Or for ML:
ratio of people who run PyTorch inference on datasets vs. people who use an app with "AI" in it that does something like age your face
Or for metaverse, ratio of people who can make a 3d model of even like a cube, vs. people who play a game in 3d.
Conversation
I bet you, the ratio of people with a minimal entry level of producer skill to people with consumer skill is way off for this generation of tech compared to previous
So asymmetry between high and low leverage ends of the tech is higher
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Not least because you even need more powerful compute to run any of it. Most consumer laptops would choke on most of the "producer" side skills I listed. And knowing how to run it on GPUs on the cloud is far harder than ftping a .html file to geocities
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Interesting btw, that all these new technologies need GPUs/tensor computing at a fairly powerful scale as a pre-condition of participation on the producer side... it's no longer cheap either
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People pointing me to various learning resources— To be clear I don’t think it’s just me not having figured it out. I don’t think anyone has. It’s like the web circa 1994. Nobody had yet put the pieces together in a workable tech+box configuration.
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It’s mainly crypto people protesting 😂
AI and metaverse people seem more comfortable with not having it all figured out yet. All 3 are at the late experimental stage. Cusp of arrival but IMO not there yet.
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I have non-trivial stakes in 2 of the 3 (web3 and AI) and trying to develop one in the third (metaverse). The one I was personally most interested in a few years ago (IoT —> AVs —> robotics) is the runt of this litter. I first flagged the set in 2017
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Reason I mention stakes, which I rarely do, is that true believers are exhausting. They think anything short of 100% enthusiastic belief is techlash-grade commie hostility. If upside scenarios don’t pan out I’ll lose more than most. That’s cause to be more rigorous, not less.
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This is partly why I tend to actively work on the quietest active fronts, and stay largely passively invested on the more frenzied ones. Right now the quietest active front is robotics. There’s a ton of interesting things happening but fortunately no crazed true believer crowd.
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In a way robotics doesn’t belong in this cohort. It’s the equivalent of mobile for web1/2. Once web3, metaverse, and AI get to a point of development, the iPhone of robots will become possible. In the meantime, enjoy Boston dynamics dancing robots and early IoT/internet-of-shit.
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The cost and performance on batteries, motors, sensors (esp vision), hydraulics is almost there. What’s missing is robot-social-media (web3), better brains (low-cost ML hardware), and environment (metaverse… robots will live in suitable VR+AR simultaneously)
Replying to
Btw I think “metaverse” is here to stay, much as kids might ridicule it as boomerverse. The terminology of AR/VR/XR/MR was floundering because the device level is the wrong level for visioning. Metaverse is “smartphone” grade cringe, not “info superhighway” grade cringe.
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I suspect it will come together in the way streaming did, not as a frontier but in a way where incumbents ally with high-value back-catalog owners to create properties. Linden labs approach relied too much on created content. Extending movie and gaming universes will be easier.
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I think the equivalent of website will be “ride”
As in the initial metaverse will look like an Internet of digitized theme parks. twitter.com/hondanhon/stat
This Tweet is unavailable.
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I think metaverse narrowly viewed as a Facebook idea is vaporware, likely with some cynical calculations attached, but industry wide (include Microsoft, Nvidia, Disney, gaming studios) there’s a there there. I’d point to Pokémon Go as the genesis event.
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The biggest difference between this tech wave and the last few is the radically darker societal context. On a scale of -10 to 10 of broader pessimism to optimism:
PC: 4
Web: 8
Mobile+cloud: 6
Web3+AI+Metaverse: -4
Covid+climate+culture war+inequality = nasty global environment
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It’s the “into darkness” tech wave. A dark age tech wave. Part grimdark part hopepunk.
Pity “dark tech” already has a different conflicting meaning.
Need a good name that’s not “4th industrial revolution” or “second digital revolution”
Gaiatech? Cavetech? Doomtech? Hopetech?
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