Why Lex Fridman doesn’t get the Metaverse
Disclaimer: The opinions in this piece are my own and not the views of my company. Bias warning: I am a pioneer in the Japanese VR industry and not a big fan of so-called “AR” on phones. I do see the potential of real AR. This piece is not about which is better — VR or AR. It is rather about the pointlessness of that conversation.
My dear friend,
Are you at a loss trying to understand what this Metaverse thing is all about? I find that people much smarter and more successful than me is in the same club. Two of them are Lex Fridman, the famous podcast host, and Neal Stephenson, also very famous and a writer on speculative fiction. He has authored such works as Snow Crash. Both of these people have all my respect, and Fridman’s podcast is exceptional. He stand’s out from the crowd as someone who really does his homework before he starts to ask questions.
Recently the two got together to talk about a variety of topics, and our immersive future — what many of us now think of as the Metaverse — came up.
“I have to ask you about Virtual Reality,” Fridman said. […] You thought about Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, quite a bit. What are the interesting trajectories you foresee for the proliferation of Virtual Reality, or Mixed reality?
Stephenson replied by talking about his work at Magic Leap, a company that tried to build an AR device for consumers (and shipped the first version in 2019). He discussed an experimental project where you can see baby goats in your real world.
But then came the question that made my jaw drop:
“What do you think, looking out fifty years from now. What wins, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, or physical reality?
“What wins?”, Stephenson replied.
“What will the people who have the financial resources enjoy spending their time in?” Fridman clarified.
“I have always been a fan of AR, and it’s kind of an easy answer” came the reply. “If you are wearing an AR device and you put a bag over your head it becomes a VR device. If you block out what’s really there then all you see is VR.”
Fridman pursued the topic: “But with AR you are constrained to physical reality. With VR you can go into fantastical worlds.”
“True, so there are still issues in those fantastical worlds with motion sickness. If your body is experiencing acceleration in your inner ear that differs from what your eye is seeing you’ll get sick unless you are a very unusual person [Author’s note: In this survey roughly 14% of respondents reported they experience motion sickness frequently in VR]. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it but it’s a constraint that VR designers have to learn to work with.”
“So do you think it’s possible that in the future we are living mostly in a Virtual Reality World? Like, we will become more and more detached from physical reality?”
“For entertainment, maybe. For certain applications. We have to make a distinction between what I would personally find interesting and what might win in the market. Maybe lots of people would like to spend a huge amount of time in VR. I am personally more interested in enhancing the experience I have of the physical world, because the physical world is pretty cool. There is a lot to be said for moving around in the real world.”
Fridman then asked if Stephenson could imagine a VR world he would like to stay in, to which the author replied that he likes working with CAD on a 2d monitor and make things, which is immersive to a degree, and you could go full VR with that, be inside the program and make 3d objects and worlds.
The problem with this conversation is that the question is pointless. What kind of reality wins? A lot of people who have little experience of immersive computing — virtual- , augmented-, or mixed reality — think one of these will dominate the others. This is like asking “what colour do you think will win in the future, white or black? It sounds quite silly, but it is very similar because if black or white cancels out the other the whole spectrum of colours is gone. The same is true of VR and AR. They are complementary, not competing technologies. Do you want to travel? Use VR. It let’s you go to other places — that is, completely different worlds from where you are physically. They can be immersive photographs or fully digital worlds. You become like the protagonist in Jumper, a film where the protagonist can have breakfast on the top of the head of the Sphinx, lunch in Paris, and dinner in Kuala Lumpur in the same day. He can do this by using teleportation. VR also lets you go to worlds artificially made by other people, meet them there, and meet them in any form you like. Be a cat or a dragon, the other sex, or — soon — a photo-realistic copy of yourself. This can also connect to the physical world. Let me give you an example:
Several years ago there was a virtual world called Hi Fidelity that seemed quite promising. People would meet there as avatars, wearing a headset or using a PC. HiFi, as it also was called, held a contest for who could build the best world and the best avatar. I was lucky enough to meet the winner of the world building contest. He appeared in the shape of an alien with glowing chest. I took the form of myself at twelve years of age.
We were both wearing headsets, which created a strong sense of what we call presence in VR. This is the illusion of actually being present in some space different from the real world, and sharing that space with other people or computer generated characters. When you let go and accept this different reality, you strongly feel that the other person or persons present in that space are really there. Afterwards, the memory stays with you as a meeting in the physical world. This has an immense value, in particular in this new world of travel restrictions, lock downs and remote work we now have to cope with.
How does this value manifest itself? Well, in the above case, the alien I met, Jason, turned out to be not only a very pleasant person, but also intelligent and talented. The vast cave world he had made was beautiful and mysterious. I was so impressed that I invited him to come to Japan where I live and run our VR agency. Jason left Cornwall, UK, some time later, and after some intermediate work we employed him. The first time I saw his real face was when he stepped out of our train station. I now hear his footsteps outside my door, because he has his office about three meters from mine, and we live in the same house here in Tajimi, a countryside town in Gifu prefecture.
Jason has created astonishing art for us, art that we can sell at good prices. If you want to take a look, you can find a collection of pottery we have turned into 3D models for local kilns — Tajimi is a town with over a thousand years of ceramic history.
Tomorrow we are starting to digitize the collection at the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art here, we just won the bidding for the job. We capture rare real world objects of high value using a technique called photogrammetry, and make them available to people around the world who otherwise would not be able to see them.
As you can tell from this example, a virtual meeting started a chain of events that has had a wonderful outcome in the real world, both for me personally, for our company, and hopefully for people around the world who love ceramic art and Japanese culture. One day these objects will be available in the Metaverse, so that anybody can pick them up with their hands to scrutinize them, and perhaps the artist himself or herself will be at their side to tell them the story of the item.
On the other side of the spectrum, people will visit the museum and experience an augmented reality, where they can similarly see objects otherwise impossible to see in a real world setting, together with other people in their physical form. On top of that, they will also be able to enjoy the local food and the kindness of people here —you’ll find them very laid back and relaxed compared to the inhabitants the busy ant hill called Tokyo. Just take a look at this charming old lady we interviewed one day to have her speak in the crude dialect people use here. This is the value of augmented reality — reality itself is never far away but gets some help.
Now, back to Fridman’s question, if VR is black and AR is white, and physical reality is somewhere in between, which will win in the future? Surely we will want the full spectrum, including reality itself and everything we experience — dreams for example. I believe fifty years from now, possibly, hopefully, much sooner, the physical interface will then be gone. No goggles, gloves or controllers will exist then. Instead, a direct brain-to-computer interface (BCI) will let us experience whatever reality we want, anywhere we want, in any shape we want to appear in.
If pandemics will be part of that reality, I will surely be tired of my home by then (if I am still around). I am a traveler, I need to go on adventure — which doesn’t mean travel has “won” over home-sweet-home. It’s always good to come back sometimes. As for physical reality, a good meal of Japanese food — without artificial augmentation — is a hard experience to beat.
Let me finish by showing you the Japanese TV program at the top of this piece where you will meet this humble scribe as well and Jason in the flesh.
— — —
Hans Karlsson is the co-founder and CTO of Mimir LLC, a VR agency working with international VR platform developers, such as The Wild, to open up the Japanese market for immersive computing. The company also creates high quality 3d models and games, including cultural heritage experiences for national and local government.
