The Future Right Now

In this episode sponsored by Nissan, we take a look at the technologies being developed right now that will reshape the web and how we interact online. From Web3 to the metaverse to, yes, NFTs, we look at what's good, what's bad and what could define our future.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
John Than Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Radio and how the tech are you today? We're going
to talk about the future, and I've got jokes about that,

(00:26):
because the future is where you and I will spend
the rest of our lives. For those plan nine from
other space fans out there that shout out as to you,
this episode is sponsored by Nissan. Nissan asked me if
I could talk about the future, and it was really
exciting to get that opportunity and I'm happy to seize

(00:46):
it now. I've talked a lot in recent episodes about
stuff like the metaverse, uh, the concept of web three
some people call it web three point oh, and the
controversial subject of n f T S. And I've been
pretty critical of how things are going so far. But
I thought this is a good opportunity for me to

(01:06):
take a step back, try and take a more objective look,
talk about what the premise is behind all of these
semi related topics, and to get an idea of what
could be. Because again we're going to talk about the future,
We're also going to talk about how things are going
right now and give some unfortunate examples of fumbling the bag,

(01:30):
because that has happened. It tends to happen whenever there's
a massive transition in tech. So this is not me saying, hey,
remember all that stuff I said that was critical of
these technologies, forget it. This is saying, all right, there
are problems right now, but what could we expect assuming

(01:52):
we work out all the problems, what could be the
future now? In order to do that, we're gonna have
to talk about a lot of different cons ups. One
of those a big important one is the blockchain, which
of course was made famous by cryptocurrency. One of the
earliest descriptions of blockchain came out of a white paper
written by someone who was going by the name of

(02:14):
Satoshi Nakamoto. So this was the same white paper that
first introduced the concept of bitcoin. So what is a
block chain? Well, as simply as I can put it,
it is a shared ledger that is made up of
blocks of transactions or other data. Transactions don't have to

(02:36):
be you know, I spent as much money to buy
that thing. Transactions can be I sent a message to
this other person but they are blocks of transactions that
are arranged in a chain, with the earliest transactions at
the far end or beginning of the chain, and the
most recent transactions being in a block that's at the

(02:58):
end of the chain. Each block along that chain depends
in part upon the values of the blocks that came
before it. This is really important because it means you
cannot make a change to an earlier block in the
chain without affecting all the blocks that come after it.

(03:18):
So I'll use an example. Let's say that I was
one of the first folks in on bitcoin. I wasn't,
or else i'd be a bazillionaire. But let's say that
I was, and I get some bitcoin one way or another.
We don't really have to go into cryptocurrency mining or
crypto exchanges in this episode. And I use that bitcoin

(03:39):
to buy something like a pizza. And at the time,
because bitcoin are worth practically nothing, it takes thousands of
bitcoin for me to buy this pizza. And I'm so
early in the bitcoin days that this transaction takes place,
and say just the third block on the chain, which
means within thirty minutes of bitcoin hitting the scene, I
have been part of it. Now flash forward a few years.

(04:03):
All right, it's several years since my eventful pizza purchase
with bitcoin, and I'm reflecting on how I spent I
don't know, like fifty thousand bitcoin to buy a pizza,
but now a single bitcoin is worth thousands of dollars.
Back then, it was worth a fraction of a penny.
So I'm sitting there thinking, Hey, if I had just

(04:25):
held onto those bitcoin that I owned, I'd be so
dang wealthy. Now i'd be I'd be crazy rich. So
maybe I want to be all sneaky and I want
to go back and delete my pizza transaction that I
did so many years ago so that I can repossess
the money that I had spent. Well, that would mean

(04:48):
I'd have to go into this public ledger and change
block number three in the chain. And now there are
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blocks that are after
number three. So the big problem, of course, is that
block number four and every block after it depends in
part on the value represented by block number three. So

(05:09):
if I make a change in block three, it affects
the whole chain after that. And because the chain is
a ledger and this ledger is shared with everyone in
the system. Everybody can see that the ledger has been changed,
that someone has tried to alter it, so the system
can then be corrected and my nefarious crypto heist will

(05:31):
be thwarted. So one thing that makes block chains useful
is that they represent a trustworthy chain of custody. If
the data in a system is in the form of
a block chain, it is effectively immutable, unchangeable. This could
be useful for all sorts of transactions. Imagine real estate

(05:53):
deeds that are stored on a block chain. It would
be clear who owned the rights to any particular estate.
If the deed were to change hands, it would be
reflected in this ledger. You could avoid situations where you
have multiple parties all claiming ownership of the same thing.
Because the record of transactions would be viewable and unchangeable,

(06:15):
you would know for sure who has ownership of it.
Of course, there's still other things you have to worry about,
like people tricking each other into giving up access to
their digital wallets that's where digital assets live, like cryptocurrency,
for example. So while the blockchain itself is secure, that

(06:35):
doesn't mean the system as a whole is secure. You've
still got weak points that batties can target. This is
why we hear about stuff like hackers stealing bitcoins and
n f t s and stuff like that, because the
hackers typically target either individual users or they target cryptocurrency exchanges,

(06:56):
but the chain itself remains steady. Okay, now I just
mentioned n f t s, so let's really get into
that because the way people have behaved around n f
t s people and companies has given n f t
S really bad name, So we're gonna talk about that too.
N f T stands for non fungible token. Fungible means

(07:19):
something that is interchangeable, Like if you have one of them,
you can interchange it with any other one of those
things and you walk away with the same value. Uh.
Here's a here's a simple example. Let's say that I
buy a toy, but the toy doesn't work out of
the box, so I take the malfunctioning toy back to
where I bought it and exchange it for a new

(07:41):
working one. The two toys are essentially identical, ignoring that
one works in one doesn't, and so from the store's
point of view, they're interchangeable as long as I have
proof that I bought it from there, I can switch
it out. This is getting close to fungible. It's not
quite because you couldn't just exchange your broken toy for
a working toy with anybody, because they'd say, no, it's

(08:04):
not the same thing. You just doesn't work. So it's
not truly fungible. Uh. However, a dollar is fungible. So
let's say that I've got a five dollar bill. I
can swap my dingy, tattered five dollar bill at a
bank for a crisp, new five dollar bill. In fact,
banks do this all the time, where they will take

(08:24):
cruddy money out of circulation. It's a way of getting
rid of dollars that are falling apart. So I bring
my ratty five dollar bill into the bank and I
exchange it for a nice, crisp five dollar bill. Even
though my five dollars is ratty and the other ones crisp. There,
they both represent the same value that are interchangeable. They
are fungible. I can also switch that five dollar bill

(08:47):
for five one dollar bills and that would be the
same thing. It remains fungible across all these variations. Now,
let's say that I have a classic rare baseball card,
and my baseball card a bit beat up. It's you know,
it's in good condition, but it's not perfect. Well, I
can't just take my good condition, rare baseball card and

(09:10):
go exchange it for the same baseball card that's in
mint condition, because the actual condition of the cards affects
their value. The baseball cards are non fungible. They are
not interchangeable. Non fungible tokens are also not interchangeable. Uh,
they represent something unique, or really, I should say they

(09:33):
represent a unique instance of something. Essentially, an n f
T is a digital token that represents some other digital information. Now,
a lot of n f t s that we've been
hearing about involves stuff like digital art, where people are
sometimes spending tens of thousands of dollars to acquire a

(09:54):
digital token representing some form of image or maybe it's
a tweet or what ever, and the token represents ownership.
But what about beyond that? What does it mean beyond that?
Because I've often said n f t s are kind
of like a digital receipt, that it's not the thing itself,
it's the receipt showing you own the thing. So on

(10:17):
its own, a digital token just means you own that
instance of that digital asset. Nothing stops someone from minting
multiple digital tokens for the same asset. They can do that,
but this is kind of like someone creating a limited
edition item. If you've ever shopped around for limited edition stuff,
you know a lot of them are numbered, right, You'll

(10:39):
have a lot of limited edition items and each one
will be individually numbered. So you might see that you
have like number four hundred twenty eight out of a
run of one thousand of whatever it is. Well, you
happen to know that there are nine other instances of
the same thing that you own, and each of those
has a number from on to one thousand, excluding number

(11:03):
because that's the one you own. And n f T
s can be the same way. Owning an n f
T doesn't mean you are the sole owner of a
piece of digital art. You are the sole owner of
one instance of that digital art. And it gets a
bit mind bindy right now. You can buy and sell
n f T s and the transactions are on top

(11:24):
of a block chain, So again, by referencing a blockchain,
you can see when and how often an n f
T changes hands. This also prevents someone from trying to
sell the same n f T multiple times. N f
T s also confused people a lot. There was a
lot of uncertainty about what an n f T actually
allows you to do with the thing you purchased. I mean, sure,

(11:49):
there's a record on a ledger that shows you are
the person who owns that digital token, which in turn
represents some digital asset. But what good does that do?
What does that give you the right to do? Does
that mean you have the right to start putting up
like T shirts featuring the artwork you bought? Right, maybe
you bought n f T representing a piece of digital art,

(12:09):
does that mean now you can merchandise that art? Or
if you purchased an n f T representing digital audio,
does that mean you can charge licensing fees for people
playing that audio? Now? The answer to those questions is
not necessarily, and typically they fall into probably not. There
are ways to include licensing rights and other i P

(12:32):
rights in an n f T transaction, so that is possible,
but it's not mandatory, it is not standard. A basic
n f T transaction just represents a simple purchase of
an instance, if I went out to a bookstore and
I bought a copy of the book The Hobbit. That
doesn't mean that I now own the publishing rights and

(12:53):
other i P rights to the Hobbit. Right, I can't
sell Hobbit merchandise. I can't print copies of the Hobbit myself.
I just own a copy of The Hobbit. And a
basic n f T is like that. It's just a
record of a transaction. But it is possible to include
stuff like merchandizing rights in an n f T, and

(13:15):
some n f T artists do this. They sell their
n f t s and they include the rights so
that whomever buys that n f T will actually have
the right to produce merchandise featuring that art if they
so choose. Also, because n f t s exist on
a blockchain, it is possible to build into n f
T s a feature in which the person who originally

(13:36):
minted that n f T in the first place will
get a cut every single time that n f T
is sold to someone else. So the artist creates an
n f T to represent a digital piece of art.
They sell that n f T to Person number one,
and they collect money from that transaction. Person one sells
that n f T to person too, well, some money

(13:59):
from that transaction still goes back to the creator, and
if I minted an n f T representing this very
episode and then sold that n f T to someone,
I could potentially get a cut of every subsequent deal
in which the n f T changed hands from that
point on out. If I so designed my n f
T minting process that way, that's actually pretty cool because

(14:22):
it represents a way for digital creators to receive long
tail compensation for their work. Now, early on, n f
T has got a really bad rap, and justifiably so,
because there was just so much speculation around them. People
were treating n f t s like they were commodities
or stocks. Uh, there was no real concept of actual value.

(14:45):
The speculation just inflated everything. The hype was driving prices
way up, which was really confounding some people and then
exciting others, and it soured a lot of folks on
the concept right away. Now we're going to take a break,
but when we come back, I'll talk a little bit
more about some of the issues with n f t
s and then some of the ways that n f

(15:06):
T s could be used in ways that I view
as positive. But first, let's take a quick break Okay,
so before the break I talked about how hype and
speculation really gave n f T s a black eye.
But on top of that, you also had n f

(15:29):
T scams to deal with. People were minting n f
T s for properties they didn't actually own, which is
fraud right, Like if you don't own something and you
sell it, you're you're being fraudulent. Uh. This is essentially
the high tech equivalent of walking up to a tourist
in New York and trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.
It's the same sort of thing. Uh. In other cases

(15:52):
you had people selling valid n f T s, but
they were using other methods to artificially pump up enthusiasm
around on those n f t s, and a classic
pump and dump scheme. That's just when you weren't to
inflate the value of something that you possess. Then you
sell that stuff off when it's at the highest price
you think it can get, and you get the heck

(16:13):
out of dodge while the price comes back down to
reality once people realize that the the perceived value of
that thing is much higher than its actual value value.
By the way, it gets super tricky to talk about
because really, when it boils down to it, value is
whatever people are willing to pay for something. Right If

(16:35):
they're not willing to pay for something, then the you
would argue that someone is trying to price something above
its value. But it's very fuzzy. It's not like it's
a hard and fast number that you can point to. Now,
on top of all that, you had a lot of
big companies that were really getting into n f t
s very quickly, sometimes without really considering why they were

(16:59):
doing it. Yawned it being no more than say, a
cynical cash grab. That that's tricky, right like, And in
some cases it probably wasn't a cynical cash grab, but
that's how it came across, and people reacted very poorly
to that. Even in cases where n f t s
could arguably make sense, such as for in game assets

(17:20):
for video games, there's been a huge backlash When you
hear about games that are considering using n f t
s for in game purchases. You're a lot of gamers
getting upset about that, and I think part of that
is because of how n f t s have performed
up to this point. But I also don't think it's

(17:40):
necessarily a bad thing, depending on how it's handled. That's
what is key, because it's absolutely and how it's handled.
So let's talk about a way of using n f
T s in a video game that could potentially work. Now,
a lot of video games out there offer up DLC,

(18:01):
or downloadable content, and this is content that is supplementary
to whatever the main core of the game is, and
players have varying opinions about DLC. I think generally speaking,
most folks think that an expansion to an original game
can be absolutely fine unless they find out that that

(18:22):
expansion was always in the game and the DLC was
just to unlock what was already there. That tends to
take gamers off because what that tells gamers is, oh,
you always had this content. What you did was you
sold me an incomplete game, and I have to pay
in order to get the complete game. That's kind of
how the perspective goes from the gamer's side. If in fact,

(18:43):
the DLC was always part of the core game and
you had to pay to unlock it. Now, if the
DLC isn't more gameplay content, let's say it's just cosmetic features,
such as a new character skin for the character you
play in the game. I think most gamers are actually
okay with that, because if they want the cosmetics stuff,

(19:04):
they can purchase a skin that they like for their
character or for their in game items or for whatever.
And if they don't want it, they just don't buy
the stuff and they continue to play the game. And
then you have DLC that includes in game features that
change how the game plays to some extent. This has
a much more shaky reputation among gamers because it can

(19:26):
lead to players spending money in order to get an
in game advantage, and gamers will often call this pay
to win, and generally speaking, it's looked down upon. If
your DLC includes stuff like special weapons that you cannot
get in any other way in the game, and those
weapons give you an incredible advantage, that is frowned upon

(19:48):
in the gamer community generally speaking. But all right, let's
say that you are a video game publisher and you've
created a franchise of games, and there's a long history
of these and they're all kind of connected together, at
least thematically, and let's say you start offering cosmetic DLC
in the form of n f t s for the

(20:09):
latest title in your franchise. Now, if a player buys
that cosmetic upgrade, they get an n f T, a
digital token representing their purchase. And this means that maybe
in future games that you create in the series, that
same player will still have access to that cosmetic upgrade
only within the new game because they have the n

(20:33):
f T that shows that they've purchased it. It's they
don't have to buy it again, They've already got it
and it can be applied to the new game. There's
there's nothing, by the way set in stone that says
this would ever be the way this would work, but
it's one potential way it could work. And also they
could potentially even sell their n f T to someone

(20:54):
else and sell the cosmetic asset to some other player.
Let's say that it's a game franchise where they created
a cool cosmetic three games back, but now they don't
sell that cosmetic anymore. They don't they don't really that
that game that's three games old isn't really heavily supported
by the publisher. You still have access to that cosmetic

(21:16):
skin because you purchased it three games ago as an
n f T, and it's supported in the most recent
version of the game, but you can't buy that new
cosmetic skin from the publisher. Well, because you have an
n f T, you might be able to sell that
n f T on a on a market in the
game or even outside the game, to someone else who
really wants that cosmetic Maybe you make money off of it.

(21:38):
That's a possibility and one that I don't think is
necessarily bad. It could work, but it would have to
be done well, and unfortunately, in the early days of
n f T S things weren't done very well, and
they have cast a pretty dark shadow on the concept
in general. But let me present another possible use of
n f T S. This is one that could potentially

(22:00):
be transformational. Let's say that you are a developer, you're
a programmer, and you write some really cool code, and
that code is useful. It could be adapted for lots
of stuff, and traditionally it's pretty darn hard to ascribe
credit two lines of code, particularly for projects in which
you have a lot of different people programming code for

(22:22):
that project. But if you could mint an n f
T representing the code you created, now you have credit
for that code. Of course, for that to work, you
would also need a system in place to verify that
the person minting the n f T actually has ownership
of the code itself, and it might not be the programmer.

(22:44):
In fact, for really big projects, I imagine that this
would be kind of the company behind that project. That
would meant the n f T not the programmer themselves,
unless we saw a massive change. But it still could
be a big benefit in the programm or community if
it were deployed properly. There are a lot of qualifiers

(23:05):
for this. So my point is n f t s
aren't inherently bad, but the way that companies and people
have been treating them hasn't really been that great, and
so they have a bad reputation understandably so, I mean,
I have been one of the people critical of the

(23:25):
way n f t s have been handled so far,
But I think n f t s will eventually settle
down at some point and potentially become really useful. It's
just gonna take some time, and this often happens in tech.
We see it happen in tech all the time. In fact,
back in the nineties, we saw it happened with the
dot com bubble, right we saw all these companies spring up,

(23:49):
these web based companies. We saw crazy speculation which ultimately
drove unsustainable business practices, and then the whole thing came
crashing down when the bubble burst. But after the crash
it was an instant but after the crash there was
recovery and slowly we established the web that we know today.

(24:12):
I think n f T S could potentially be on
a similar path as long as folks layoff the speculation,
the crass cash grabs, and people are more alert to
things like n f T scams. So not a ringing
endorsement for n f T S, I understand, But I'm
saying like the technology makes sense if it's properly used.

(24:36):
We just haven't seen very many cases of that as
of yet. All right, now, let's switch gears from n
f T S and talk about Web three. So the
concept of Web three is one that sounds interesting and
appealing on the surface. Uh. It's about a decentralized version
of the web built on top of the blockchain. Data

(24:59):
exchanges will be transactions which themselves will be part of
a public ledger. It will allow for direct communication without
the use of an intermediary, so you can communicate with
your friends without going through a platform like Facebook, or
you can send someone money directly without it passing through
a payment services app, that kind of thing. The argument

(25:19):
here is that Web two point oh, which used to
be defined as UH websites that had user generated content,
they had dynamic elements in them, they were changeable, that
kind of thing. The way Web three views Web two
is that it's an It's a web where massive companies
like Meta and Google absolutely dominate the experience because these

(25:44):
are the companies that gather user information to modify it,
sell it off to advertisers, target those users with advertising,
and so it's companies like Google and Meta that determine
what you see when you're on the web. That that's
why you see the ads that you see. It's why
when you go to Facebook, it's why your your news

(26:07):
feed is the way it is. When you and a
friend who might have very similar interests compare your news feeds,
they could look totally different because of all the data
that Meta is gathering and then using to determine what
to feed you and win and how that's the concept
Web three says about Web two, and that Web three

(26:30):
will not be that you will not be going through
these massive companies. They will not be the entities that
dictate what your experiences and what you see. Now this
is all hypothetical. There are actually conflicting visions of what
Web three point oh will be and how it will manifest.
So we don't have a set in stone definition of

(26:53):
Web three. But generally the idea is that these ledgers,
these blockchains, which would i there be public, or they
would be viewable by some designated group of entities. A
blockchain does not have to be public, by the way,
it does have to be viewable by all the parties
that are part of the not a regulatory but oversight board.

(27:15):
You might say it has to be viewable by all
those parties, but it doesn't have to be for everyone
in the system. In fact, Meta was proposing a blockchain
based currency that would have only been viewable by the
partners of that project. That all fell apart. Moreover, all

(27:36):
people would have equal access to Web three. There'd be
no gatekeeping, so there'd be no censorship in the sense
of people being prevented from being on there. So Web
three proponents are saying that platforms like Twitter and Facebook,
which occasionally do ban people, would not have the authority

(27:57):
to do that on Web three. So I'm sure that
a lot of you have already seen some potential problems
with this vision. One is that while idealistically it's great
that everyone has access and no one has denied, it
can very clearly lead to situations in which bad actors
use such a platform such a Web three philosophy to

(28:21):
ramp up misinformation or disinformation campaigns, or hate speech harassment,
that kind of thing. You can easily see where this
would be abused. Uh, and that is a big issue
that would have to be worked out because, uh, it
would just it would get too chaotic, and anyone who

(28:43):
was from any kind of vulnerable population would be at
very high risk of being abused in some way or
multiple ways. Another Web three's features is that it gets
away from those massive companies have been dominating the web
so far, like I mentioned companies like Meta, Amazon, Google,

(29:04):
and so you wouldn't have the data intermediaries anymore. The
idea being that if you're on Web three, you own
your data. You can choose to share your data or
sell your data, but it is your data, you have
control of it, and theoretically, if you're able to put
something up, you're able to take it down. That's easier

(29:25):
said than done. More likely than not, you put something
up and it stays up, because otherwise you have a
very fractured and unstable platform there. But the concept is
that you have that ownership, it does not go through
anyone else, and that is one of the big things
that appeals to a lot of Web three point oh advocates.

(29:48):
I've got more to say about Web three, including some
other potential consequences, but before we get into all of that,
let's take a quick break. So before we went to break,
I talked about how Web three one of the big

(30:09):
selling points is that it is not beholden to these
massive companies like Google and Amazon and Meta and that
sort of thing. Some people have pointed out that the
the fact that this quote unquote decentralized is only decentralized
to a certain extent, like kind of gets into a

(30:30):
George Orwell animal farm kind of thing, like, yeah, it's decentralized,
but some platforms are more decentralized than others. People have
pointed out that the owners of the blockchain, that the
the the exchange is not really owners, but the exchanges
that exist that uh, that are facilitating these kinds of things.

(30:51):
Will end up effectively taking a similar place to these
massive companies. That really all you're doing is replacing the
overlords for a new set of overlords. That's one of
the criticisms. Of course, these things don't really exist yet,
so it's it's hard to say whether that criticism is merited.
It's simply been raised. Another big downside is that currently

(31:16):
blockchain transactions are typically pretty slow. For example, Well in
order for a transaction to go through, it has to
be verified first, and on the Bitcoin blockchain, a transaction
on average takes about ten minutes to verify. This is
closely related with the crypto mining process for Bitcoin, but

(31:39):
it's not the case across every blockchain. On on Ethereum,
the average length of time actually varies widely, between fifteen
seconds on the short end to verify a transaction up
to five minutes on the long end of it. Uh.
The amount of time it takes depends on lots of
different factors, including network contolution, So the busier it is,

(32:01):
the longer it's going to take for things to really complete.
A web three that's built on top of blockchain transactions
is going to need to solve some serious scaling issues
to allow for faster verification or else we would see
the experience of using Web three platforms as being far

(32:21):
too clunky and clumsy and slow for people to see
it as being worthwhile. Um. Anytime you encounter any kind
of lag, people start to lose patients quickly. Like I'm
sure you can all remember a time when accessing the
Internet required more patients, right that you had to wait
longer for a page to load, or for a video

(32:43):
to buffer, or things of that nature. And then as
connections improve and our access to those connections improve, we
become used to being able to access things much more quickly,
and if we ever encounter a situation where we can't
do that is in credibly frustrating. That's one of the

(33:03):
downsides to Web three is that right now blockchain transactions
are slow, and I think a lot of people would
find it very off putting to have an online experience
that requires that much waiting. Um. But that's not to
say that these are problems that are unsurmountable. So we
might find solutions to these problems, and Web three may

(33:24):
well be the future of the Web. I have my doubts,
largely because I worry about some of the consequences of
Web three, particularly when it comes to things like keeping
a handle on hate speech. But that's not to say
that by the time we actually start seeing real Web
three factors emerging beyond just the theoretical and the pilot programs,

(33:45):
maybe by then we'll have an approach to dealing with
this sort of stuff. So it's it's too early to
pass judgment. In other words, I have my concerns, but
that doesn't mean that those concerns won't be met. Right
we might be able to address them, So I'm trying
to keep an open mind. Now, let's talk about the metaverse. Okay.

(34:07):
Generally speaking, a metaverse is a persistent online world in
which you can do pretty much all the stuff you
can do in the real world plus more. Or it's
an it's an online series of touch points that can
spill over into the real world if you're using something

(34:28):
like augmented reality glasses. Now, there are examples of limited
metaverses today right now. One that's been around for ages
is Second Life. That's a virtual world in which people
can own virtual real estate, they can interact with one another.
At one time, there was this kind of general belief

(34:49):
that businesses we're going to go all in on Second Life,
and a few actually really did spend quite a bit
of money to establish a presence in Second Life, building
out a virtue will storefront, or virtual customer experiences, so
Second Life users could visit these these companies presence in
Second Life and then interact with the business in some

(35:12):
presumably meaningful way. You can do things like go to
concerts in Second Life, or you could hold business meetings,
or you know, just hang out with your friends. You
could do all sorts of stuff, at least in theory,
and Second Life got a lot of interest, but it
wasn't able to sustain it, at least not on a
wide scale. I mean, Second Life still exists, people still

(35:34):
use it, but it never took off to become the
future of business, communications, socialization, the Internet. Like a lot
of people were predicting that back in the early days
of Second Life, it did not achieve that by any means.
And some people will point to stuff like Roadblocks as
a type of metaverse. Roadblocks is an online game platform,

(35:57):
and really the appeal of Roadblocks is that it lets
users create and play games of all sorts within this
online world, and those games can be really sophisticated, and
they can have complicated rules and incentives for play, or
they can be way more loosey goosey. It can turn

(36:18):
into essentially like a giant game of Make believes, sort
of the the sort of stuff you would encounter if
you were to, uh watch kids play on a playground
and watch them makeup games on the fly. That can
happen on Roadblocks as well. And Roadblocks has tools available
for people to create stuff, and it serves as a
place where those creations can then be experienced by other people.

(36:41):
So it's a sort of unorganized metaverse in a way
that is determined by its users. Uh. In a similar way,
there are Minecraft servers that do something that's you know,
similar to what you find in Roadblocks. Uh. There are
people who play Fortnite who have gone to call SERTs.
Within Fortnite, there are folks who like to role play

(37:04):
in a grand Theft Auto five server, turning it from
a game that's all about committing crimes into simulacrum of society.
It's just an online society. Maybe you play the part
of a shopkeeper or a cop or something, or just
a you know, an average citizen. There are role play
service for that which blows my mind. But the metaverse

(37:26):
concept goes beyond these fairly narrow manifestations. You could you
could point in these and say like this, this is
almost more like a proto metaverse. Often the metaverse concept
will incorporate technologies like mixed reality. That includes virtual reality.
That's a system where a computer creates everything you see

(37:47):
and interact with, and you use something like a headset
in order to access it. And it also includes augmented reality.
This is where a computer system overlays digital information on
top of your actual real world experience. So the classic
example is a pair of a R glasses that will
overlay information as you look at the world around you.

(38:10):
So you look at a building and it lists out
the businesses that are in that building. That's an example
of augmented reality. So imagine that you pop on a
VR headset at home and you jump into a virtual
environment and you meet up with your friends who similarly
are there virtually, and you all spend time hanging out

(38:30):
together and you maybe you play some games, maybe you
shoot the breeze with each other, maybe you sing some karaoke,
Maybe you decide to put on a virtual sketch show
like you actually put on a play in this virtual environment,
with each person playing other characters. Really, the possibilities are
only limited by whatever the platform can support, and even

(38:51):
in cases where a platform can't natively support whatever it
is you're trying to do, people tend to be creative
enough to find ways to make it work by kind
of jerry rigging a solution. We see this happen all
the time. The g t A five role playing servers
are a great example of that. It was not meant
to be a role playing game, but people turned it

(39:12):
into that. That's the same sort of thing we should
expect with the emergence of more robust beta versus. Maybe
you'll use your VR headset so that you can virtually
attend a huge concert. So imagine being able to go
to an enormous venue with thousands of other people, but
in reality you're at home, sitting in a air conditioned room,

(39:35):
maybe standing in it if you want to be up
on your feet, depending on the band. Um. I used
to think that this was a really goofy use of technology,
but the more I think about it, the more it
actually appeals to me. See, I'm not comfortable in large crowds,
I I get a little agoraphobic. Um, if I'm not
near the edge of the crowd, I start to feel
very trapped and my anxiety starts to rank way high.

(39:58):
I don't quite get to the point I can't function,
but I am very uncomfortable and I rarely enjoy myself.
So I actively avoid big concerts for that reason. I
do not go to them. I'll go to smaller ones,
but I can't like big outdoor venues things like that.
I just can't do them. However, if I could attend

(40:18):
virtually where I'd be able to see the act and
the audio that's being fed to me would be from
a soundboard, so the audio is going to be great
no matter where I am in virtual virtually in relation
to the act, that would be a big appeal to me. Like,
I don't even know how I would handle that. From
a programming standpoint, what I program it so that wherever

(40:40):
I am virtually in relation to the stage, I get
sound that reflects that. Like, if I'm further away, would
it be quiet if I'm closer to the left side,
would the left side speakers be louder to me than
the right side? I don't know, I would probably just
want to have the cleanest audio possible from the live performance.

(41:02):
That would be my own personal preference, but I don't
know if that's how it would ever feed out anyway.
To me, that is a little bit more exciting than
just watching a flat video of a concert online, right
being able to see a virtual representation of it, and
in fact, like we have the technology where the act

(41:23):
could be appearing as actual video representations as opposed to
say a cartoonish avatar. Like I think of being able
to see the struts Um perform live. I've seen them
perform lives several times, really really enjoy their live shows.
I would much prefer to see them perform live as video.
Then I don't know now that I think about it,

(41:45):
if they were appearing as like Roadblock style characters, that
has its own kind of charm too, But anyway, you
would have lots of options, uh, And that that would
mean that you would be able to kind of be
there virtually in person and be able to see the
interactctions between the act and the crowd. To me, that's
a big part of the fun of going to live

(42:05):
events and seeing that interactivity or heck, imagine using VR
to explore places that you would otherwise never be able
to go to. Not just like other places around the
world right now, you could go to places that no
longer exist, like a virtual recreation of historic sites that
have long since been demolished. Being able to explore those

(42:28):
would be amazing. Or maybe you could visit the Moon
or Mars, or maybe a fantasy setting that never existed
in the first place. All of these are possibilities in
a metaverse. Meanwhile, you still have the opportunity to incorporate
commerce into this experience. Companies could establish an existence in

(42:48):
the metaverse, giving you the chance to interact virtually with products.
You could purchase virtual replications of stuff so that you
can use it in your in metaverse avatar. Like you
know Nike has made sneakers this way, virtual sneakers. I
don't know that to me is gets a little silly,

(43:08):
but then it might just not be for me that part.
Or maybe you could actually order real goods and services
through virtual storefronts to get a chance to see what
something looks like in person or virtually in person, and
then order it without having to seek out a store.
This would be really useful for stores that don't have
a presence in your particular region. Right There's some stores

(43:32):
I hear about that I would love to visit, but
there aren't any close to me. So being able to
do that virtually and being able to get like a
good feel for what the product looks like within a
virtual world that could be really useful. So that's something
that has a lot of companies really excited right now.
And it's also a place where we're seeing n f
t s come up in conversation. Again, so a n

(43:54):
f T could represent a purchase of a digital item,
giving you the use of that item as long as
you possess the n f T or maybe you then
decide to sell that on the market later on. You
can do that in an n f T marketplace. You know,
we just have to get through all the nonsense with
n f t s right now that are giving the
tech a bad name. And again, it will all depend

(44:16):
on how it is deployed. It can still be deployed
in a way that's just terrible, and n f T
s never live up to their potential. That's dependent upon
us making systems where the n f T s makes sense.
They're not a scam and they don't become just a
speculative investment pump and dump. And because there's this general

(44:37):
notion that Web three could be the future of the
web and the metaverse could be the future of how
people interact with each other online, there's a real rush
in these spaces to establish footholds there. And this is
where we're seeing a lot of the stuff that's giving
people a bad feeling about where things are going, because

(44:57):
there's a lot of sloppy decisions that are being made
on the way. So Meta slash Facebook has really pushed
for the metaverse. You know, they've famously sunk billions of
dollars into it already, and the company's reputation is you know, tarnished, right,
I mean, that's that's arguably one of the reasons why
Facebook changed its name to Meta because Facebook has got

(45:21):
a bit of a stigma against it, so naturally a
lot of people are wary of any metaverse that is
spearheaded by Meta. And I think what Meta and several
other companies are hoping for is to be the first
to really establish a robust metaverse. Because if they can
be the first to do it, and if they can
prove they already have a large installed base of users

(45:44):
interested in it, then they can attract all the other
parties to join that particular metaverse. And by parties, i'm
talking about like major companies and stuff. So if Meta
can say, hey, we've got the metaverse platform and we
already have three billion users be as they have accounts
set Facebook, then that is a powerful selling point to

(46:05):
get other parties on board. I mean, it sends a
message to a company that they can't afford to ignore
this place where everybody is already, they need to be there.
So my guess is that's really Meta's game plan to
establish a metaverse that effectively becomes the default. It's kind
of the anti web three because it would be as

(46:26):
if Meta owned the web, assuming, of course, that the
metaverse actually became the primary way that people interfaced online
with each other and with commerce. That's a big presumption, however,
but assuming that that did happen, then that's kind of
what Meta's goal is, just to be, you know, sort
of the gatekeeper for the whole thing. So the anti

(46:48):
web three. Meta is not the only company attempting to
do this. I've been calling them out a lot because
they're the most high profile company but there are lots
of companies that are involved in this, and then there
are some companies that are more interested in building out
things that could be a foundational element of a metaverse
rather than building out the whole metaverse themselves. Meanwhile, this

(47:10):
is still all under the assumption that this is the
future that people want and that people will be eager
to interact with and able to interact with. So for
all of that to happen, we're gonna need a lot
of other things to fall into place. One is that,
assuming the metaverse is going to require mixed reality hardware,
that hardware has to be available and affordable. You probably

(47:31):
also want it to be untethered. You know, you don't
want to have to be connected or physically anchored to
a computer in most of these cases. And for that
to work, you need really good wireless connectivity solutions, and
you need a strong edge computing system. We're gonna need
to take one more quick break. When we come back,
I'll talk a bit about what edge computing is and

(47:52):
why it's important. Okay, let's let's do a quick overview
of what edge computing is. Uh, it's related to cloud computing. Right.
With cloud computing, you have these networks that are doing computations,
maybe they're doing data storage, maybe they're hosting apps, maybe
they are running processes. With edge computing, you locate computation

(48:18):
and data storage systems as close to the end users
as you can to cut down on latency and transfer speeds.
So with edge computing, companies like Meta could use the
computer systems that are at the edge near the end
users to handle the bulk of computational work that would
otherwise have to fall to the user's own hardware or

(48:40):
it would be in the cloud. If it's just in
the cloud, then there's going to be a delay because
of the distance between user and cloud, and you don't
want to delay. If it's at the user, well, then
that means that you have just put the burden on
the user to have a computer powerful enough to process
whatever it is you're trying to do. So this is

(49:01):
why a lot of earlier virtual reality systems were these
tethered systems that required people to have a screaming fast
gaming PC if they wanted to use the VR system,
because all the hard work had to be done by
the local system. Edge computing a very strong edge computing

(49:22):
network paired with very fast wireless data transfers would allow
you to do the heavy lifting at the edge and
then beam that to the user with very low latency,
so that you don't have to have a massively powerful
VR system locally. You can have a lightweight v OUR

(49:42):
system that depends upon these edge computing networks. That's one
of the key components that will be necessary to make
a metaverse of this type a reality. And we definitely
have lots of examples of edge computing networks already. These
are not, you know, hypothetical or futuristic things. They exist now.

(50:04):
We're just gonna need a lot more of them. Now.
There are a lot of other components that we will
need to evolve for the metaverse to become a reality.
Intels Rajah Kaduri famously posted that he believed we are
going to need one thousand times the computing power we
currently have at our disposal in order to support a

(50:25):
truly robust, persistent metaverse in the way that people are
envisioning today. So we are talking about a future here,
and because it's a future, it is uncertain. We don't
really know how it will manifest or how many different
kinds we're going to get. While Meta is absolutely determined

(50:47):
to try and make it stamp the the one and
only Metaverse. We're likely to see a lot of different
versions of this, some of which will be much more modest. Right.
Many of them will probably be in the form of
the games that we've been talking about, like Minecraft and
Roadblocks and Fortnite. That we are going to see more

(51:07):
metaverse style concepts and features make their way into online games. Uh,
and we might not immediately call those online games a
metaverse in their own right, but rather say, these are
games that incorporate philosophies that are things we associate with
a metaverse. But you know, it may very well be

(51:31):
that the meta one that gets offered ends up being
the largely the one and only now that it really
is one and only, but that because of Meta's footprint,
because it has access to so many users, assuming that
it finds a way to make the hardware affordable, and
it may very well be that Meta's plan is to

(51:54):
make the hardware affordable by selling it below cost and
then making up the money the long run once it's
able to um to generate revenue off the metaverse. Something
that Mark Zuckerberg himself has said is years down the line.
Maybe that's how it all involds. We just don't know yet.

(52:14):
So will the metaverse really become how people interact online?
Will Web three replace the system we have now where
massive companies own most of the experience and determine what
we see and what we don't see. I honestly don't know.
It's certainly possible. Uh. There are people working very hard
to make that become a reality. But there are also

(52:36):
a lot of people who are very skeptical of it
and critical of it and concerned about it, who, while
not necessarily actively working against this possibility, or at least
raising questions that they're demanding answers to. Before we just
embrace this as the future, I'm sure we're gonna see

(52:56):
a lot more controversy and missteps along the way. You know,
reality is messy, and companies will often make terrible mistakes
because they'll they'll have a vision of what they want
to achieve and not have a full concept of what
the consequences are of achieving that vision. But this is

(53:17):
how technological revolutions happen. When you're in the middle of
a technological revolution, you can't see the end of it.
You can't see how it will work out, how it
will all settle down, or even if it will work out,
or if it will just be a failed experiment. You
can't tell when you're in it. It's only in hindsight
that we recognize what works. When we talk about Web

(53:40):
one and Web two. The reason we're even able to
talk about that is because we were able to stick
around long enough to see how the web changed from
the early days to post two thousand four or so.
And I'm sure that the process of getting to this
future is going to be very grad will so there

(54:01):
will be milestones that we will pass that we won't
recognize that we passed. It will only be in hindsight
when we look back and say, oh, yes, when this
product came out, that was the foundation for this critical
component of the metaverse. But we won't be able to
say that what it's happening, at least not in every case.
So if I had messages for all of you out

(54:24):
there when it comes to things like Web three, the metaverse,
and f t S all of that, it is all
right to be enthusiastic. It's okay to be enthusiastic, It's
okay to be excited, use critical thinking, ask questions. Learn
as much as you can before you start jumping into things,

(54:47):
because if it's anything where it's going to require an investment,
whether that's an investment of your money, of your resources,
of your time, of your efforts, you should satisfy as
much of your curiosity as you can that that investment
will be worthwhile. It may not work out, but you

(55:07):
should definitely be comfortable with the investment before you you
commit it. Uh. I think a lot of people fell
into a trap where they were making investments without fully
appreciating what they were investing in, and some of those
people got burned for that, and that's what has led
to this very critical view of these these basic concepts.

(55:31):
And plus we can't get around the fact that we've
got some big companies that have a shaky reputation that
um at least publicly, that also lead to that. So
this future, I'm not as down on it as I
used to be. I used to be really super critical
of it, but I actually see how if deployed properly,

(55:55):
it could be really really beneficial. But that's an if
we have to push for the proper implementation in order
for that reality to come to pass, that's it. For
this episode. Hope you enjoyed learning about these topics and
their implications. A lot of people say this is definitely

(56:16):
where we're headed, So it's good to educate ourselves as
best we can so that we can make sure that
the future we do create is the best one we
can possibly make, and the only way to do that
is by educating ourselves. If you have suggestions for topics
I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, I
welcome you to reach out and let me know. The

(56:37):
best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text stuff H s W. Thank
you again to Nissan for sponsoring this episode and giving
me the opportunity to really dive in to this future concept.
It is exciting. It is exciting both in the sense
that there is incredible potential and that we have to

(56:59):
be aware of possible drawbacks. To me, all of that
is exciting. I hope it is to YouTube and I'll
talk to you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(57:21):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.