CNET's Scott Stein and Brian Cooley explain the metaverse

Speaker 1: So Scott Stein is my fellow editor at large at CNET. And he spends a lot of time long has talking about and thinking about virtual worlds. In fact, Scott, you wrote a play years ago that almost envisioned where we are now. Speaker 2: Uh, this is true. My thesis play in college was about chat with rooms and explored living in a world where you'd be creating an alternate version of yourself. And yeah, it's kind of a metaverse I wrote a play about online game [00:00:30] worlds too. So I've been thinking about this for about as long as the first wave of VR people have been thinking about this. Yeah. Speaker 1: In a nutshell, what do you think the metaverse is? Well correct. What do you think the metaverse should be? The Speaker 2: Topic lately fills me with frustration makes me wanna scream. I've been covering this for a long time and I thought of it as AR VR immersive. And, and like you said, suddenly all of a sudden we've got the term metaverse, which has gotten a lot of heat and you know, it, it, it could weigh over hype or [00:01:00] it could end up the fulfilling. Some of those things you can tell people have been in the space for a while. It's like liberating and also terrible because they feel like maybe like the days are done. It's like the last days at disco or something. Right. Speaker 1: It's the last days of the nineties web, when everyone got along and it was kumbaya and all standards based. And then all of a sudden it just become this FRA fast of proprietary platform. Speaker 2: And it's not just about VR and AR headsets. Speaker 1: Okay. That's a key thing, cuz you've done so much work on VR and AR headsets. You're you're a guy [00:01:30] on that at CNET. And yet that is too narrow, a lens, right? This isn't just VR coming to fruition. Look how many people Speaker 2: Are gonna be wearing things on their heads. We've talked about this for a while. It is growing. Um, but you're always gonna have a subset. And I think it's kind of like, you know, how many people are wearing smart watches, how many people are using iPads or whatever. Speaker 1: Yeah. And those are large subsets because those are frankly easy to do. Whenever you ask human beings, put something on their face, they get really self conscious and really particular for good reason. So I that's [00:02:00] why I'm, I'm concerned that the idea that the metaverse equals VR, which is a big part of the conversation right now is gonna be very limiting to the average consumer's Speaker 2: Interest in it. And I think what we haven't seen yet and what we're starting to hear companies promise is this is this thing that I want headsets to be like headphones for your eyes. I've talked about that to companies for a while in the sense that when you're doing work, you pop in headphones or you don't, you could do speakers, you could use headphones. The analogy is not perfect for headsets, but there is something there. Um, [00:02:30] if you wanna create extra monitors, be in some sort of space for yourself, look at something immersively, dive in. Ideally what I'd wanna do is just be able to pop them on for the experience, pop them off, but still use the app I'm using. And right now on windows PCs, you can do that. That's what windows mixed reality was all about. It doesn't work for all apps. You know, it, it's kind of, it can be a little bit janky and you want it to work with your phone. I think because most people are working on the go [00:03:00] and we haven't had any ability to do that. Even though companies like Qualcomm are trying to strive for that with some plug-in glasses over the next couple Speaker 1: Of years. So I find that interesting, what you're pointing out there is there's one, there's one key to our answer. The metaverse could be a place where you take today's flat IL experiences and you can, uh, your choice drop to them to engage with them in an immersive way. Therefore it becomes an interface, a new interface for real life, a richer one, as opposed to a completely different [00:03:30] destination and a company Speaker 2: That I spoke to recently that I feel like is a, is a good kind of like, uh, you know, they're kind of like the Canary in the, in the metaverse, uh, for me to that metaphor works to, to see what's coming, um, spatial, which, which is a, a communications company that that's worked in VR and AR trying to define office spaces. Uh, this company ha had been, uh, has been on HoloLens and Oculus quest and a lot of cross platform stuff, but they recently pivoted to [00:04:00] emphasizing the web more and not headsets. So when I met with them, it was all about the web experience on your laptop, uh, where you can see your face in a video chat, which you can't do in VR. And they're, they're also pivoting into a whole NFT space, which is a whole other conversation. But I think that the off headset experience, which then they can, you know, you could pop the headset in and then join spatial on your headset with like a little quick link. I think that's the relationship. So you're like, oh, we're chatting here. [00:04:30] All right. Maybe I'm gonna pop the headset on, which is what Microsoft is trying to do with teams next year as well. We have Speaker 1: Got a long way to go yet to figure out how we're gonna do hybrid work and make it work well. I, whereas right now, as we're talking at the end of 21, there's a big trend to throw remote work on the junk pile and say, you know what? It kind of sucked. Let's get away from it. Do as little as we have to, and then do three or more days in the office. And I think it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We haven't even spent nearly enough time seeing how technologies that could include the metaverse in a big way. Can suddenly [00:05:00] make remote work the king and in office, the Speaker 2: Filler. Yeah. People were laughing earlier this year when I got to see, um, now meta Facebook's horizon work rooms, which was this virtual workspace that mark Zuckerberg dropped in. Everybody looked like cartoons. I still thought it was really interesting. And it's hard to see unless you're, you're trying it. What was intriguing to me is not so much, oh, we're we eating in a virtual space, but that it mapped, uh, my laptop into it so that I was able to type on my keyboard and [00:05:30] work on my computer while in this virtual world that, you know, like right here, I've got like the Oculus controllers, like most VR you're holding like a PlayStation controller and that's not a work tool. The they're trying to find ways to, you know, the nice thing about a computer or an iPad or a phone is you've got a way to get your work done and it's, it's seamless and it's gotta flow to it. VR doesn't have that flow yet. They, they, they're trying to fold tools in, but nobody's cracked. How do I get [00:06:00] real work done? What is my, what's my Speaker 1: Input. As you're talking, I'm thinking about, you know, the, the great triumvirate Cordy drop down menus and right click the three interfaces that we all know universally will that ethic of universality you think have any hope on the meta averse or is this gonna immediately fracture into the big platforms that have huge money or worse splinter into an infinite number of metaverse platforms? Where is it gonna live? Speaker 2: Everyone's promising interoperability, but history would suggest [00:06:30] that it's going to be, multi-platform fragmented semi uncompatible, half broken. Those are big questions I have. And, and when I, when I talked to meta about this earlier this year, there were a lot of metaphors to like things that can cross state lines or, or passports or, you know, things that can come with you. When you go to like the other place stuff you expect to bring with you, you know, I don't, that could be like digital currents that could be crypto, certainly, um, whole fully things like NFTs, which are claiming cross compatibility. [00:07:00] That could be assets, but we don't really know. And all these companies that wanna be open are also trying to build their own proprietary stuff. Speaker 1: And the other thing that's gotta be interoperable to my relationships if I can take my NFTs and my currency and my files, that's one thing. But can I bring my contacts with me? I mean, to this day, we all have multiple social networks from LinkedIn to TikTok and two or three in the middle, because we can't gather all of our people in one place. And if the metaverse can't do that, I think that that's Speaker 2: A big flaw. Also. What about your identity? You know, there's a lot of stuff now that, oh yeah, [00:07:30] right now it's been kind of a one-to-one mapping with creating an avatar med has talked lately about some sort of multiform identity that you'll have a much more of fluid identity. This is kind of the idea of the internet as originally dreamed, which was that we would have some sort of great fluidity of identity. Um, when we're online, then it became more locked down to personal, you know, information, you know, in the Facebook era and, and, and this kind of one-to-one mapping. I think that's interesting. But then again, like you said, you [00:08:00] know, where, how, how do you carry that over companies like Snapchat, which also works in AR they're they're talking about their lenses and air filters moving possibly from, from other apps that might allow the hook in, Speaker 1: Um, crypto bros and NFT bros, uh, time for you to tune out. Cause Scott's gonna rail on the, on the effect. You're concerned that they're, that they're turning the metaverse into something that exists for Speaker 2: Them. Crypto is a big force right now, uh, that to put it mildly [00:08:30] and NFTs too. And I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in that space, but it's force it's it's you can feel it, uh, chain changing some of the landscape, like again, to name one company, spatial moving to NFTs because the money's there and there there's a financial poll. And, and that also is kind of an off headset thing where you might be doing transactions in a lot of spaces, not just in VR or AR. Some of that stuff is about digital digital [00:09:00] content and the future of what goods are. But a lot of this stuff now is also like a lot of super trending drops of random things that people are speculating on. So, you know, and you don't know if that stuff's going to be part of the few, your landscape or not. Speaker 2: How do you know if you're gonna buy this some sort of NFT, you know, house or environment or, or thing it could be a valuable, or it could have no place in that next world. It could be, you know, have a little random piece of a, you know, like an old game cartridge, [00:09:30] all signs now, point to every company trying to talk about the metaverse is talking that on their terms for their stuff that works for them. You know, whether it's like, oh, we're phone based, we'll be on the phone. We're social network. It's about intercommunication we're cloud based it's about the cloud. Speaker 1: And I think that makes sense. I mean, in the sense that yes, companies and organizations are gonna say, look, here's a new platform. Let's leverage it to our, to our benefit for what we do. So that mean that makes sense. That's what they know, that's their knitting. Uh, but at the same time, it starts [00:10:00] to, it starts to become a little boring. It starts to become another way of doing what we already did that is sensible, but also a little boring. Speaker 2: I go back to how my, how I felt when I first used VR and when I still use new technologies and I find them exciting and surprising promising. And then I think about how the whole app universe opened up some incredible apps, many, many incredible apps that changed the landscape or streaming. You know, we went from like the ability to stream a video to a whole streaming economy [00:10:30] and shows made in a streaming landscape that have changed our perspective. I think it'll get to that point. And I, that we'll, we need to discuss the one-to-one mapping of the metaverse onto the real world, which is like, you know, suggest that you there'll be a whole IOT layer the way you can kind of peek into things in the real world from a distance through telepresence or the ability to just kinda like seamlessly jump into something. I think it's the seamlessness part that's missing because there's some really cool VR things right [00:11:00] now, but not everyone's in it and you're not gonna easily hop into it, but I think that's what everybody's trying to get to next, you know, I Speaker 1: Guess, uh, between some of these big buckets we've talked about, which is, um, social and, and communication, uh, gaming and entertainment, shopping, eCommerce, and work. And I guess we could put telehealth into another major bucket in there. Um, if we just look at those five top of your head, which one are you most excited about in terms of [00:11:30] its potential and it's near term reality. Speaker 2: I keep getting back to what we just went through in the past two years. You know, the beginning, I wrote a story early on in the pandemic about, um, how we're all virtual with or without a headset. And I wrote it in anger because at that point there were a lot of stories about how, oh, VRS really cool again. Or I think VR is really interesting and, and it is, but that the point was that we were all redefining virtual by [00:12:00] necessity and for a lot of people that didn't involve headsets. And that is the influence. Now I think on this whole next wave, every company talking about this, now there, there there's real experiences we're drawing on. Like we really need to get stuff done. We might have more pandemics. We might just be working like this. Um, we might want this tool in our toolbox and, and it's not a game anymore. Speaker 2: You know, now it is a real necessity. So I think about [00:12:30] that as the part to lean on for what I'm most excited about. And that may sound really boring, but it's also like you, we bring up telehealth or, or work. And I think about when people go, oh, why would it wanna be a cartoon or a conference room? Or why would I wanna do this? And I go, yeah, totally. But then what is the thing that we can do? How can it be better than zoom? How can we hook more tools in, is it just gonna happen naturally as we keep glamming more few futures, um, or we're gonna take this leap, but I think that is as metaverse [00:13:00] as anything else. Speaker 1: And I also think we have a whole convulsive wave of high bit rate technology we're gonna need for this because all the things we're talking about that are nuanced, nuanced, interpersonal convincing, uh, models for the metaverse need to get rid of all the, the lack of duplex communication, the stepping on each other, the lag, the out of ness of all this stuff that no human brain falls for. That we're way too sophisticated to ever [00:13:30] slide into that. Our brain says, okay, I got it. I'm on zoom, never, ever, ever, ever gonna be Vince that I'm talking to Scott Stein, I'm talking to a 24 inch monitor that has representation of him to get the metaverse to really seem like it's not there really transparent, which is I think a big goal. So that all I feel is what's happening, not the technology that's making it happen. We got a long way to go in just a lot of com of connectivity and processing. I think Speaker 2: There's a bit of a divide where we talk to each other now with our, with our real faces on [00:14:00] video in VR, it's all avatars because there's no way to capture your face when you got a headset on which companies are trying to overcome. But if we're digitally creating that you end up in that uncanny valley on the other side, you know, there are these two different parts and maybe they don't have to connect. Maybe it's us talking over zoom. And we're, we're also reaching in with other tools at the same time. You know, I feel like you, people have to kind of solve for that because you don't wanna have to choose. You don't have to either work in a conference room as a cartoon [00:14:30] or, uh, be in a grid with people to see like, you know, how my mom is really doing. I can see the, the expressions on her Facebook that almost Speaker 1: Certainly needs to include, uh, gaze monitoring and, um, and going beyond gesture to non-contact full body monitoring because I'm giving off all kinds of cues right now that zoom just can't even see what I'm doing with my hands, what I'm doing with my pencil, as I'm holding it here, as my eyes flick around here and there that I just look at the clock to [00:15:00] see how we're doing on time or that I just look over here to see if I'm getting a message, or am I looking around as I'm board, all those things have to be grabbed to really make this thing different and way better, better than today's so-called immersive experiences. Speaker 2: I see a big interconnection between AR VR robotics and automated vehicles. There's a, a coming world of these self-aware sensory systems. And [00:15:30] they're not that different. Like, I feel like the things that are on your AR headset, the things that are on robotics, like the LIDAR and the slam, the things that are on cars are kind of similar. And the idea I think is that eventually they'll all be training each other. We're gonna see next year, a number of headsets, introducing eye tracking, I think. And I think this is going to start advancing the conversation on that, um, for interaction, for questions of data privacy. Um, we've seen it in business headsets. We just haven't seen it. It's probably going to [00:16:00] show up on all the major competitors and the three pieces of hardware I expect will define the landscape next year will be met, is next headset, PlayStation, VR two, and whatever Apple's got, we've Speaker 1: Been talking to Scott Stein. He's my fellow. Hello editor at large at SNET.