Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) How To Build A Metaverse

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

Coming at the Metaverse from a different angle. If you're a dev or even just an enthusiast, how, from a technological perspective, will the Metaverse be built? Sponsors: FirstRepublic.com Streak.com/techmeme Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome everybody to the TechMeme Ride Home Experience for Wednesday, November 10th, 2021. Today we have some special guests who are joining us. They're actually here already. But of course, Brian and I like to kick it off with sort of a sense for what's going on in the world. And, man, I was trying to summarize the things that, like, I wanted to bring up. And I just came up with, like, a bazillion things. So the thing that I guess I wanted to start with, which is sort of, not connected to a lot of the other stuff we will be talking about later is the launch of Apple business essentials.

And the reason why I thought this was interesting and was starting with was because, you know, Apple's always been kind of like this weird company when it comes to like enterprise use cases. Like they have a lot of enterprise users. They have a lot of like, you know, deals where you can just sort of like, I don't know, like subscribe to devices. But this is the first time where they're sort of going, I guess, down market to SMBs. And the thing that was, I guess, that stood out to me about this was, I guess, a couple things. Like, one, how this relates to, I guess, a lot of professionalization of consumer software in general. You know, Facebook definitely with workplaces moving that direction. And I have a comment about that in a second, too.

But Google and Microsoft have largely, I think, been owning that space for some time. And to see Apple move in that direction is very interesting because I'm sure that what Apple, of course, you know, knows is that, you know, most people, if they are issued some device or set of devices for their work, will probably have their own personal devices too, including iPhones. And one of the things that was significant in the way that they pitched this was that they talked about how most, I guess, small business employees, let's say the business is around 50 people, have three devices. So Apple is like very clearly kind of articulating what they think small businesses should be,

you know, anticipating. and that's you have like a laptop desktop for a serious work. You've got an iPad and you've got your iPhone. And all of these, those things are connected through an Apple ID. And what they're offering, at least in terms of the value props they're putting out there, is a simple setup and onboarding with something called collections.

In other words, if you want your employees to have a set of apps or services or a firewall or things like that that are just pre-configured and set, you can go into this business essentials app, create a collection of those things and then essentially deploy it to a new employee that joins and you give them the devices. and the device is pre-configured with those assets. Then, of course, they have security, which is a big cell, which is File Vault.

Activation lock is interesting. So essentially, if your employee loses a device, like a phone or a laptop, you can remotely lock it. A lot of tech companies have this stuff, but bringing it to the broader marketplace, I think is interesting. And then user enrollment. And then ICloud is part of that and AppleCare Plus. And the thing that I thought was actually the most interesting was about how they're offering tech support, more or less through either a phone call or other Apple, like, I don't know, whether it's genius bars or not, in a way that just from a, like the number of people that Apple is going to have to employ to make essentially IT available for anybody that wants to, you know, distribute Apple devices to their employees was the thing that really stood out to me. I mean, this is how they get to be like Walmart size if they're not already. So I just thought that was like really big.

Relative to, you know, again, like Google or Microsoft, I don't know what they do in terms of support. But the fact that Apple has been doing this for, you know, millions and millions of customers in the consumer space for years, and now they're just going to do it to business customers, I thought was very, very interesting. So quick question. It's interesting to me. And by the way, of course, I didn't get to do this on the show today, so I'll do it tomorrow. but the fact that they're going after SMBs first. Well, hold on.

When you say first, does that imply that you're not familiar with their existing enterprise offerings? It must be. Go on. See, exactly. I didn't know this either until one day I accidentally stumbled upon apple.com slash business. And they do a bunch of stuff with IT departments and stuff like that. So they already have something for larger enterprises. Mostly like enterprise sales.

Even if you're a Microsoft employee, there's a good chance that you're a personal iPhone user. Exactly. We know tons of people like that ourselves. Or at Google, you name it. So what I was going to say, and then you can fill in how they do this on the enterprise. But what I was going to say is that if you're a SMB, small, medium, business. business, whatever. You're assuming that there's probably half of your workforce is on iPhones anyway, and so this is a cheap and easy way to sort of bring that into your smaller medium enterprise.

And so how are they already doing that with larger enterprises? Well, I know that they do it for largely like MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Moving into mobile devices, I think is maybe one of the things that's a little bit more novel. I haven't worked at a big tech company, you know, in that sense, in quite a while. But I do remember, you know, at least when I worked at Google, it was, it was great. They had kind of like this IT department where you could go and get your laptop like replaced, like, you know, quarterly or maybe not quarterly. But like, you know, and they would essentially take care of a bunch of configurations and setups and stuff like that so that you as the individual user didn't have to go through hours and hours of configuration. You know, one of the things that you mentioned, actually, this is, this is kind of relevant.

But I remember one of the days, I think, when we got together or something, you were kind of worried about how long it was going to take to upgrade your phone or something. And you're like, oh, my phone's going to be out of commission all day. And then you went and did it. And it was like, not bad at all. So clearly there's been an evolution in the ability for Apple to, one, provision devices and then to manage the upgrade cycle and then really narrowed down what is being upgraded. And now they're able to roll that out, I think, more effectively to and create a whole new business line from that. But clearly this is about the cloud, right? So even though we're talking about devices, this is probably a play towards getting all sorts of businesses in the ecosystem of like file vault and things like that.

It's about one, it's taking that existing consumer base and then finding other ways of monetizing it through business, right? And one of the things that we've been talking about that we talked with Alex Kenterwitz about was that. the sort of battle of the tech giants and they're all starting to eat each other's lunch. And Apple up until now really hasn't, you know, I mean, in terms of putting things out in the front channel, haven't really talked to businesses. That's, you know, really been, again, Microsoft and Facebook. And so the fact that Apple now sees a need to grow their business by addressing small businesses, I think is very interesting. I also, I know I'm going to put on my speculation hat, but it seems like Apple might be slowly moving more towards, you know, they're very slow. They're

very sort of like plotting and scheming, you know, thinking about things for, for, for years on perspective, that if they wanted to go after Facebook's, you know, business and, you know, one of the things that Facebook was arguing, um, with its antitrust arguments was that it's really good and very important for small to midsize businesses is that Apple needs to start establishing those relationships now. And people already have relationships through Apple's hardware products. That's the core of that relationship. Facebook doesn't have that. Facebook is trying to get portal out there. And, you know, that's a good product, but it's not the one that you carry with you everywhere you go.

And so it seems like long term, whether it's, you know, what Apple's doing with business chat or where, you know, Apple has its nascent advertising business, that it slowly wants to crowd out the existing relationships that people, you know, have with their businesses with, you know, Microsoft and Google and the rest. So two thoughts real quick. with the M chips, the Apple Silicon chips coming on board, and they seem to be like just

beasts for doing actual productivity. I'm wondering if this is tied into that a little bit where they're going to make a huge play. Yeah, I would, I would, so to add on that, like once you start, you know, making, and we've talked about this before, once you are in the business of Silicon, like, you need to have a lot more places

or customers for that Silicon. So it seems like what they've done is they've taken the model of the iPhone. And a lot of the innovations that came out of that from battery tech to miniaturization to speed, et cetera, to power management. And now they're basically replicating the iPhone in like multiple different screen sizes. And again, they just like need more places to sell it to. And so businesses is a logical place where they can do that. So you sell them the laptops, you sell them the iPads and you sell them the phones.

And you're basically reselling the same product. at a huge market premium over and over again. And you're making it so easy to get into the ecosystem with user management, which is the stuff that's always the headaches that no one wants to deal with. And Apple brings their approach to it, which usually is about restricting what people can do. And it will actually be, I think, a compelling offering. I mean, I think right now it looks like plans can be customized to support each user with up to three devices and up to two terabytes of secure storage in iCloud, starting at $2.99 a month.

Right. That was my... $2.99.99. $3 per user. Aside from the fact that your employees will be comfortable with Apple because they've been familiar with the Genius Bar for 20 years or whatever. Right. You know, they're coming in at the low end.

It's very, very cheap. But by the way, all Apple cares about is the ARR, the services business. So, like, even if they're coming in very, very cheap, It's not, there couldn't be a lot of cost to just turning this on, flipping a switch. No, no. They've already built this all out. It really is just expanding the market. They already have the infrastructure.

And so, like, it's flipping a switch where you could have overnight another $20 billion. That's what I'm pointing to, right? So, anyways, so that was one. I think we've covered that one. The other one, speaking of, you know, business and growing your market and charging people for things, Twitter Blue, finally is launched in the United States. I just saw that in the labs feature, which is one of the benefits of Twitter Blue,

you may soon be able to add NFTs to your profile photo, and so that was the thing that actually got me to go for the $3 upgrade. It's funny. I can get either the Apple Business Essentials for $3 or Twitter Blue for Twitter. It's like totally apples and oranges. It's the same price. It's confusing. Anyways, so that's finally launched.

And I don't know. What is your thought? Do you think it's worthwhile or not? I think it's entirely worthwhile. I haven't signed up for it yet. I will point this out that they're both charging, they're both charging three bucks, right? $2.99-eat?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But except one of them is paying 30% to another. And another is keeping all of that $2.99. This is true. But, okay, Twitter Blue. Yeah, I think it's great. Somebody pointed out, I don't think I said it on the show today, that it's one of those things where, like,

even if there's one thing that you like about it for three bucks a month, you sign up for it, and then you see that there's, oh, my God, four or five other things that maybe I like to. So even if it's just one thing that gets you in there for three bucks, then you find out these other things that you might end up liking over the course of it. Like, that's actually, you know, bundling is not anything new. But doing one of these things that is super, super cheap, but you get a dozen benefits from it, that's kind of really a smart way to do this sort of thing.

To your point, I think there are a number of different things that appeal to different types of users. And that is one of the challenges, I think, for Twitter in deciding who to serve with these features. The custom icons and the custom color schemes like, for young people, maybe that's great. Go ahead. Well, I'm going to interrupt because one of the things about Twitter that I've always thought is that Twitter always wanted to be Facebook and then they gave up the ghost of having that sort of scale or whatever. But what I've always thought about them as a business is you have these super committed, what is it? Let's call it 100 million if you're being generous, but let's call it 50 million people that are just like Twitter diehards, right? And why wouldn't you just serve your diehard, your altras, right?

And so, like, this is the first step in that. This is one of those things that I thought that they should have done years and years and years ago. And so this is my question to you. Now, this is total confirmation bias because the people that I would tend to follow, the people you would tend to follow are Twitter ultras. And the Twitter ultras, at least that I've seen over the last 24 hours, are like, this is great, I'm on board, I'd pay $10 a month or whatever. And we're going to have to find out if this plays out.

But what's your take in terms of taking the temperature? Because it is a great business, even if there's 50 million Twitter ultras and they get 5 million of them to sign up, that's not bad for them, right? Well, it is important to point out that this is the first time that Twitter is actually charging users for something that's not advertising. Isn't this the first time a major social media platform is charging? For like premium features? Yeah.

I'm sure somebody on the internet is going to correct us. But at least in terms of our exposure, it does feel like ping for these kind of in-app upgrades has largely been the realm of games and not social media. Because the whole premise of social media was that you charged or you charged the advertisers for access to eyeballs. And that was the whole kind of paradigm around us being the product that was being sold to other people. So now we're both the product and we're also being sold too. So it's, you know, we're getting hit on both sides. But, you know, one of these ideas, and I find it very ironic, it's not ironic. It's sort of pathetic.

I'm not sure which it is. But I've enabled tips tips on Twitter. And I've received absolutely zero tips. Now, if someone wants to go pay me, you know, and tip me right now, you can pay for my first month of Twitter blue. That would be great. I find it very interesting that on the one hand, Twitter is doing all these things with, you know, monetized spaces, super follows, which, you know, I can apply. I have not, you know, had access to that yet. So they're finding ways of, like, compensating creators.

And then at the same time, like, starting to charge them for premium stuff. And I'm kind of wondering how that's going to go over in terms of the experience where it's, in some ways, you're, like, almost like nullifying it, which is fine, I guess. What I really like to see, I guess, as, you know, like you said, Twitter or tools for the Twitter ultras that really help us do better tweeting. I think review fits into that in terms of its newsletter, you know, product. It needs a redesign and needs to be rebuilt, you know, for the Twitter UI. But it's got potential. And then the other thing that all that is that, you know, and we, of course, talked to Tony Hale from Scroll back in May about what was happening there. and I think we predicted very accurately what was going to happen. And of course, that launched with, you know, and then some, which is that you now have what's called ad-free articles. This is not, you know, jump the paywall, but it's just sort of like, I guess, an ad blocker built into articles. And then somehow that's supporting journalists. And then there's also, essentially, they brought Nuzzle back. So now you can see the articles that are trending in your network. And so those things start to really give you a sense for, okay, what's going on out in the world, what's how,

happening with my network. And if I want to consume that content in the confines of Twitter to increase its stickiness, well, sure, I'll pay three bucks to get a better reader experience in that world. So I think it's interesting. I agree. I haven't signed up yet, but I obviously... Well, if anybody else does sign up for Twitter Blue, hit us up, let us know what you think. Is it worth it? Is it not? What else could they do that would be exciting or interesting to you? Pay for Chris to sign up. Exactly. Compensate me for, yeah, exactly, with the referrals. There are three more things, four more things that I'm going to bring up in rapid succession,

and then we're going to get our guests on here because they're going to have some things to say about all the stuff that I'm sharing. The first is that apparently New York City's new mayor is very, I guess, crypto-friendly, in a sense, in so much that he is already, I guess, going to be minting the second city coin, which Miami, of course, was the first. I will, by the way, I'm pinning tweets, linking to some of the articles that I'm talking about. And so this one you can see first. Let me add this to the space.

And then the other one is that, you know, I thought that city coins are cool, you know, but what's really cool is that Seoul apparently is going to be the first city that is going to be fully replicated in the metaverse. And so, you know, you combine these two ideas together and suddenly you're kind of like getting somewhere that I think is kind of cool.

You know, again, I thought that San Francisco might be the city that would be first in the metaverse because again, you know, Silicon Valley tech. More importantly, Marvel has like a perfect representation of San Francisco in the Bay Area, of course, in some 3D model someplace. You know, that's where all the Marvel movies are shot. And so you'd think that we'd be able to walk around those sets in, you know, 3D space. But no, once again, it's going to be soul. I said to my wife this morning, I pointed out that a lot of the Web 3 stuff has been in Brooklyn all these years.

Yeah, true. North of me, like Williamsburg area. What's the big one, the name of the company is alluding me, the original big company that all of the United East? No, no, no, no. Yeah, hold on. but are they when you do these city coins are they air dropped

to like how does this work right like I don't know yeah I would yes did Miami air drop to Miami citizens New York and airdrop to like that would be interesting if we ever get to that like that's the sort of like frenzy

I'll know when we're really got a peak frenzy if like it's just like you're if you're a resident, if you can show a utility bill that shows you're within the five boroughs, and then you can claim an airdrop of a certain amount of coins. Well, I mean, what if there was a distribution? Like, what if you did like UBI that way? Where by living in a certain place and having a certain, you know, maybe you allow your location roughly to be tracked in as long as you're home,

then you get some percentage of the tokens and then those tokens are used to then vote. Right? On local municipal things. And so then your ability to shape local elections is based on how much time you actually spend in that place as opposed to just having a mailing address. I don't know. This could really fuck things up. But it could also be very interesting. So you mentioned Seoul because I think that that was what you were going to trend.

No, I got one more. One more. And then I'm going to bring them in, which is that, and you mentioned this on the show today, that Unity has acquired Weta Digital. Now, if Weta Digital is not a household name, that's perfectly reasonable. But these are the digital effects guys, you know, and it's probably a lot of guys. But regardless, that do so many of the amazing visual effects on huge movies that you're definitely aware of, whether it's like Planet of the Apes or Lord of the Rings, all that stuff. And in this acquisition, what they're getting is a lot of IP. I think this, I don't know if it's like a $1.2 billion acquisition, something along those lines.

But didn't I say that they're not. That, sorry, you're right. IP in terms of characters, you're right. Those are not coming along. Unity doesn't want that. Unity wants the tooling. Unity wants the patents. Unity wants the stuff that allows creators to create cool shit, basically.

And so, anyways, that's the last thing that I was going to bring up. And with that, I do want to introduce our guest today, because these are guys who actually build in Unity. They use the software. They're building for the Metaverse. and they're also related to me. So we've got the guys from Studio Lab here. We've got my brother Tim. We've got Ian and we've got Wes.

Why don't you say hello, guys? Hey, guys. How are you doing? What's going on? Hey, there. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves with your voices so we know who's talking? Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Yeah. So I'm Tim. I'm actually Chris's brother. And I built Studio Lab out here in New Hampshire, which is where Chris is from, as well as a company called Events United. And then, Ian, I work in a lot of commercial work and the director of virtual production here. So I'm Wesley. I was kind of the person who got Tim and Ian kind of on board with the whole crypto thing. Just to be blatantly honest, but he's also a nephew. Yes, at the same time. But yeah, I mean, I've kind of been in the space of giving

them a perspective of kind of like a i'm 19 years old um kind of out of high school but um i've kind of try to give them a way of thinking outside of the box in the future and um kind of brought them on board in this you know whole day yeah heavily heavily on board yeah okay so let me let me back up and provide a little context um the reason why i really wanted to get you know west and the whole crew here um is because You know, Brian and I have been sort of going on about the Metaverse and whether it's cringe or not. And whether it's like, okay, boom, or cringe or kind of like, interesting. And when I was actually out on the East Coast, you know, traveling around, I went to Tim's

studio, studio lab. Let me, I'll share a link to this. Let's see. And basically, they, like, this is, I don't remember if Facebook had just renamed or whatever, but maybe. Metaverse was like the conversation that was going on. And so I knew that what Tim had built was more or less the set on which they filmed the Mandalorian. And so it's this large XR stage that's a curved screen. It's how tall is it? It's about 14 feet high, 52 feet around right now. Can I ask a question to be clear, you didn't build the Mandalorian stage?

You just build a similar thing to the, yeah. Okay, got it. So it's not the Mandalorian, but they could do that. That's right. But the tech to make that stage happen that the Mandalorian was shot on is extremely difficult. And we spent two years developing ways to do it better and easier for the entire film industry, which essentially why it matters to this conversation is our ability to kind of blend the digital and analog worlds together in real time. And so the reason, and I've pinned some links if you guys want to go check it out and actually see how this works.

there's a YouTube video there called World Control app, and it gives you a sense for the level of control that digital designers have over these environments to manipulate them in real time. And then the stuff that's like, I don't know if you guys can either send me a link over DM or just whatever, but the ability to then blend things that are kind of in the real world, in atoms,

and to move a camera around that is tracked through, What is it using like a, not a gimbal, but it's tracked in space. Yeah, so to give you a little bit of context and understand how it works is we're pretty much triangulating the position of the camera. And the reason why this is important is because we need to know the relationship of where the camera is to the actual video wall. The easiest way to kind of think about it is everybody, you know, knows how green screen works. You know, you added in post later. But what we're doing is we're using this technology to get visuals real time.

We're using Unreal Engine right now. This is really interesting because you brought up the whole Unity thing and how honestly I think Unity is a bit behind in the virtual space. So, you know, we've worked a little bit with Unity, but it is very clunky right now. And the purchase of that company makes sense for them because they are a little bit lagging in the whole VFX, real-time VFX space because Unreal Engine,

their lighting system is amazing. Real-time lighting anyway. So, again, going back, to that. It's real-time visual effects, so there's no postwork. You know, clients come in or people who want to shoot. They're able to, you know, get a camera up, track it in real-time space, and walk out of the shoot with pretty much 90% of their shots done. And no, not no post-work, but a lot of post-work done. Let me jump in here real quick to make two quick points. Unreal Engine is owned by epic by the way so listeners of the show uh keep your scorecards marked exactly but um so

and and forgive me uh as a a film school graduate what you're saying is that when you when you film in front of a green screen what it is is the green screen is just something that you can go into post later and you can put all the bullshit in the background right you can put uh the mount doom in the background as Frodo is approaching it. But what you're doing with this is because the screen in the background is so high-res, essentially you can be standing just on Apple boxes or just a platform or something, and it can be like you're in the desert. You're in the Mandalorian Desert or whatever.

And not only that, it's not just that, okay, I can have a high-res desert behind me. as the camera moves in the same way, if people are familiar with the way your VR headset works, where as you look around, the reason that VR works is it feels like as your head moves, your field of vision sort of... Well, there's like a parallax also. Exactly.

And so in a similar way, if the camera moves around, say, an actor or whatever, then the background... Also needs to move in time. Screen moves, right. in time with that. And that's why Unreal Engines is huge because we have to be able to render the...

And again, Chris brought up the fact that we can manipulate the world, so we can change the sun angle, we can make it rain, we can make it fog, you know, and ultimately what's huge is you can jump from location and location in a matter of seconds, so we can be in a desert. And then in the next shot, you know, we're in Antarctica.

You know, and instead of picking up all your gear and moving, you actually can just switch it on a dime. And that's kind of what Tim was talking about, with the blending of the digital and the physical. And we're seeing that on film sets. And to honestly think about it as a metaverse, bringing it to consumers, that's kind of an interesting thought. So that's why we kind of lived in that.

One more thing, and then Chris, go ahead. But again, the film nerd in me is one of the things that I love about this new way of doing things, is that I feel like the uncanny valley has been beaten in a way. Like if you even look back at the Lord of the Rings from 20 years ago, which we all thought was the greatest VX stuff that we ever saw. It looks horrible now. By today's standards. On today's TVs, for sure.

Right. This stuff is a generational leap where the lighting, if you know, if you know, like, lighting and stuff, like, it's so much better. And it doesn't feel like you can see that the actor is in a studio. And then the background is just green screen. bullshit. It's so much better and so much more vibrant. I feel like this is a stage jump technologically. I think you're actually touching on something really important here, which is kind of the digital realism. And to this point, honestly, it's not easy to do things and make them real. Even on these XR stages, which essentially we have extended reality, which is a combination of virtual reality, mixed reality, real reality, all these different things coming together, which makes extended reality, which is why we call them XR stages. But the problem is it's actually still really hard to make things look real.

Even using Unreal Engine, you still need to make that content, which is why the purchase of what are from Unity is really interesting, right? They are a company that's able to make real-looking digital assets. And when you have that ability, you start to have the upper hand when you're talking about the Metaverse and blending the two worlds, a digital world and the real world. It's a very interesting acquisition in my mind. mind because one of the biggest headaches with all these XR stages that we're building around

this country and that are being built around the world. It's if you don't have that realism, sure, you can do some cool stuff that looks very fake and that in on purpose and that's fine. But if you do want to bring in what we see now with our own eyes into this world, you have to be able to recreate that. And very few companies can do that, which is why I find this purchase really interesting. So one of the other things that I want to bring up about this, you know, and I think, Tim, you're making like an interesting point where on the one hand, one of the, you know, I don't know, I guess I think about it as sort of like a moonshot kind of thing. Like if you can create 3D, you know, graphics and environments that are so realistic, again, that you've crossed the uncanny valley. And then you're able to manipulate them in real time. That's like, has been very, very elusive. And there's a lot of AI stuff that I think has like unlocked and, you know, gotten us closer to that reality.

Now, the thing that is interesting about this, you know, in the context of that acquisition and the context of the meta, or yes, the meta keynote by Zuck is the way in which these things are being positioned around creators and the creator economy. Specifically, one of the things that a representative from Unity said about this acquisition was that their intention, because one of the questions that was all over their forums was, well, this is great, but how much is it going to cost? Like all this stuff is very expensive. The machines that you need to run the stuff is very expensive.

And basically they're like, look, we, you know, might have spent a cool billion on this. But our goal is to provide these tools at price points accessible to a wide range of craters. Now, obviously, that may not be the hobbyists. But I think what I'm trying to like piece together is what is the overall kind of set of shifts that are happening in the industry. And the reason why I really wanted to get, you know, the studio lab guys here was because they're both in it, they're seeing it from the front lines, they're defining what is going on to those front lines, and they have a very non-cynical, non-kind of like, oh, this is like dumb, or like, oh, we've been like trying to do like virtual reality for 20 years and it still sucks.

It's like if you're in it, like I feel like they're almost like the web 2.0 like pioneers that we were, you know, 10, 15 years ago, but doing it in immersive space. And so, you know, Wes coming up as a 19-year-old kid who's deeply in crypto, Like, one of the things that we discovered that we have a shared sort of interest in, so I grew up collecting comic books. Tim knows about my copious amounts of comic books. And one of the things that they've all gotten into recently is the Vivaverse and VV. And VV.V.E.

And VV basically is doing, creating NFTs, I hope, and I think. And you guys can speak to this a little bit more for all sorts of, mostly starting with comic book characters, Spider-Man, Batman, etc. but now they're starting to do Disney collectibles as well. And the way in which you experience or collect those objects is in these, well, right now it's I think called the vault. And it's this really shitty kind of place where you stack your 3D models and it's kind of dumb.

But it's the vernacular. It's learning how to use these tools and to construct these spaces. And that that's good like VV is almost creating. like the geocities of NFTs. So anyways, like, I'm going on and on. But, like, Wes, like, you guys talk to me about how you guys see some of that happening, both in the crypto space and how you guys value things and how you share. Like, how do you see the world right now?

Yeah, well, when you invest in these digital collectibles, you're not just investing in, like, the 3D model that it is now. You're also investing in what it could be. Like, even recently, they had a Disney drop where they had, like, a Mickey Mouse hat, and it was golden. and it looks absolutely beautiful. And right now it's just like sitting in a little showroom or you can zoom in on it, see the little details.

But the company has been very open about how it can be used for multiple different things in the future, like they're looking for theme parks and stuff. And all these vast different companies are trying to get, you know, like their foot in the water in the idea of this metaverse. I think for the most part, when we're relating with XR, the idea that when you create these digital assets or these digital collectibles and that you actually own them, like kind of like something that I see in the future is we're able to have photogrammetry, like high detailed work of rocks, like high detailed people and stuff like that. for the most part I see in the future, like say I want to

get, I don't know, Keanu Reeves on my show or on my in my movie, but he's all the way across the world. Keanu Reeves say he owns the digital asset of himself, the full high quality 4K, 8K of himself.

He can send that over to us and then we can rent it out. We can rent it out. Well, we can actually take it one step further than that is he could be in his own location, say his house if you wanted to be. Yeah, exactly. And we can stream his, his body movements and everything about him in real time into, let's say, our stage, and they're going to shoot the next Matrix movie, whatever. Matrix 5. Right. So, yeah, exactly. So we could then

have and have him, his digital version of himself, not have to travel to us and be able to do all the things that he needs to do. Well, let me jump in here real quick. So because already we're pretty close to voice being there, right? So that even if Keanu has... You're talking about deep fakes. Right, yeah. Right. Okay, so right now, I think we're pretty close to...

If Keanu just did like a half an hour worth of, you know, getting on a mic like this, you'd be able to then do ADR for him for a movie, right? Easy. And then we're getting close to the point where you do a full body scan or something like or like you digitize enough photos of his face, then you could do similar things for his acting. So then again, sorry, someone's gonna jump in, but I'm thinking of like the crow like they did

with Brandon Lee and things like that, but we're getting close to that point, right? Yeah, but the thing, the thing about up to this point is like even deep fakes, right? It's a lot of work to make that work. What we're talking about is the ability to do this in real time. He could be acting from a different spot in the world. in all of these stages are coming together.

Do you need him at all? Yeah, because he has a special ability to act, right? He's his own person. The human part. Exactly. You can't replace these parts. And as we're talking about the metaverse and all these things, it's really important to keep in mind that we're still human beings

that need to kind of take part in this experience. And who we are as individuals is not going to change. And who he has as an actor in this case, who he is matters. Well, the way he expresses himself and carries himself, there will be subtleties and nuances. And, you know, the AI will be able to capture a bunch of it, but not maybe get to like that last, you know, 1% or 2%. That 2% could cost like a billion dollars to actually achieve. Whereas I think what we're saying is a couple things.

One is that like the digital rendering of these things have gotten really, really good where, you know, at least as far as the human eye is concerned, it's pretty indistinguishable. Second, it seems to me, I mean, especially if you see some of the stuff again that was presented, in the meta keynote or in some of Google's work lately, I'm thinking on the Facebook side of like codec avatars, the way in which you can synthesize or create synthetic, you know, doppelgangers of a person has gotten very, very good. And the way in which you can create puppetry that is also informed by, you know, AI models and bodies and things like that is also important.

I think what I'm trying to piece apart and understand is for those folks who have the skepticism and come to this and say, oh, this is like dumb. I guess there's a set of people. And I think, you know, like Wes and Ian and Tim are kind of in there. We're like, no, actually, this is normal. This is our web. Like the way in which we create content, the way in which we share, the way we struggle to like make things work is similar to like how we used to create, you know, use tables for layout and stuff.

Like we were approximating things that we were familiar with and that are ultimately good with technology that was imperfect. And that technology now is not only getting more and more perfect, but it's getting easier and easier to use and more and more powerful. And the types of expression that are going to be available to a whole younger generation that just takes for granted that Snapchat filters and AR and VR and XR and XR is the norm, I think is what I'm imagining is what the Metaverse is going to be comprised of. Yeah, and I think, Chris, you're kind of going towards some important things here about this kind of the way that we're going to make these things across the board.

it as kind of being in separate places and how we do this creation of, let's say, a movie or a show. I want Ian to talk a little bit about kind of what Navidia is working on because it, and Ian is working very closely with Navity on this, but it really kind of opens the doors to how we are all going to do this in the future and why all this actually really matters. Yeah, so ultimately when you make a film or you're trying to shoot a movie, commercial, the more iterations you can have, the more ideas you can see and almost storyboard on paper to get that final emotion out is super important. When you look at how movies were created, people were like, again, John Favre talks about this all time. It was super expensive to get any

rendering. So before they even pressed render, they were making sketches on a notepad and like, hey, can we move this here, can do this, that. But if they had the opportunity to see a full high resolution, high resolution render real time and make, you know, Brian, like you're talking about, maybe you don't need Keanu, but if you're working with other assets, can we move them around? Can we throw somebody else in a mocap suit who's really good at changing things and making things look real? It comes down to how fast can we collaborate and how quickly can we pretty much take an idea that a person has or a story that a person has that they want to tell and make it real. And that's kind of where, you know, Nvidia just launched and has, they just did GTC, which is pretty much them.

talking about everything that's going on and what is we touched on unpack that what is gtc basically it's it's it's it's pretty much in videos like yearly meeting about hey this is all of our new updates these are the new launches that are happening um it's like a developer conference yeah yeah yeah like a GPU technology conference exactly so the big thing they touched on and i don't get i can get a little bit into it yeah ultimately what what they're saying is the amount of collaboration that is needed to create a film i'm And you might know this, but you're bouncing off of so many, so many different pipelines. Like you're going in 3D.

Well, if you ever wait to the end of a movie that has a lot of 3D stuff in it and you see like the credits, it's insane. It's like a city. It's nuts. Yeah, exactly. So the back and forth collaboration that Nvidia is working on with Omniverse. And Omniverse is the thing that is going to build the Metaverse. Like, absolutely like. I'm sorry.

Say that again. And what is the Omniverse? I'll get it. So Omniverse basically, again, I'll pack this. We're going deep, guys. Strap yourselves in. There's so much here. But, you know,

Nvidia sees the ability, I guess I have to go even further back. You got to do it. Give the overview first. So basically all it's allowing to do is take all of your 3D programs that you would use for 3D work and use them real time.

Think of like a Google Docs. Like, you know, Chris, if you're where you are and I'm here and Tim somewhere else and we're all updating things. It's just in that Google Doc, but we all can see it real time. That's do that in 3D Programs is extremely hard.

So if you're, for instance, like, if we look at a regular table, you have a mesh, and then you have a substance on that mesh, which creates the texture, right? There's a thousand different things that makes the table to table. And you have different artists, like, collaborating. And the big thing is, it usually takes weeks to do things. Like, I have to export it out. Now you get it. Now you do your thing. Now you set it back to me, and now I'm going to do it.

That takes so much time. And the iterations, just you don't get enough. So what Omniverse is doing is saying, let me take all of your files and convert them into a file type called USD. Now, USD is... Has nothing to do with the currency, by the way. No, nothing. I mean, it does long term, you know. And this is a...

How do you turn USB into USD is basically the question? Exactly. Yeah, continue. So Pixar made this 20 years ago, this file type 20 years ago, to make Toy Story 1. Oh, right. So it's been around for a while. But Pixar is the only one that, you know, setting up all these servers and making this all work is extremely hard. And again, this is going to get easier.

But ultimately, what's going to allow us to do is we all can be in our own files and working in our own 3D programs. But when I, for instance, change the texture on the 3D surface, you're seeing it all the way across the other side of the world. In a completely different program. In a complete, yes. So this is the kind of like world building, almost like Roblox, but like with super high-deaf models that are super realistic.

Right. Not only that. Let me do a Mayacolpa because I chose, I didn't do the Nvidia Omniverse story. I did the Nvidia custom voice story this week, and I wish now that I've done the Omnibus one because this is my more than. The week's not over yet. Yeah. So one of the things that's important, again, I apologize, but going back to film school stuff, like, famously Jerry Lewis was stupidly the guy that came up with the idea of having a monitor on set. so while you're filming something,

you can see what it looks like as opposed to waiting for the rushes the next day. Essentially, what you're talking about is for this sort of creation stuff, first of all, you can see it before you actually do it, before you render it. Is that what you're saying? Well, I mean, it's all being rendered real time.

So I think that's a different mentality has to have. Got it, got it. Yeah, we don't need to, again, hit render. We're like, hey, make that iteration, and then boom, now we, oh, do I like it? No, I don't. Before, you'd have to be like, do we have to really think about this before we get ridder?

We're waiting three weeks for a really shitty render. It's almost like the storyboards are the act of creation. Exactly, yes. And as you're doing that, and what's huge is now you have all of these creatives combining their thought processes. And we all know, the more people you work with, the more talented and really fun people you can work with, the better the final product comes out. So as a director, if you're trying to get your idea out into the world, the quicker you can get it on paper and the quicker that everybody around you can see what you're going for,

the faster they can help you get to that goal. And so the fact that all these people in their own native languages, I guess is the best way to put it, can work in their own 3D substance, 3D max, whatever, they can think in their own language and can help you build, that story that you're trying to build even though you have no clue how to work any of these 3D softwares. Can I jump in one more, Chris?

Please, no. Okay, so when we talk, we're talking, I know that you guys would argue that this is bigger than just filmmaking and creativity. But if we're talking about the Metaverse thing, one of the things is

forget Keanu. If I'm going to be in one of Zuck's stupid fucking meetings in AR or VR. I don't want to look like a dumb sort of Nintendo

Avatar. I want to look like me, right? So how close would you say we are, if you can do Keanu, but that's probably going to cost more money than to do me for my Zoom meetings or to my meetings with

Zach? are we five, ten years away from when I can be scanned? Because that's the thing is that it would be interesting to be, as opposed to doing the portals with my kids and their grandparents, if we were all in a virtual space where as our bodies moved, they look like us? Do you know what I'm saying? So how close am I to being Keanu eyes? Yeah, so I've done full research on this, but there's a company out there,

crypto company, they go by the ticker hero, meta hero, but they basically, they have this huge structure that is filled with Sony cameras and they take very high quality, 18K, no, 16K possibly. You basically would go to a physical space and they want to do multiple, and they want to do multiple different locations. So say if I want to be in the new 2K game in my avatar and I want a high quality version of myself, you would go to a physical place wherever they have this set up area. You would go there and you would walk in and you go, okay, I have this time for 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I pay whatever in hero token for this to get done. And whoever owns these

locations get incentives for each and every time they get scans. So, me as an independent individual, I can go in, and all I need is one scan. I need to find one time during my life to go to a physical place to get a full 16K scan of my body, and I can use it for the rest of my life. Presuming you don't age, I mean, that's a great way to live forever. Yeah, you are going to age, obviously. That's actually interesting. So what Wes is talking about is volumetric capture, and we can do that now professionally on these bigger stages with very, very few places can actually do this.

And to be honest with you, yeah, it captures yourself and how you are now. But ultimately, it still doesn't look great. I mean, it's also huge and kind of clunky. It is. It's going to take time to really get there and to answer your question in five, ten years. I mean, God, I don't know, the speed that everything is working in the whole blockchain world. I mean, it could be five years. Or you're going to be able to hold your phone in front of your face and do it within five years.

Yeah. Well, I was like, so hold on, like, because the direction you guys are going in is, it's speculative in one direction, which sort of presumes or assumes that people actually would prefer to live out kind of a, you know, I don't know, a more human than human kind of experience in this metaverse. And that is certainly one articulation. Now, one of the links that I shared is for Google's Project Starline, which does some combination of kind of a volume metric like phone call on like a high density or high, um, high, high speed. line and it uses AI to sort of synthesize your face and do all this, I don't know, cool, interesting light work or something. There are a number of those efforts that are trying to make super real like human expression, you know, facial soul machines, I think is another one. They're based on of Australia. They do this stuff too. But I guess what I also wonder, going back and circling around to, you know, Wes's interest in the viviverse and about some of these collectibles.

And I mean, what's going on with board apes and all the cryptopunks and these like 8-bit art things is that people seem to want to have this broad valence of the way that they might express themselves in the mid-averse. So, Brian, you can be totally, you know, fully 3D, fully realized, you know, you can go and use your hero coins to buy that, you know, 3D version of yourself that never ages. But I feel like there's going to be a whole other other group of people that are quite pseudonymous and want to use those avatars in the space. That's always what sci-fi has always imagined. That's the whole ready player one thing. Exactly, right. And so I guess like I'm curious for again, like these either meta-natives or, you know, crypto-natives, like, what you guys feel about this?

Like, aesthetically, like, does it matter to you? You don't know what I mean? Like, I guess like, we kind of look at it. We're like, oh, like, interesting. Like, I would never do that. I'm not going to be in VR all day. But like, I feel like you guys have a different relationship. to these technologies where it's just like you take it for granted.

So what are we missing? I think the one thing to consider here is there's, let's say, let's take a game like World of World of Warcraft or something where you create an avatar of who you want to be. Yep. You can make that person anything you want to be. In my case, I like to be a dwarf. I don't know. It's your inner self, you know, coming through.

But they're badass, right? And they're just like big, broly dudes. And I can. This is because I used to beat you up when we were younger, right? That's right. Yeah. This is where it comes out. I have to really make up for all these years.

So, you know, I think, but I can make that version of myself what I want it to be, right, at that time. But then we also have this thing where I kind of think about like, and I think Brian,

you may have just mentioned this was like, okay, I'm going to call and have, like, I don't want to do a Zoom call because Zoom blows. But like, let's just say, like,

you know, I want to have a version of myself that represents me as I actually am so that she feels she can connect. with me, right? I think there's going to be a few versions of ourselves that we're going to be able to do. And honestly, I do think that that version,

the very realistic one, is going to happen all in real time and not that wouldn't be an avatar, right? That would be something different. But there's a version of ourselves as we are, and there's going to be a version of ourselves as an avatar. And they're going to be used for different things based on what that use case is.

And it makes perfect sense right now because of where we're going. Avatars are easy. We can make things how we want them to be. It's very hard to replicate who we are and how we actually are at this current state. But yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that there's not going to be two options. And you have to be careful because our facial expressions and how we, like everything that you do, the way your eye twitches, the way how many times you blink, like the conversations that you have and the things that you pick up, that's why like I hate texts and calls. It sucks.

You can't see, you know, somebody's expression. And that's super important when we're talking about emotion because, yeah, you want to go see grandma or you want to see somebody that you couldn't see like what are those last conversations that you might have and you want to make sure that they understand your sincerity and understand um how you're feeling in that moment you know if a i is kind of messing that up and giving somebody an off feeling of you not being genuine like that might affect how we have relationships so there is again going back to that uncannity value we have to be careful with how that affects it and weirdly i feel like this got compressed i maybe

Maybe Zuck did this to us, but there was a time when... He did it all. He's done a lot of things to me. But there was a time, like, in the Tumblr days and even before that, when, like, you had an AOL screen name where you could be somebody completely different than who you were. So there is precedent for the idea that you have different hats or different uniforms that you put on and different, you know, depending on who you're talking to, what life you're living, where you're living. where you're living at, those sorts of things.

Actually, the people speaking, what are your age? If you don't want, I'm just curious. Wesley, go ahead. So I'm 19 years old, and then I'm 22. I'm 450. That's not possible. I'm older than you.

I'm 463. Okay. Dwarf years. 40-year-old want to serve. Well, this kind of does get into what I'm talking about, which is I feel like we've been through a period where what the promise of living your life online was is that you could be something and somebody else, and then it got sort of folded back into you have to live your real self.

Zuck did that to us to a degree. And then, you know, I don't know. So maybe it's sort of like, you know, a flower blooming and closing and blooming and closing. Like these things can go in cycles. But the younger people right now, I'm curious. how you feel about this idea of identity, digital identity versus real identity? Does it even matter to you? Is it so frigging fungible at this point that it doesn't matter? Well, I think when you have anything

revolutionary when it comes to tech, the thing about this is it's not just you changing your identity, but it also is you can change your environment on like, you know, just like that. Like I can go in my room and, you know, I'm 19 years old. I'm not that great at cleaning my room. But think about it. In the future, I could walk in my room. All I'll need is a bet. I don't need a bureau. I don't need a TV. I don't need a desk to work on. All I need is a bed and a bunch of room to work in. Right. And I could just put my VR or AR glasses on and I could be wherever I want. I can have my own virtual office. I mean, this is what they show in Ready Player One. I was going to say, this is that Ready Player One thing that freaks older people out. Exactly. The fuck. especially like not cleaning your room is but well you don't have anything so what is there to clean there's nothing we just got a mattress

you have like a mattress and like a peloton tread and that's it and you do have to be careful though because we can't it's tough to think about this now because even our idea us being young like we're going to have kids younger than us that are just like I don't even care about the physical world that could be a possibility but when we think about it right now So wait, you believe that. You believe that that is an inevitability.

That's where things are going. No, I don't believe it, but I'm scared that it could be. Like, I'm scared that, you know, somebody, and I think about this all the time, and maybe we're already living in a metaverse, because if you were born without any understanding what the real world was, and we were just so keen to be like, oh, somebody's born, like stick them into VR immediately. You don't know anything that's different. That's the matrix.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're back to Keanu. But ultimately what it comes down to is like, I don't think, you know, I really don't want to lose that, you know, human touch or like that physicalness that, like, hey, we're all in this room together. Like, we're all sitting in this podcast room together. We can bounce off each other. I think that's what Zuck's trying to replace is like, you know,

screw seeing your friends in real life. Let's just all be at physical avatar. Let's have play dates where we all sit around and go to VR. Exactly. Chris, can I do one more generation? thing and then take it from here. Sure permission granted. Does this

have to be on the blockchain? What we're talking about, everything we've been talking about, we've sort of been dipping in and out of, well, of course we can do this on the blockchain and this. The idea that the Metaverse and Web 3 are sort of the same thing,

to what degree do, again, you Youngs, how much do you believe that this is inevitably going to happen on a blockchain in some capacity? Well, I think for the most part, the biggest concern right now for, I mean, I guess people our age, I mean, I wouldn't say privacy because we all know, like, at the same time, many companies have access.

So we kind of, with Web 2.0, we kind of sign our informational way. But with blockchain, you kind of have the opportunity to technically own what you have. There's no middleman when you got Facebook and you got Google who, okay, if you want to, if you do really own this? Do you really own this digital asset? And when it comes to privacy for the for the most part, I feel like we've already given up so much privacy at this point that if we are going to take the next step to the metaverse, it would at least be, I guess, not as bad when it comes to introducing blockchain into it. is then at least you know what you own, rather than, okay, well, do I really own this? Or am I going to have to go through a middleman every single time? Because you believe that what a blockchain means is it's always decentralized. There is no middleman that ultimately owns and is selling you.

Yeah, well, there's, I mean, it depends on what you kind of go through. There's different designs when it comes to different crypto economies. but when it comes to like like I said this VVverse thing if I were to not have this through the blockchain and I were to just buy a Mickey Mouse hat with $10 USDT I mean the only reason that I know that I own it is that it's on my phone but if I have a wallet address that is super hard to be I mean hacked or crypto. I mean, who knows, but at least I know that as long as I keep my wallet, say, if I have two-factor authentication in, and I have all these different privacy barriers, I will actually own what I have. And for the future, I will likely own everything inside my VV vault for now. So, like, one question, I think, to build on what Brian is asking is a bit about, like,

your value system. Like, I hear what you guys are saying, and I feel like we had a lot of these, I don't know, conversations, I want to say in the early era of kind of like Web 1.7 to, you know, as 2.0 was coming out about decentralization and, you know, having grown up in New Hampshire, as you guys are, like we're quite libertarian on the spectrum. And yet there's still, you know, realities in making technology accessible and usable by a broad set of people. Nonetheless, as you guys are growing up in this space, there is a new set of assumptions about how you think technology should work, how it should serve you, how it should serve you, you can take advantage of it.

And one of the tensions, I guess, that would be really interesting to hear about is, on the one hand, you guys are talking about you're afraid that people are going to, like, lose touch with reality and with their humanity and they're going to lose some sense of their soul or something. And yet, you guys are building in this space. Like, you guys are becoming, like, the new experts of creating the digital environment in which people are going to spend a great deal of their time. So how do you reflect on that?

Because, you know, if I think back to what we were doing when, you know, and I was, like, coming up with the idea for the hashtag, it was like, we're going to empower people and give people the ability to publish without ever having to go through gatekeepers, blah, blah, and then turns out giving people that power was maybe not the best idea. And yet, and yet we did. And yet that empowerment, I think, was actually very important and very useful. And it brought more people into the ability to express and to connect and to share. And that's, I think, what drives, you know, not to speak on his behalf, but, you know, a lot of what Zuckerberg does. So you guys are building in this space, you guys are using crypto, you guys are creatives, artists, like,

trying to make this work. When you hear these messages in these keynotes, how do you receive that information? How do you make sense of it? What does it mean to you? And where do you think this is, where do you want this stuff to go in the next couple years? Yeah. Again, if we want to keep going on this, like now we're talking about like good versus evil. Like there's a lot of stuff that we can talk about. Just like in our mind, yeah, I would love for ultimately. these tools and this technology to allow us to tell better stories and interact with each other in a more deeper way. But there's always going to be the flip side. You know, you can't have bad without good. So, you know, so, you know, so that's interesting just, you know, because it seems

like there's a lot of critics of social media today that are like, oh, it's terrible. And yes, maybe there are specific decisions that Facebook made along the way that we're not good for humanity. For sure. But knowing that in advance is really, really hard. Like the stuff that you guys are doing right now, whether it's deep fakes or whether it's the next election that's sort of, you know, completely defrauded because the whole thing takes place on an XR stage and we don't even know it. You know, like, there is no integrity, really, that prevents that from happening. The blockchain doesn't really prevent it if that technology is inscrutable or impossible

to use by most people. And it's always going to be, like, again, as technology gets bigger and easier to use, you know, the idea that anybody can do anything with deepfakes or anybody, you know, it's going to get easier and easier because right now, like Tim was saying, it's hard to do a deep fake. What if everybody has the potential to do a deep fake? Now we're in some murky water because nobody knows what's real. That's right. So, yeah, it's a hard question to answer, but ultimately, like, the reason why we're doing this is because we see a future where creating and collaborating is easier than ever before. And yes, there are going to be things where it's going to be like,

wow, this is really messed up that somebody's using it for this, but I think the best thing, and I've said this from the beginning, I want to know how it works so we can shut it down if it goes too hard. I would love to be like, if it does get too far, hey, how do we build a tool that can detect

deep fix? If you're at Facebook meta, or the other way around meta, would you be pulling the plug right now? I mean, it depends how much you like Zucker or not. I mean, like these little fits. a frustrating person. They're like,

understand. Again, he's done some amazing things. And look at all the, like, again, the reason why we even

got this far in XR is because somebody made a Facebook group a year and a half ago called XR virtual production, and there was a thousand people on it, and we went ham for a year and a half just bouncing back ideas.

What's funny is you mentioned us, now that Facebook group is absolute trash. People are trapping on each other. Somebody asked a simple question. It's inevitable. It's, it comes down to what, are people want to do with it? You know what I mean? And, you know, it is funny you say that,

because, like, thinking about it now, the group was amazing. But you ask a question now, it's game over. Like, you shouldn't even ask that question. Are you stupid? You know, whose law is it Chris about, you know, eventually it's all Godwin's law? Godwin's law calling each other Hitler or whatever. Yeah. You know, Chris, I think we've, I don't know if we've done this on the air before, but like, I think what you and I, Chris, have have lived through was the idea that like when we were coming up it was like well if we make information available to everybody that can't possibly be bad because everyone will have access to information and what we've discovered is that everyone having access to information just makes the

truth muddier and what you just said was that like what we're going for now is everything's muddy like the truth is going to just be like almost completely inscrutable. I think the process that we're about to embark on and have been kind of going on for the last several years is the realization that access to all subjective reality just leads to a complete kind of like mental breakdown. You're living in too many partial realities where you're not able to see causation and correlation and make sense of things over time. and then to take the lessons that make sense in one place and sort of, you know, really socialize them and make, you know, use them, let's say from a geographic place to a contextless or a complete context collapsed space like Twitter where everything is super important to everybody else and everybody wants everyone else to agree with them. And that made sense when we all lived in like villages of, you know, 150 to 500 people, like having everyone kind of agree that, yes, this is where the wall should go and, you know, let's not pee in that pond. because that's where we get our drinking water or something. That all makes sense.

But when you connect 6 billion people, the lack of coherence amongst all of our individually lived experiences makes it really, really hard to figure out what to do. And so in some ways, the Metaverse almost pushes back against that by giving us each a subjective space in which we can be the masters of our own universe. And maybe that's the problem. Like we just can't be connected to all those people. There was somebody, what was his name? Ian, I think, who, not this Ian, a different Ian, who wrote a post.

about how maybe humans just really aren't supposed to talk this much or something. And maybe that, you know, we've overwired ourselves. And it's like being on a really crazy, you know, mushroom trip where you've got so many things going off, you know, where the cross chatter in your brain is talking to itself in a way that just shouldn't. And so eventually you kind of like chill out. And then you're like, oh, okay, I can like think normal again. And that's why my brain is set up this way and not in some other way.

But I think it's actually pretty interesting because if we look at kind of what Bitcoin in the crypto space is solving, right, which was very financially driven at first. By making everything decentralized, it's actually, or not everything, but many things decentralized or at least having to be a big part of what crypto is in certain companies is so important because it's removing us from a lot of those decisions. I think this is people, people, right? So I think what is really important in where we're headed with all of this to keep things sane as more and more people are going to adopt crypto and blockchain technology, is the

decentralization is so important. I think about that because, you know, as Zina was just talking about, and Chris, you brought it just like how everyone has a say and how everyone's thoughts get into a conversation and how it can you start into a bloodbath very fast, based opinion. Let me try to make your point more forceful, which is one of the things that decentralization should allow for is for literally like decentralization. Like if you think about the universe and planets and the space, like most of the universe is empty. There's nothing in it. You know, and in that space allows for lots of different permutations and generativity to occur,

some things, you know, which produce life and are really, really great and lots of dead stuff that doesn't actually work out. So what you have to have with decentralization is the willingness. And I think DAOs are kind of a representation of where this could go. is if we actually allowed ourselves to decouple and to move away from one another and to try things out and to not worry about convincing everyone else, like what's going on and trying to cohere to some, you know, I guess cultural melting pot, that might actually be more productive. Right. The decentralization should be that there are a bunch of economies that spring up that have their own logics to them and that are actually like positive and productive and useful for all the members that exist within those spaces. It's when we try to create, like to centralize everything in. to one set of, you know, decisions that makes it really, really hard.

And also on top of that, that your values as a human can align with something. Right. By that economy, we're basically saying by tokenizing these different businesses or providing fractional ownership, which then hopefully aligns incentives with that you want this thing to continue to grow and to be useful and to be good. And then your interests are also served by contributing to it. Yeah. And I think that separation of people is important. I mean, Facebook is, I mean, that was a clear example of the shit show that this last year, last few years was politically. And now seeing that separating us into different pools is actually a good thing. This is one thing actually that I call her my auntie Kara, Kara Swisher, because I listen to her all the time. She made a point about community and commonality. And this is specifically around vaccinations.

and the choice that individuals should have over their bodies or not, and whether this is a collective action problem or whether this is a personal liberties, expression issue. And I think we've used the word community in a very kind of generalized way to presume that we are all part of one community. But in fact, we're not. There are many different communities, and those communities are operating under their own logic

with their own purposes and their own reasons to come together. We do have commonality. We are susceptible to things that want to destroy us or kill us or just infect us because, you know, they don't know what we are. They're just a host. So it's important, I think, to distinguish between being completely, you know, having to agree on everything and be an absolute lockstep alignment, which is a kind of totalitarianism versus freedom and the ability to choose amongst other folks who have, let's say, similar sort of values or interests

and so forth. So I know we've got like very, like, we're out of like the tech space and like, you know, now we're in, like, philosophical world. But I think it's. important because what I was hoping to elicit in this conversation was kind of a sense for the future from people who are like growing up in it. And the difference I think for me and Brian is that we grow up in a time like pre-internet and then post-internet. You know, I created like the website for West High School. There was no website for West High School before I came there. And so,

you know, 10, 15 years after me, now I'm sure, you know, high school kids go there and there's like some stupid website or whatever. They have no idea where it came from. it's always been there. And so they take for granted that every place should have a website. You're growing up in an era where you'll start to assume that every place, you know, that is meaningful, has an outpost in the metaverse does exist there. And so the culture and the decisions that you guys make now in how you're building for the space and how you understand it and the structures that you build that are either inclusive or exclusive from an economic perspective will determine whether that metaverse is actually humane and just.

or terrible. At least that's how I see it. So that's why I wanted to talk to you guys about this. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And again, it comes down to what I think, you know, what you talked about, you know, us all agreeing on things versus not. I think we'd all agree, like, if everybody thought the exact same way and was the exact same, you know, person, life would be pretty boring, right?

And so when we all have this freedom to express who we are and, you know, come to a point where, you know, technology enhances who we, are in a way where we're able to tell our stories in a better position or we have an idea that we want it to come to life and we're able to see that happen in less amount of time. I think that's ultimately why technology is so interesting because you don't have to spend hours or days rendering things anymore. We can actually get to the point of creating. Again, the whole reason why I think Tim I, Wesley are all into this technology stuff is

because we see a future where it's easy to create things. It's easy to get your ideas across. And, you know, I think there's a lot that has to be say with Facebook and all the stuff is a lot of the issues that come up is just misunderstanding, you know. And if we can have, you know, something where we can get our point across and we can understand each other better, that's the future. I would love to see is when, you know, somebody can read a post or or see a story that's been created and they go, wow, I understand their perspective. I might not agree with all of it, but I can see where they're coming because this is the way they grew up. This is where they're going.

That's exciting because now we can actually communicate on a more deeper level instead of 140 characters and you piss this dude off because he's coming out from a completely different angle. So again, we started in tech. We're going to philosophy, but it is all, you can't just take this technology that's coming up and just ditch what morality is or how good and evil choices are made. It's all encompassing. And actually going back to the tech for a second, you know, when you're just talking about this, it's making me think about in many scenarios, the consumer products are kind of made first on a large scale,

and then it kind of move into the film industry, into the event industry. My background is events. And it's kind of going from a small scale, on a mass adoption, to, you know, big picture, big items being built. With X-R, it's a little bit different. We've actually been spending time on the big platforms and the big stages. because it's so expensive to do this. And now we're going to start to move back into phones, into smaller devices and make it more consumer-driven.

And when that happens, it's going to be, I think, kind of the entryway into what people are thinking is a metaverse. I know everyone has the idea of what the metaverse is. I have my own. I think it's very much already a thing. It's just the connection of all of us and having digital assets and now the ability to actually own digital things, which Wesley touched on,

which, by the way, I think is incredibly important to the Metaverse being anything. Without digital ownership, you don't have anything. And now when you put all these pieces together, we're sitting in our living rooms, and we can transform a space, a physical space, which is what we're doing in these XR stages. We're taking the physical environment we are, and we are scanning it, we know exactly where everything is to a fraction of a millimeter, everything, and then recreating those things digitally. It's going to happen in your homes.

and it's going to happen on a smaller scale. The way that we go to the movies now is going to shift from seeing something on the screen to a fully immersive environment. But what's so important about a lot of these things, and COVID taught me this, is the value of being together is not going to go away. The value of us spending physical time and physical space together, whether there's a metaverse or not, will never go away. And I think it's probably stronger now than it has been. So as you think about things like the movie, and how we're going to experience these differently. And as screens, if we really developed the technology to stop light and create actual holographic images,

which I know one company is working on, how we experience those things as a unit together. And what Zuck was getting at was essentially we can experience us together digitally. I'm actually kind of saying more that, yeah, but that doesn't offer a lot of value to who we are as human beings. We thrive together, physically together. We smell the same air. We feel the same dampness in the air. Those are things that put us in the same environment. The Metaverse is going to have a version of this and it's going to play a role in it,

but it will not be, in my mind, the end-all be-all. It's just something to enhance and bring people that couldn't be with us to where we are. Well, I think one thing that's interesting about what you're saying there, and this is something that I think just over time, we have to recognize the ways in which the limits of technology to, approach reality become incredibly important and almost amplified, the more that we rely in what technology at the time is good at. So I think what, you know, the, the tactile things that you just described will not be available in the bedaverse anytime soon. Damness, smells, like,

the energetic vibe that you get from other humans in a space, those are not going to be able to be synthesized at scale really anytime soon, you know, I mean, unless maybe there's like some brain implants or something and, you know, Alon's working that. Elon's working on it. Yeah. Setting those things aside. Those are still maybe 10 to 15 years away. You know, I think what you're saying is very profound and very important.

Because, again, there's going to be a generation that grows up that just sort of does spend time in the metaverse and they spend time in meat space. And that's totally normal and totally functional. And I suppose, you know, with the awareness, you know, Ian, I think that you spoke to about how there is a difference and you don't want to get just, you know, sort of born into the Metaverse and then stuck in the Metaverse because there are amazing and important things about reality that we all need to be part of as well, given that that's where our meat bodies exist. Chris, do you know who said this?

Somebody said it recently. And for all my skepticism about Metaverse as like a boomerific. Yeah, by the way, I'm not trying to convince you, Brian. I just, you know, your perspective, I think is a really good contrast. If you know who said this, let's give them credit. But somebody said recently, and I buy this 100%. What the move to the metaverse is, is there's going to come some threshold where for most people, their digital lives are more valuable. Yes, that was, oh man, I bookmarked that.

Yeah. And by the way, I mean that emotionally, I mean that economically or whatever. And for all my skepticism, I would be willing to bet that that is coming, that threshold will be crossed sooner than most people think. Yeah. But like that's what we're talking about where. Sean Puri, Part 3, what it is. The Metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth more to us than our physical life. This is not an overnight change or an invention by some Steve Jobs type.

It's a gradual change that's been happening for 20 years. Let's see how, like, we saw in the past how revolutionary the iPhone was and how, like, if we were to go back and we were to envision, if you were to go back to like, let's say, 2000, and you knew that the iPhone was going to come out and people were going to be glued to their phones. And we've seen the good and the bad that it is brought to us, the good and the bad tools. Wes, you weren't alive in 2000. Okay, that's true. It could possibly be ancients. With the metaverse, you're able to have, like, think of the amount of problems that we can solve.

And I'm sure you are all aware of this about how people can do office work at home, which people are already doing, but exemplified. You can have business with whiteboards and you can create whole models and engineering way easier than just typing on a keyboard. You can solve all these things in an easier manner. But if we know that this is inevitable, which for us it really is, if you could go back in time and you knew that all this was going to be inevitable, what would you do with that? Like would you want to go down the route for good? or would you want to take advantage of this, which is in the bad way. But either way, every single tool that is revolutionized history has had the good and the bad, which we're all aware of.

And when it comes to the future, if we're able to bring apart our creativity and we get to have a choice on what the talents we have now, what we can bring to the table, because the earlier that you get in on this, the more you get to decide on, where it goes for the most part. Go ahead, Brian. I was going to say, Chris, I'm going to share it on Friday, but that Noah Smith piece about how the Metaverse represents potentially infinite

economic growth. So that's another way to look at it. But you know what? What you just said, please people, do it for good this time. Learn the lessons of Chris and my generation and please do it right this time. I think it's kind of word like,

like, you know, Satoshi and, or, you know, who he actually is, and Vitalik Buter, like, to me, are making something that wasn't necessarily in their own self-interest,

but something that was for the greater good in the way that they made, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And why that matters is going back to what I mentioned about being decentralized and they're not having control over what it is after it's made.

and that no one really does. And so I know that there's upgrades being made to, like, specifically Ethereum, but, like, the point is, if you had good people to start something, but not necessarily continue to control it and have, and actually trust into our computer system to, and code, to keep it going, you are removing some of the potential downfalls of humanity, which is the way that some people can take. I think a part of this is about, incentives and what we reward and what people pursue, you know, in their lives. And look, the internet and the web were built on open standards that nobody owns.

And yet we have five giant oligarch tech platforms that own. But also, you know, Brian, of course, to go back one step further, the internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack when humans were kind of at their worst. So it kind of does go back. Listen, I took a gummy a half an hour ago. This is starting to kick in. Okay. So, guys, you guys have been great.

This is amazing. Let's do a quick lightning round. One each. What's one thing that you guys are really excited about going forward? It can be tech. It could be your creativity, storytelling. Try to get specific about something that, let's say, over the next year, you're really looking forward to. At least that wasn't a deep question.

Trying to get some levity in here, you know? Brian's baked now. So. Why is it going to go first? I think I'm excited to see just I've always been interested when it comes to to economics and, you know, cryptonomics or whatever. But for the most part, I'm interested to see on how this actual free market plays out when it comes to crypto. And because I use us.

If it's free. freedom. But like for the longest time, like when I turned 18 years old, I was always like a big business night. I was always into financial. I was going to YouTube. Look at all these YouTube gurus on financial. I was like, oh, I just want to get into the stock market. I just want to invest my money. I'll be a millionaire in a couple of years. I'll get dividends and all this stuff. Which he probably will be by the way. Yeah, possibly. But for the most part, it was great up until I saw my Robin Hood portfolio go from up $1,300 down $2,000, up $1,300 down $5,000.

It was, to me, it felt like they tell you that it's a free market and that it's off you, but at the most, for me, it was incredibly difficult to invest. Like 90% of people in the stock market don't beat the stock market every year. year. The 10% are really the people with a lot of money who go, who have a stock market account greater than $25,000. Bees me, just a little high school guy or out of high school, I had this small account and I can't make more than three-day trades in a five-day span. I don't have access to these stock charts. I don't have big heavy bags to manipulate this stock or anything. but I for about two years I was probably a year and a half I was in the whole stock market until eventually

I was just so stressed and I was like okay I'm done I need to find something else that I want to invest my time and my money into and that's when I kind of discovered crypto and I found out that I like this is really where it comes to like elaborating elaborating on the middleman and decentralization like when I own crypto it's it's actually mine I'm not buying from Robin Hood who gets it from someone else, they get to stop from somewhere else. In a essential free market where there's no manipulation and there's no inflation, there's no, there's way less of a chance, I would say. I think those are big assumptions.

Manipulation. Yeah, I know. These are big assumptions for a 19-year-old kid. But when it comes to a free market, I'm just very interested on seeing how this plays out, because I'm a big believer in when you have a true free market, the holes tend to fill themselves when it comes to the issues. All right. So free market. So I do, it's going to be interesting. We'll come back to you in five years and if you've got a million bucks, you can send me some. You know, you can send me a Twitter tip, you know, and send 30% to Uncle

Apple. That's fine. All right. Ian. Yes. So in my mind, this is less, I guess, financial and more just down the creative route because I've just been in it for so long. But I would say it's, you know, you look at these stories that are told like the ones Disney's are telling the one Marvel and all these other ones are telling and how they impact how you know we grow up and those are being told at a massive scale and I think what I'm most excited about is that the tools are becoming more and more accessible to a younger generation and I think there's stories out there that need to be told by people who never had access to it before and I'm really curious how that'll affect you know the the way we view the world so you know if there's a team of 10 or 11 people who have access to this and now can tell a story at scale like you could marvel or Disney or all this other stuff then you know who's to say that they can't tell a story that's going to impact them in a way that you know a big feature film would so not saying it's going to go to 12 million people but the fact that if you're interested in a specific genre and want to create a movie around that or a story around that

it is more possible to do it now than it ever has before. So I'm more excited in the fact that everybody is going to be able to create and tell stories in a way they haven't been before. Very cool. Tim? Oh, man. I'm actually excited about a lot of different things, but one is definitely the way that we are going to experience entertainment in the future, in the way that we are shifting that landscape of very 2D. to very immersive, not just 3D, but actually immersive.

And we talked about sight, smell, and all these different experiences that are the way that we experience things. And we're getting to a place now where these are becoming very possible. And the reason it matters to me is we get to like the storytelling of, I mean, you can take any movie. But to be able to put yourself into that movie set and to look around as it's happening, you don't have to necessarily look. look from the camera's perspective. You could look from your own perspective and experience these things in the way that you would like to experience that. I just, it's, it's exciting to me because we get to be part of a story rather than just really watch. And these stories that I'm, I'm thinking of like the Harry Potter's and these very kind of magical and mysterious things that

are very much, we can only watch, but not really partake in. We are going to be able to partaking them, but on top of that, through digital assets and collectibles and this new financial system, we might have an ownership piece in some of these movies and some of these experiences where we own part of that set or, you know, it's not just watching. We have stake in these things now. And that's really, to me, what's really exciting. Awesome. Well, guys, this was amazing. Thank you so much for taking your evening and spending it with us and talking to us about all sorts of things that really push you guys in all sorts of different directions and you rolled with it really well.

So thank you guys for coming out. Brian, any last thoughts? You didn't ask me what I'm excited. All right, Stone or Brian, tell us, what are you excited about? I'm excited that Arsenal Football Club seems to be good again for the first few years ago. Chris, real quick,

were you involved in the ENS? I was, the domain drop, yes. Yeah, Jesus Christ, I know somebody that made so much money. I did not make as much money, but I was pleasantly surprised by, you know, registering a domain name and suddenly having several thousand dollars, you know, show up in my account. Messina.eath, yes. So I have the whole family crest now, so you're going to have to rent it from me, buddy. I was there first.

By the way, I totally forgot, but what do you guys want to plug? Where can people find out more about Studio Lab, about each of your, you know, what you guys do on Instagram and creativity. Yeah. Where can people find you guys? Yeah. So on Twitter, there's at Studio Lab, New Hampshire, or NH, sorry, Studio Lab and NH. You can kind of follow what we work on in the XR space. And then there's all, I mean, all socials, right?

We're pretty active on them. And then on the Events United side is also our other company that is very, very active in the event space. And one of the things that I'm actually kind of excited about is we've recently been releasing videos of kind of pack calls at the day in the life. And you get to see, it's like something you'd seen on Netflix and kind of see what happens at the events and behind the scenes and the warehouse and all these daily things. And it's kind of tells our story, right? And it's exciting to me because we built this 12 years ago, started to and to see it take its own flight right now. And those things are all on YouTube and on our website. But yeah, that's kind of where you can find stuff about us.

Okay. Ian, Wes, what will be you guys? Yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram, do a lot of Instagram stories showing, all again, the day-to-day stuff. So that's Ian underscore Messina 7. That's pretty much the only kind of have right now. But again, if you're curious about the day-to-day and a lot of behind the scenes. I think it's also, you know, for Ian, he really kind of, I wouldn't say pioneered the XR stuff, but he was very much at the very early stages of this that took a very broad vision and was able to kind of narrow down this XR experience for people

so much so that he's now kind of traveled around the country and working with people like Sony Pictures and other big studios on collaborating with them. And a lot of that happened from Instagram and you putting content out. Yeah. Yeah, well, so if you ever want to find me, most of the time I use Instagram, I'm at Wesley Messina. But for the most part, you'll mostly see me post stories about where I kind of work part-time for Tim. I kind of worked part-time with my dad at his car wash. I kind of do a cool, kind of dip my foot in the water of multiple things, kind of figure out what I want to do.

So if you want to join me on that journey, you can just follow me there. And watch his roads be a millionaire. Yeah, exactly. You ever want to see a 19-year-old become a millionaire over time. You guys can sponsor the next episode of TechMeme right home. Eventually, I'll need to make my own creator coin. So I'll see how it goes. Unfortunately, Wesley, when you become a millionaire, it won't really matter because a million dollars at that point is.

It's true. Yeah. With inflation as it is. Lars Zuckerberg has multiple million dollars and he's still working. All right, guys, this is great. Thanks again for coming out. And we'll catch you guys soon. Thanks, thanks everybody.

Awesome. Thanks, thanks everybody.