20 years ago about Second Life, which Philip Rosedale’s Linden Lab launched in 2003. Rosedale is very clear about the ways in which he was inspired by Snow Crash. He is also clear, however, that a trip to Burning Man in the late 1990s forever framed his thinking about virtual worlds, their inhabitants, and their ethos. Second Life was to be “a 3D online world created and owned by its users.” It was hugely successful—it dominated news headlines and conversations. Companies and brands fought to establish themselves in this new domain; we had conferences and concerts in Second Life, and even church. In the early 2000s, millions of people flocked to the platform and created lives there. Anthropologists studied them*; policy makers and politicians debated them. And the realities of a fully fledged virtual world collided quickly with regulators and policy makers; concerns about fiat currencies, money laundering, and prostitution all surfaced. 

However, I think there are even earlier histories that could inform our thinking. Before Second Life. Before virtual and augmented reality. Before the web and the internet. Before mobile phones and personal computers. Before television, and radio, and movies. Before any of that, an enormous iron and glass building arose in London’s Hyde Park. It was the summer of 1851, and the future was on display. 

Arc lights and hydraulic presses (powered by a hidden steam engine), electric telegrams, a prototype fax machine, mechanical birds in artificial trees, a submarine, guns, the first life-size and lifelike sculptures of dinosaurs, Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber, Matthew Brady’s daguerreotypes, even Britain’s first flushing public toilets. There were three stories’ worth of alcoves with red bunting and signs proclaiming each display’s country of origin, spread out over 92,000 square meters of gleaming glass enclosures—the Crystal Palace, as one satirical magazine dubbed it.

It was a whole world dedicated to the future: a world in which almost anyone could be immersed, educated, challenged, inspired, titillated, or provoked. 

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, as the extraordinary event was formally known, was the brainchild of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s beloved consort. It would showcase more than 100,000 exhibits from all over the world. The queen herself would attend at least 30 times. In her opening speech, she made clear her agenda: “It is my anxious desire to promote among nations the cultivation of all those arts which are fostered by peace and which in their turn contribute to maintain the peace of the world.” The age of empire may already have been in decline, but the Great Exhibition was all about asserting power and a vision for Britain’s future. And what a modern, industrialized future it would be, even if colonies all over the world would be needed to make it happen. 

Of course, London was a city already full of expositions and displays, places where you could visit the wondrous and strange. Charles Babbage was partial to Merlin’s Mechanical Museum, with its many automata. Others favored dioramas of the Holy Land and Paris. The Great Exhibition was different because it had scale, and the power of empire behind it. It wasn’t just a spectacle; it was a whole world dedicated to the future: a world in which almost anyone could be immersed, educated, challenged, inspired, titillated, or provoked. It was not little bits and pieces, but one large, imposing, unavoidable statement. 

In its day, the Great Exhibition had many critics. Some worried about the ancient elm trees in Hyde Park that found themselves contained in the enormous structure. Others worried about the tensile strength of all that glass. In the press, there were months of ridicule, with one politician describing it as “one of the greatest humbugs, frauds, and absurdities ever known.” In the Houses of Parliament, some questioned Prince Albert’s motives, citing his status as a foreign prince and suggesting that the Great Exhibition was just a publicity exercise to encourage and perhaps mask the rise of immigration in Britain. Still others suggested that the Great Exhibition would attract pickpockets, prostitutes, and spies, and called for 1,000 extra police to be on duty. 

Unsurprisingly, the dire warnings were overblown, and for a sunny summer, people from all over Britain—taking advantage of the rapidly expanding railway network—flocked to the massive glass house in the park. The organizers set entrance fees at a shilling, which made it accessible to the British working classes. “See the world for a shilling” was a common refrain that summer. 

A surprising fraction of the literary and scientific community of the day found its way to the Crystal Palace. That roll call includes Charles Dickens, Charles Dodgson (who would become Lewis Carroll), Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday, Samuel Colt, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Babbage, and George Eliot. Dickens hated it: it was just all too much rampant materialism, and his most recent biographer claims that his experiences there shaped all his work thereafter. Brontë, by contrast, wrote, “It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth—as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it thus, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvelous power of effect.” Dodgson had such a moment when he entered the Crystal Palace. He wrote, “The impression when you get inside is of bewilderment. It looks like a sort of fairyland.”

And then, just like that, the Great Exhibition closed its doors on the 15th of October, 1851. Over its five-and-a-half-month run, it was estimated, over 6 million people visited the Crystal Palace (at the time, the total population of Britain was only 24 million). In its short life in Hyde Park, the Great Exhibition also turned a remarkable profit of some £186,437 (more than $35 million today). Some of it went to the purchase of land in South Kensington to create London’s current museum district. Another portion underwrote an educational trust that still provides scholarships for scientific research. The Crystal Palace was disassembled in the winter of 1851 and transported to a new site, where it would continue to showcase all manner of wonders until a cataclysmic fire in 1936 reduced it to a smoldering iron skeleton. And if the fancy takes you, you can still visit the Great Exhibition today, via a virtual tour hosted on the website of the Royal Parks. 

The Great Exhibition kicked off more than a century of world’s fairs—spaces of spectacle and wonder that, in turn, would shape the world around them. In America, these world-making activities included the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair—a whole city with more than 200 purpose-built structures, whitewashed and gleaming, showcasing technologies as varied as a fully electrical kitchen with dishwasher, an electric chicken incubator, a seismograph, Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope, searchlights, Morse code telegraphy, multiphase power generators, moving walkways, and the world’s first Ferris wheel. Over one quarter of Americans would attend the World’s Fair in less than six months.

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Why I became a TechTrekker

Published

1 year ago

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22 August 2023

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group jumps into the air with snowy mountains in the background


My senior spring in high school, I decided to defer my MIT enrollment by a year. I had always planned to take a gap year, but after receiving the silver tube in the mail and seeing all my college-bound friends plan out their classes and dorm decor, I got cold feet. Every time I mentioned my plans, I was met with questions like “But what about school?” and “MIT is cool with this?”

Yeah. MIT totally is. Postponing your MIT start date is as simple as clicking a checkbox. 

Sofia Pronina (right) was among those who hiked to the Katla Glacier during this year’s TechTrek to Iceland.

COURTESY PHOTO

Now, having finished my first year of classes, I’m really grateful that I stuck with my decision to delay MIT, as I realized that having a full year of unstructured time is a gift. I could let my creative juices run. Pick up hobbies for fun. Do cool things like work at an AI startup and teach myself how to create latte art. My favorite part of the year, however, was backpacking across Europe. I traveled through Austria, Slovakia, Russia, Spain, France, the UK, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Hungary. 

Moreover, despite my fear that I’d be losing a valuable year, traveling turned out to be the most productive thing I could have done with my time. I got to explore different cultures, meet new people from all over the world, and gain unique perspectives that I couldn’t have gotten otherwise. My travels throughout Europe allowed me to leave my comfort zone and expand my understanding of the greater human experience. 

“In Iceland there’s less focus on hustle culture, and this relaxed approach to work-life balance ends up fostering creativity. This was a wild revelation to a bunch of MIT students.”

When I became a full-time student last fall, I realized that StartLabs, the premier undergraduate entrepreneurship club on campus, gives MIT undergrads a similar opportunity to expand their horizons and experience new things. I immediately signed up. At StartLabs, we host fireside chats and ideathons throughout the year. But our flagship event is our annual TechTrek over spring break. In previous years, StartLabs has gone on TechTrek trips to Germany, Switzerland, and Israel. On these fully funded trips, StartLabs members have visited and collaborated with industry leaders, incubators, startups, and academic institutions. They take these treks both to connect with the global startup sphere and to build closer relationships within the club itself.

Most important, however, the process of organizing the TechTrek is itself an expedited introduction to entrepreneurship. The trip is entirely planned by StartLabs members; we figure out travel logistics, find sponsors, and then discover ways to optimize our funding. 

two students soaking in a hot spring in Iceland

COURTESY PHOTO

In organizing this year’s trip to Iceland, we had to learn how to delegate roles to all the planners and how to maintain morale when making this trip a reality seemed to be an impossible task. We woke up extra early to take 6 a.m. calls with Icelandic founders and sponsors. We came up with options for different levels of sponsorship, used pattern recognition to deduce the email addresses of hundreds of potential contacts at organizations we wanted to visit, and all got scrappy with utilizing our LinkedIn connections.

And as any good entrepreneur must, we had to learn how to be lean and maximize our resources. To stretch our food budget, we planned all our incubator and company visits around lunchtime in hopes of getting fed, played human Tetris as we fit 16 people into a six-person Airbnb, and emailed grocery stores to get their nearly expired foods for a discount. We even made a deal with the local bus company to give us free tickets in exchange for a story post on our Instagram account. 

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The Download: spying keyboard software, and why boring AI is best

Published

1 year ago

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22 August 2023

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🧠


This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How ubiquitous keyboard software puts hundreds of millions of Chinese users at risk

For millions of Chinese people, the first software they download onto devices is always the same: a keyboard app. Yet few of them are aware that it may make everything they type vulnerable to spying eyes. 

QWERTY keyboards are inefficient as many Chinese characters share the same latinized spelling. As a result, many switch to smart, localized keyboard apps to save time and frustration. Today, over 800 million Chinese people use third-party keyboard apps on their PCs, laptops, and mobile phones. 

But a recent report by the Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto–affiliated research group, revealed that Sogou, one of the most popular Chinese keyboard apps, had a massive security loophole. Read the full story. 

—Zeyi Yang

Why we should all be rooting for boring AI

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is setting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed at “analyzing and integrating” AI tools such as large language models across the department. It hopes they could improve intelligence and operational planning. 

But those might not be the right use cases, writes our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkila. Generative AI tools, such as language models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they make things up. They also have massive security vulnerabilities, privacy problems, and deeply ingrained biases. 

Applying these technologies in high-stakes settings could lead to deadly accidents where it’s unclear who or what should be held responsible, or even why the problem occurred. The DoD’s best bet is to apply generative AI to more mundane things like Excel, email, or word processing. Read the full story. 

This story is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The ice cores that will let us look 1.5 million years into the past

To better understand the role atmospheric carbon dioxide plays in Earth’s climate cycles, scientists have long turned to ice cores drilled in Antarctica, where snow layers accumulate and compact over hundreds of thousands of years, trapping samples of ancient air in a lattice of bubbles that serve as tiny time capsules. 

By analyzing those cores, scientists can connect greenhouse-gas concentrations with temperatures going back 800,000 years. Now, a new European-led initiative hopes to eventually retrieve the oldest core yet, dating back 1.5 million years. But that impressive feat is still only the first step. Once they’ve done that, they’ll have to figure out how they’re going to extract the air from the ice. Read the full story.

—Christian Elliott

This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, set to go live tomorrow. Subscribe today for as low as $8/month to ensure you receive full access to the new Ethics issue and in-depth stories on experimental drugs, AI assisted warfare, microfinance, and more.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 How AI got dragged into the culture wars
Fears about ‘woke’ AI fundamentally misunderstand how it works. Yet they’re gaining traction. (The Guardian) 
+ Why it’s impossible to build an unbiased AI language model. (MIT Technology Review)
 
2 Researchers are racing to understand a new coronavirus variant 
It’s unlikely to be cause for concern, but it shows this virus still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. (Nature)
+ Covid hasn’t entirely gone away—here’s where we stand. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Why we can’t afford to stop monitoring it. (Ars Technica)
 
3 How Hilary became such a monster storm
Much of it is down to unusually hot sea surface temperatures. (Wired $)
+ The era of simultaneous climate disasters is here to stay. (Axios)
+ People are donning cooling vests so they can work through the heat. (Wired $)
 
4 Brain privacy is set to become important 
Scientists are getting better at decoding our brain data. It’s surely only a matter of time before others want a peek. (The Atlantic $)
+ How your brain data could be used against you. (MIT Technology Review)
 
5 How Nvidia built such a big competitive advantage in AI chips
Today it accounts for 70% of all AI chip sales—and an even greater share for training generative models. (NYT $)
+ The chips it’s selling to China are less effective due to US export controls. (Ars Technica)
+ These simple design rules could turn the chip industry on its head. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 Inside the complex world of dissociative identity disorder on TikTok 
Reducing stigma is great, but doctors fear people are self-diagnosing or even imitating the disorder. (The Verge)
 
7 What TikTok might have to give up to keep operating in the US
This shows just how hollow the authorities’ purported data-collection concerns really are. (Forbes)
 
8 Soldiers in Ukraine are playing World of Tanks on their phones
It’s eerily similar to the war they are themselves fighting, but they say it helps them to dissociate from the horror. (NYT $)
 
9 Conspiracy theorists are sharing mad ideas on what causes wildfires
But it’s all just a convoluted way to try to avoid having to tackle climate change. (Slate $)
 
10 Christie’s accidentally leaked the location of tons of valuable art 🖼📍
Seemingly thanks to the metadata that often automatically attaches to smartphone photos. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“Is it going to take people dying for something to move forward?”

—An anonymous air traffic controller warns that staffing shortages in their industry, plus other factors, are starting to threaten passenger safety, the New York Times reports.

The big story

Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present

" "

VICTOR KERLOW

October 2022

Since its birth in the late 2000s, effective altruism has aimed to answer the question “How can those with means have the most impact on the world in a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.

It’s no surprise that effective altruisms’ ideas have long faced criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems in favor of abstract math. And as believers pour even greater amounts of money into the movement’s increasingly sci-fi ideals, such charges are only intensifying. Read the full story.

—Rebecca Ackermann

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Watch Andrew Scott’s electrifying reading of the 1965 commencement address ‘Choose One of Five’ by Edith Sampson.
+ Here’s how Metallica makes sure its live performances ROCK. ($)
+ Cannot deal with this utterly ludicrous wooden vehicle. 
+ Learn about a weird and wonderful new instrument called a harpejji.



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Why we should all be rooting for boring AI

Published

1 year ago

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22 August 2023

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Why we should all be rooting for boring AI


This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

I’m back from a wholesome week off picking blueberries in a forest. So this story we published last week about the messy ethics of AI in warfare is just the antidote, bringing my blood pressure right back up again. 

Arthur Holland Michel does a great job looking at the complicated and nuanced ethical questions around warfare and the military’s increasing use of artificial-intelligence tools. There are myriad ways AI could fail catastrophically or be abused in conflict situations, and there don’t seem to be any real rules constraining it yet. Holland Michel’s story illustrates how little there is to hold people accountable when things go wrong.  

Last year I wrote about how the war in Ukraine kick-started a new boom in business for defense AI startups. The latest hype cycle has only added to that, as companies—and now the military too—race to embed generative AI in products and services. 

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is setting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed at “analyzing and integrating” AI tools such as large language models across the department. 

The department sees tons of potential to “improve intelligence, operational planning, and administrative and business processes.” 

But Holland Michel’s story highlights why the first two use cases might be a bad idea. Generative AI tools, such as language models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they make things up. They also have massive security vulnerabilities, privacy problems, and deeply ingrained biases.  

Applying these technologies in high-stakes settings could lead to deadly accidents where it’s unclear who or what should be held responsible, or even why the problem occurred. Everyone agrees that humans should make the final call, but that is made harder by technology that acts unpredictably, especially in fast-moving conflict situations. 

Some worry that the people lowest on the hierarchy will pay the highest price when things go wrong: “In the event of an accident—regardless of whether the human was wrong, the computer was wrong, or they were wrong together—the person who made the ‘decision’ will absorb the blame and protect everyone else along the chain of command from the full impact of accountability,” Holland Michel writes. 

The only ones who seem likely to face no consequences when AI fails in war are the companies supplying the technology.

It helps companies when the rules the US has set to govern AI in warfare are mere recommendations, not laws. That makes it really hard to hold anyone accountable. Even the AI Act, the EU’s sweeping upcoming regulation for high-risk AI systems, exempts military uses, which arguably are the highest-risk applications of them all. 

While everyone is looking for exciting new uses for generative AI, I personally can’t wait for it to become boring. 

Amid early signs that people are starting to lose interest in the technology, companies might find that these sorts of tools are better suited for mundane, low-risk applications than solving humanity’s biggest problems.

Applying AI in, for example, productivity software such as Excel, email, or word processing might not be the sexiest idea, but compared to warfare it’s a relatively low-stakes application, and simple enough to have the potential to actually work as advertised. It could help us do the tedious bits of our jobs faster and better.

Boring AI is unlikely to break as easily and, most important, won’t kill anyone. Hopefully, soon we’ll forget we’re interacting with AI at all. (It wasn’t that long ago when machine translation was an exciting new thing in AI. Now most people don’t even think about its role in powering Google Translate.) 

That’s why I’m more confident that organizations like the DoD will find success applying generative AI in administrative and business processes. 

Boring AI is not morally complex. It’s not magic. But it works. 

Deeper Learning

AI isn’t great at decoding human emotions. So why are regulators targeting the tech?

Amid all the chatter about ChatGPT, artificial general intelligence, and the prospect of robots taking people’s jobs, regulators in the EU and the US have been ramping up warnings against AI and emotion recognition. Emotion recognition is the attempt to identify a person’s feelings or state of mind using AI analysis of video, facial images, or audio recordings. 

But why is this a top concern? Western regulators are particularly concerned about China’s use of the technology, and its potential to enable social control. And there’s also evidence that it simply does not work properly. Tate Ryan-Mosley dissected the thorny questions around the technology in last week’s edition of The Technocrat, our weekly newsletter on tech policy.

Bits and Bytes

Meta is preparing to launch free code-generating software
A version of its new LLaMA 2 language model that is able to generate programming code will pose a stiff challenge to similar proprietary code-generating programs from rivals such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The open-source program is called Code Llama, and its launch is imminent, according to The Information. (The Information) 

OpenAI is testing GPT-4 for content moderation
Using the language model to moderate online content could really help alleviate the mental toll content moderation takes on humans. OpenAI says it’s seen some promising first results, although the tech does not outperform highly trained humans. A lot of big, open questions remain, such as whether the tool can be attuned to different cultures and pick up context and nuance. (OpenAI)

Google is working on an AI assistant that offers life advice
The generative AI tools could function as a life coach, offering up ideas, planning instructions, and tutoring tips. (The New York Times)

Two tech luminaries have quit their jobs to build AI systems inspired by bees
Sakana, a new AI research lab, draws inspiration from the animal kingdom. Founded by two prominent industry researchers and former Googlers, the company plans to make multiple smaller AI models that work together, the idea being that a “swarm” of programs could be as powerful as a single large AI model. (Bloomberg)

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