mergeconflict283 === [00:00:00] James: Frank, before we start today's podcast, I got to give a shout out to a listener. Are you ready? [00:00:16] Frank: Oh, yeah, we haven't done this in awhile. What do you got? [00:00:19] James: Whoa. Wow. Don Messer. Really? Uh, I have not checked my PO box in a year and, and, and, and [00:00:27] Frank: change. Oh, no, you just reminded me that I have a PO box. [00:00:33] James: Um, you can, you can send things to my PO box. I'll put it in the show notes. Uh, 2, 2, 1, 2 queen avenue, north box 5 33, Seattle Washington, 9 8 1 0 9. I don't check that puppy too often. Our good friend, Don sent me a postcard with a hand drawn Xamarin monkey on it, Frank. [00:00:54] Frank: Well, that takes some time. Thank you. That is cool. I haven't seen a picture of it, but I'm just saying that's cool because. Cool. [00:01:02] James: Thanks. Very cool. And, uh, Don writes in and says, thank you so much for the cool coffee mug. Remember we sent out coffee mugs to all of our Patrion subscribers a year ago and, and download. And he said he enjoys all of our merge conflict podcasts and wishes us most outstanding success. Wow. Life. And on our ventures, Don, we wish you the most outside. Um, most success outstanding. Outstanding. In life in your journey, wherever you're at. Don. Thank you so much for being a listener. And if you want a cool coffee mug, you should become a patron subscriber. Cause we will maybe send out coffee mugs at once. Again, I have about a hundred of them in my closet, Frank, and they need to go somewhere. They need to go somewhere. [00:01:45] Frank: Yeah. I I've heard merge requests. We, we need to do a little bit better job selling the merch, but uh, yeah. I kind of love my mug. I want one through, so we got to put a storefront up so I can buy [00:01:57] James: some. It is now I made a mistake with the mugs because I was on a journey. Well, let's do a little, let's do a little retro. This December is let's go on a little backtracking [00:02:05] Frank: here. I was on a, well, let me pause you there. There's no mistake with the mugs. The mugs are perfect, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say. [00:02:12] James: So I, early on. Uh, after we started merge conflict and intend to dispatch, and my wife started a podcast and we brought in a few other different podcasts. Like Danny had one with me and, um, we had a vegan podcast and I built up this network soundbite out of him. And, uh, I was really getting into the podcast game. I was like side hustle. Do this thing, believe in podcasts or. And I never really had the full time to invest in scale, like I really needed to do so somebody, um, is our podcast network, but, and there are podcasts on it besides ours. There's a few, but I sh we went out and we got mugs made from a local Seattle company. And they're the most amazing mugs. They're just Frank. Tell them about them. [00:02:55] Frank: The mugs are your, I want to call them the standard co uh, coffee shop or cafe mug, but the word standard does not do them justice. No, they are thick. They're heavy. It does. They will not break in an industrial dishwasher. Um, they have good hand grip. Uh, it's a good ceramic, it's a beautiful color. It's exactly the color. You would imagine a coffee mug. And it has a nice, uh, elegant curve to it. It's a very elegant curve. It is. Um, I, I treasure my mug and I'm glad it's industrial strength because I beat it up. Pretty good. [00:03:29] James: They're there green. I, I searched wide and far for coffee mugs and many coffee mugs are very thin. They don't keep your coffee warm. They are not, you know, heavy duty, thick walls. And these diner style, coffee mugs, uh, traditional coffee mugs. I just found them Seattle coffee works, I believe is the company it's on the bottom of the mug. Uh, and I, I drove down to, I believe Olympia where they're at and I, and I went the smart car and had to pick up all of these. [00:03:56] Frank: I did not know the story. I didn't know. He drove to Olympia. It's not that far of a drive. We don't like to drive here in Seattle. Great job, James. [00:04:03] James: Yeah. You got to drive through Tacoma and that's, you know, uh, so yeah, they all went down to Olympia and I picked up these mugs and I had to fill up this smart car with them and, and there was a lot of them and you have to buy them at a certain quantity. I believe it was like 200 mugs at a certain price. And. Uh, they're all super great, super great people. They do a lot of coffee mugs in and around the Seattle and Puget sound area and just really delightful folks. And we've got all these books now, in retrospect, what I should've done is I should have probably just got merged conflict and mugs and slapped our logo on there, which would have been better. Uh, that was that, that was like the, the thing I should have done that I didn't do because while soundbite out FM looks cool. If you're a merged conflict listener, we probably could have given out more and set up a merch shop. No one's going to want to buy my defunct, uh, [00:04:51] Frank: defunct. They are corporate overlords. We're just lucky that our corporate overlords are you. Yeah, so we, we lucked out there. Um, but yeah, but I, I think this is a call to arms. We should. Try again. And look, I'm going on record here. I am willing to drive to Olympia if that's what it takes. Um, I don't really want to mail these puppies out so we can negotiate with someone. There's a lot of, we, we didn't do the, um, infrastructure part, right? The fulfillment center. We didn't have a warehouse. So that's why we're a little bad at sending out mugs. Uh, James poor James had to do all that. The [00:05:25] James: fulfillment center was the closet. That was the storage and fulfillment actually was queen and dispatch, which is where my, my PO box is at. And, um, I just dropped off a box and I dropped off a list and I said, have fun. Here's my credit card. And I left and it was like 80 mugs or something like that, that I sent all over the place. I think the, the bill that I got back for shipping [00:05:46] Frank: international, right. You, you did international. You just threw it all in, right [00:05:50] James: through it all. And in some of them went to India and to Europe and to Australia, it's all over the place. And the bill I got back. Thanks, patron subscribers, because it was, it was more than what the mugs, all of the most cost, uh, which makes sense, which makes sense when you're sending out a mug at a time. [00:06:10] Frank: Um, I like it. We're running a communist system here. Everyone paid in and everyone got, wow. Patrion got a mug [00:06:16] James: Pedro. So today though, Frank, I have a topic because I was sitting at Fremont brewing, uh, last week, uh, with, uh, some colleagues. Not at Microsoft, but at another company, some, some colleagues of, of colleagues and we were discussing something that I think that you would find quite interesting, which is what if in this time we're at, we're at Fremont brewing right in Fremont. And imagine that there's like a virtual dog there. Right. Cause we couldn't bring our dog in, but imagine there's a virtual dog, but, but it. Your dog. Right. And then imagine that this virtual dog is like this dog that you can kind of have on demands. You get all the good things about a dog. It's like cute and hang out with it, but you don't have to pick up his poop. You don't have to do these other things. And then imagine though Frank, that like, we're all experiencing this virtual dog together. And also some how we can all like pet the dog and like rub the dog and we get like haptic feedback. About the dog. Right. But then we can like power dogs. It's like, we can be like, oh, look at all these dogs, like you bring your dog to work at Microsoft. You can't bring your dog to work. It's the, unless it's a, um, um, a service dog, uh, or animal, I guess there's more service than just dogs, but could be a chicken. It could be a chicken service, ferret, whatever it is. And you know, I was walking in the streets of Seattle and there was a missing ferret. I'm not going to lie about it. Now that fair. Let's just be honest. That fair has gone, but it's not going to serve no. I mean the streets of Seattle. So, but imagine this is, this is there. Right? And what am I talking about? [00:07:57] Frank: I am so confused. I have a thought, I know what I wanted to be. I really don't know where you're going, but I went first to Tomagotchi. Have you tried? Tomagotchi and then, um, and then I was like virtual, like, is it really there we talk in holograms, I would love a hologram. I'm actually really into holograms right now. And then. Or is he talking about her robot? What in the world is? So it's one of those episodes. Every one is an episode where Frank has absolutely no idea what James is talking about. So let's go on a ride. James, what the heck are you talking about? [00:08:29] James: It's the metaverse episode, Frank. It's happening. [00:08:34] Frank: Oh, okay. VR AR you want AR that? Okay. Metaverse Mehta the company Mehta, the Facebook it's happening. Did you watch the John Carmack keynote? [00:08:46] James: Let's start with. I did not watch the John Carmack one. Uh, I watched the, uh, and video one, uh, recently where they were talking about the metaverse and now here's the, the part, the metaverse is not one company, right? It can't be, it has to be like the internet where it's all things, I assume all into one, but really it is just a hybrid between snow crash and ready player one. And that's really what the matter is going to be. Right. Am I wrong? [00:09:13] Frank: I was going to say roadblocks and [00:09:15] James: Minecraft. They are many verses in their own, right. In some regard, [00:09:20] Frank: Oh, absolutely. And I think there are our first ones and yeah, it's going to be weird. How, how this all goes, right? You, you said it's not going to be one company and yet it is because right now our thing is games. So each game is a metaphor. You know, all of the RPG games out there, all the shared experience games, those are a hundred percent men have versus so what I think when people say metaverse, they're thinking about something that's more globally accepted, um, everyone's on it. And that's why kind of makes. That met at the company with Facebook. It's something that has a lot of people on it that they would actually be the ones to make us, uh, an early version of it. The other company has certainly tried over time, but we haven't gotten to that critical mass where everyone is on it and it's worthwhile and all that kind of stuff. Second life, second life, second life. I'm just going to keep saying that 8,000 times throughout this podcast. W where were, where were you going with us? So do you, what, what state do you think we're in? Where do you think we're going? What mistakes have we made? Which direction are we going with this puppy? Let's [00:10:27] James: go back because, you know, I mentioned snow crash, which is, I believe one of the first times metaverse as a word even was brought up, uh, in general. But since then in pop culture, we have seen, uh, we've seen a few things that you just mentioned, right? So I mentioned snow crash and ready player one, which is. Is describing a metaverse that we're all living in, but you also mentioned things that are existing today that that are not books are not film, which are second life, which was probably one of the earliest Mehta verses that I can think about. Um, but any MMO? Yeah, go ahead and fight back. [00:11:01] Frank: Okay. Citation a second. Life is what got me into. Uh, because a lot of it, at least like the gameplay logic was written in and the components, it was actually a programmable system. A lot of that was written in mano and I saw a lecture by someone named Miguel de Casa, heard of him. Yeah. And, uh, he, uh, actually, no, I'm sorry. The. By someone else, but they kept giving shout outs to him and we talked about, and that kind of stuff, but they used all these cool little hacks, you know, hacks in the good way to, uh, create a really cool scripting system for a second life and mano. And I found that runtime lecture so interesting the way they did continuations, you know, they could actually. Pause an entire thread at a time serialized its entire heap, move it to a different server and start that continuation again, really clever tricks they did with mano. So side tangent, uh, the tech behind second life was super awesome, even though it didn't totally take off as a plan. [00:12:02] James: Yeah. You know, there's, there's been second life. There's been the Minecraft, the roadblocks, the, all these things where you're, you're in it. And, and even fortnight to some extent, right. Where we're talking about seeing a marshmallow concert or Travis Scott concert with people there, but it's not really the immersion. No, you're not. I'm not. They're like, Hey Frank, come join me in this thing. And we're, we're, we're there together. I imagine the, the, the long-term metaverse and I'm getting ahead of myself here, the longterm metaphors to be the ready player one. Right. When I was talking about the virtual dog, there's a few things there. And you, you said these, these universally accepted, which I think is an important thing, and this is where the discussion went, um, uh, last week as well, because right now, whatever metaverse in quote we have, or the verse that we have right now, Is not necessarily globally accepted by all right. Not every single person or percentage 80%, 60% 50, but whatever the masses, let's say 51% of people are playing second life fortnight. These things are, there are a lot of. But they're not in it, right? We're not all yet. In a virtual meeting, I've never been in a virtual meeting besides just hopping on teams where that is virtual enough. That is its own micro. Is that a, is that a micro, micro med of hers? [00:13:27] Frank: It is. I mean, I, it, you know, this is where definitions get fuzzy and we can argue all day about what is this and what does that, and we can create barriers in language, but I don't find any of that. Fascinating. Obviously it's. Yeah. You know, like how deep in are you getting, how communicative are you? Are you representing your true personality or are you representing the character? These are important questions that an online culture where we're actually a pretty new online culture where like 20, 30 years old. And we're still figuring these things out. How do you want to represent yourself and what represent. They want, what software is going to exacerbate that, you know, there was a time where we all love Facebook and now we think they're evil and now we're like, well, they're evil, but it's a necessary service and it's all over the place. And we're just going to keep having these debates. I can write, I'm sorry. I'm going on a tangent, please continue. [00:14:17] James: Well, we get back to the virtual dog experience that we were starting to talk about. Like what would enable that technology, right? Would, would we all need, we'd be sitting at a bar. Yeah. Alright, Millie show up, right? That's that's our dog like Millie and here's Millie. And to me, we're not, we're not throwing an Oculus at the brewery. You know what I mean? We're not, we're not all throwing and busting out our glasses. Maybe there's a shim glass. [00:14:44] Frank: Maybe there was a time there with the Google glass where I actually thought that was going to be a thing, but you're right. If, if we want acceptance right now, then. Okay. So what I want to say is like, it has to be in your pocket or already has to be there, but it's worse than that. Uh, that will make it a toy that will make it to where it is today for it to actually take off, it has to replace something. Yeah. Actually that's when it actually becomes useful, you're like, oh, I used to have to carry two of these things and I only have to carry one. Now, in this case, it might be while I used to have to carry a dog around now, I don't have to carry a dog around, but, um, Bare minimum. It has to be something people already have, or is cheap to get something along those slides, otherwise, whatever. It's just not going to happen. Ideally though it replaces something, it extends things. It makes things better. Apple has a, what are they like USD, Z files. Like if you go shopping for a new Mac pro they'll like click this thing and you can see it in AR and. It'll uh, with the right mind types and all that serve at the right file off of a server, and it'll inject it into a virtual environment and that can actually be animated, but it's a static animation. It's it's not a reactive little robot dog that you got to feed every day and everyone can interact with. And then there's no shared experience row. You're just placing it on your phone. No one else can see it, but we're, we're, we're, we're getting these small steps in. Also, we have to keep mentioning games. Wow is definitely a metaverse, uh, the old EverQuest. I wasn't EverQuest player, not a wild player, but as well. I'll I'll you were a, wow. Yeah. So all the deep RPGs, those are men of horses. Of course. They're they're they're Mehta versus they're just you're you're stuck in an ORC [00:16:31] James: world. Yeah. I would say the difference there, if I can imagine. In in wow. Or in EverQuest, is it you're playing this other character. You're not playing yourself as if I was James the warrior or whatever. Yeah. That would be kind of cool. And, you know, and everything, all ready player one, people had their own avatar and things like that. And, and I don't know which route the. Metaverse eventually we'll go to, I believe that what they're trying to push at least is like realistic. Like Frank is in the metaverse and there's probably gonna be multiple verses that you go into where sometimes you're an avatar sometimes yourself, like business Frank. And, um, but yeah, I agree. Like if, if I was in that yeah. Teams for a team, the teams, right. The difference with wow. Is that you weren't like in it. I wasn't surrounded by it. Um, And I don't, I'm not, I'm not convinced that AR VR goggles and things like that are the, are they're the gateway, but they're not the mainstream. I don't know. Anything that you're strapping on to your, your, your faces there. The closest would be glasses way into the future way, way into the future. Where I think like mainstream adoption, what actually occur would be contact lenses. And I don't know, Frank, how long into the future I've thought about contact lenses as, as this way of doing an immense. And I also want the, I want all of the things to be sticky, right? So there has to be something computing, this power. I think of the iron man, right? That the Tony stark of it, where right now I'm at this computer and I'm here, but I want to be able to throw stuff virtual. I want to be able to throw a virtual tab over here and a virtual thing over here, but I want to have anything on, I want to blend those worlds, but I want to like wake up and you can imagine putting in your metaverse contact lenses and if you need glasses, they would all say. Double as that in a way to, and you'll be able to control those. Some, I don't know how Frank, but I feel like that is the, I don't know how many years it's going to take to get there, but I feel like it won't be mainstream. I don't think until it. To that point for like mass, mass, deep Metta adoption. Am I wrong? Am I right? Merged debate conflict me. [00:18:43] Frank: I am both going to agree and disagree with you as I do in the world. I'm always placating. Okay. So, um, I would always argue that I wanted those contact lenses too, but it was funny while you were describing them. I was like, that sounds gross. I don't want it. And it's funny. I wear contact lenses. I have absolutely no problem with contact lenses. I leave them in way too long, everyone, and, and they're terrible. So I I'm, I'm a prime candidate for this. And at the same time, I don't think they're falling necessary or at least, uh, I think those will be supplementary. So going back to my argument, um, I think people would wear glasses. If the glasses could replace your phone. If I, if I could leave the house with just my glasses. Yeah. Honestly, I would prefer to wear a nice set of glasses and I set a Ray bands that were magical phones and reality, and not have to have a phone stuck in my pocket. If it couldn't replicate all the functionality of the phone. Now I can't, um, I can't do ice circuit. Um, On my glasses though, you know, maybe I should get to work on that. I should be working on an AR experience so that I won't miss this wave, but there'll be a point where the device is functional enough that it can actually start to replace other devices. And that's when I will take off when you're like, well, you know, I could get a phone or I could get these cool glasses and oh yeah. They also do AR, but I can also get my text messages. And I think we're in a good spot. They don't need to be contacts in my opinion. Functional. It's the functionality that matters. Do [00:20:19] James: you believe that the metaverse will be hindered in adoption and push forward because of privacy concerns around people recording stuff? Like how do we get past that? Right? That was the problem with a lot of glasses. [00:20:35] Frank: That's a good one, buddy. I don't have a great answer. I'm usually pretty dumb when it comes to privacy. Things that I think are simple end up being hard and all that stuff. So I don't want to underestimate privacy here. I never liked the idea of, um, Recording the world, but I guess, you know, if we want an AR experience, it's very hard to do AR without having a camera, you need a camera of some sorts to kind of scan the environment, to do the overlays properly, really hard to do without a camera. And if you have a camera there technical, you can record and technically you do it without a light and technically. You can do that in places where in the United States, we have a general rule of if, if there is an expectation of privacy, you can't record someone. If there's not an expectation of privacy, then you can record them. So those lines are just, I think the lawyers are going to have to come up with better definitions for those lines. Like the legal code is going to have to catch up with the technology. Yeah. [00:21:34] James: Correct. Because anyone at any point. You know, take out their cell phone and start recording anything at any given time. And people are Snapchatting and doing stuff all the time, but there is an expectation in certain instances, just like there's drone laws, right? You, can't not people do this and people get very upset. You can't just fly a drone over somebody like that. That's not, you can't. If you tell them it's kind of fun actually. And, um, I was around some people that were very angry and threw some rocks at not my drone, but other, other people's drones. Um, it will do get very upset about the drones and, and I'm very cognizant of that because I read all the drone rules and regulations, but even then, right there, those are things that are, you know, they're flying around and doing stuff. But granted, we all have a super powerful recording machine in our pocket, so, okay. So at some point we have this. For how long is the metaverse or does, is the other question? Does the metaverse stay. Inside your house because those, those privacy concerns, right. You know, we think of ready player one, you strapped into a haptic suit and you put on the guy you've seen ready player one. You've read ready player one. Right? Okay. Uh, both, [00:22:45] Frank: both. I've done on both. I did my homework, James. I didn't know it, but I did my homework. [00:22:49] James: Good. I'm proud of you. That, that then those are important things because I don't read many books, but when I read ready player one, I loved it. And then I watched the movie when it came out, book was better, but movie. Maybe I'll rewatch the movie tonight anyways, regardless. Um, that was an experience where, you know, you stayed inside. So do you think that the metaverse is going to stay an inside thing? Because of all those things where we literally don't have an answer to all the privacy concerns and all that other. [00:23:16] Frank: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I don't, I don't know the answer in some ways I want to boil it down to, is it going to be VR or AR what's going to win and you know, you want to think that they're, they're so related to each other, that it's going to be a blending of it. If I have a pair of glasses that can do AR. Probably I could just put a mask over then them and all of a sudden I'm in VR, you can capture the entire world around me or give me a holodeck experience. You know, I'm waiting for a holodeck. I want like eight projectors in my living room and have plain white walls and then just be able to enter any visual space that I want to want. That'd be fun. Well, [00:23:56] James: well, and imagine a world where I'm sitting at home and Heather and I put on a. AR our glasses and we are in a shared experience and we say, let's play mastermind tonight. Right. Or let's play clue. Right. And it's like, Hey, that you don't own that game. Right. Ah, okay. One of you buy it and you share this experience. Oh, Well by clue, right. All as 4 99, or I just buy it and download it to my glasses. And then you invite, I invite Heather to the game and then we can see the game with our glasses. And it's in this environment here, basically. Like that's yeah. That's what I would want to see in general. Right. And that sort of shared reality space, but, um, it's gonna like put it down on our table. We're not going to slap on our glasses and do this thing because you know, when you play a game, You're looking around, seeing people, seeing people's facial things and things like that. That's just one experience where the VR experience on the other hand is the complete opposite. That is the ready player. One experience. There was no augmented reality, mixed reality experiences there and there, I believe that they both fundamentally the verses that they create are fundamentally not fundamentally there overly it's a Venn diagram. But they're the ven parts that aren't the same are pretty good sizes. That's what I want to say. [00:25:18] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we're going to end up with a multi metaverse multimedia. That's [00:25:26] James: horrible. A Marvel multi-verse [00:25:30] Frank: unified stage five multimedia verse. Um, okay. So I imagine this, uh, the internet comes out and we have this wonderful thing or the Internet's out, whatever the Internet's great and a wonderful things invented, and it's called the worldwide web and now people can create things. Things called the. Uh, websites and all of a sudden, the world explodes the internet existed for years, years before the worldwide web existed. But it was that key invention, a, the invention of URL, B the invention of a HTML, making it pretty easy to create user interfaces and linkable documents and things like. And because they were hackers, they made it pretty easy to set up servers and all of that stuff. And thus the great internet was created and we all got jobs and we lived happily ever after. But the problem is, uh, the, the URL can transcend all of this. The URL is still the greatest invention of humankind yet. I mean, a universal resource locator. How awesome is that? So we w we, we we'll take that. We'll take that, but, uh, HTML. We'll take HDP. We'll take you RLS all that. Stuff's fine. We can run all this on our servers, but, um, we tried to create Mehta versus we tried to create like 3d world and virtual world. So VRML back in the days, it used to be a part of all of the HDP servers out there, but it just failed. It didn't work probably because we didn't have good interfaces to it. But also because we had an invented web 2.0 and social media and all that stuff. But even today, even with HTML being so easily. Absolutely. No one creates an in the global scheme of things. Absolutely. No one creates websites. We all create Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and blogging WordPress's and we're blocky things. And we need that software, those creation kind of softwares to come out. So that. You know, making a virtual world as a hard work, even with unity. I love unity. I love creating a little union environment, putting on my VR goggles and go look, I'm in a virtual world, but it's still a lot of work to make it look good and put effort into. So we need the word presses of the metaphors. [00:27:46] James: I do agree. I believe that there's multi parts. There's a, there's a, there needs to be a place where developers are able to create fundamental, fundamental pieces and extend these verses. Right. I think of it as an app store, the iPhone, right. iPhone would be nothing. Without developers creating software for it at any given point and companies have spawned all this stuff took many years to get there, you know, in general. Cause after, you know, it took a little bit for apple to open it up and they had to create a fundamental foundation for developers to build upon and continue to innovate on and extend that single. You know, uh, in general and there's, there's the ecosystems and the, the metaverse that is inside of your phone or the verse, maybe it's a 2d verse that's inside of your phone. Is there, it will unlock different things. But then there's the other part, which I think is, is, is happening to some regards, the creator space, right. Platforms that enable other people to create. More platforms with that platform. So, uh, when I look at the roadblocks of the world, right, that is like one thing where we're we're creators are creating things and creating unique experiences without necessarily having to be a developer, but then some of them are and creating new things. But then the Squarespace is that word process, like you recreate that. So if anyone wants to extend the metaverse or integrate into the metaverse, there needs to be a sliding scale of entry points. You know, I just recently, for example, You think of early internet, right? I was a geo cities person. I had one, I had one that was it, a foundational piece. I just recently I'm getting back into dance, dance revolution. And I remember doing this old modification where you took one of the soft mats and you modified is with some wood and some runners and stuff. And I found that website that I use about 50. Nope, 20 years ago, I'm older and it was on angel fire and that was still available. So, you know, what I did with that website is I put it on GitHub. So I just, I took it. I copied it. I was like, this angel fire may not be around forever, but those are fundamental pieces. Like when you think. People got their ideas and they were able to express them. Right. I love this point that you just brought up about this, this space for enabling people get. Cause if, if only Facebook, Metta, if only Matta and only, you know, uh, whatever company is is going to do is going to create these things. It's going to limit the creativity. That's going to enable everyone. There needs to be that infrastructure, though, right? Just like there's internet infrastructure. DNS lookups. There is registrars that is combining these in and bring it together. And if you think of the early AOL's, they, someone brought these pieces together. So maybe it is meta that will bring some of these pieces together. And then it'll fan out over years. I don't know if I'll be alive for it or not. Maybe I think. [00:30:41] Frank: I think it will be. I mean, the, the social networks are our best and easiest example for all this stuff. And the early social networks, uh, grew fast and died fast. You know, that it was the wild west of all that, because we were trying to figure out what the social on the internet actually mean. How much of myself do I want to expose? Uh, what are the kinds of posts I want to do? Tumblr was a great playground for all that stuff. So I I'm actually really optimistic. Uh, even if. Not even if I hope that Metta and Facebook or whoever it is, whatever they're calling themselves. I hope they do a good job. Yeah. I want to see them create something. Awesome. Yeah. I don't have huge faith that they will be the AOL or the CompuServe of the metaverse. Um, there's, there's, there's a definite chance that they do and they succeed. But they're going to create something at least interesting. And then someone's going to build from that. And then someone's going to build from that, you know, Facebook was not the first social network. They're like the fifth big one, if we're, I mean, depending on what scale you don't want that at the millions of social network. And so, and they succeeded because they learn from the lessons of all the people that came before them. Yeah. Now they're the frontiers now they're the pioneers and it'll be interesting to see if they have. And I don't even want to call it smarts. It's luck. You can't predict the mass movements of social groups, no matter how much foundation you read or any of that kind of stuff, you just can't. And so they might succeed. They might not either way something interesting will come out of it. Um, talking about, um, buying fun displays online. We're not talking about that, but I'm just going to segue over there. I was interested to see, you can actually buy cheap, like. To display controller's meant for left and right eyes met for VR goggles and you can buy these things for like 50 bucks. You can build a DIY VR headset kind of easily. Now you got to get good lenses and all that stuff, but we already see commoditization of it already. So the hardware is getting there. It's a matter of getting the software there and, um, and burning through the frontier and seeing what there is on the other. [00:32:54] James: And once you get that adoption of people in, we create the infrastructure for people to come meet that software and make an extend the verse. Right. Then, then it will grow from there. And that's why we saw, you know, Facebook, iPhones, Android, these windows, Mac, these different ecosystems grow because people are there. So you gotta get them there. It's gotta be enticing. Right. And the original iPhone is going to know there's enticing enough, even with this lockdown ecosystem that people flock to it. And then from that, it was able to expand. But if no one bought the original iPhone, there wouldn't be, we wouldn't be where we're at today, but you know, it's the same thing with Facebook. If Facebook never went beyond high schools and colleges, it, you know, they're that mass adoption. So I think that there there's different scales to mass adoption. Not that you know, mass adoption is. I would say, like, even my wife wants, wants to, to join in into the metaverse or whatever it is. Right. And, and, but again, that adoption might be like, oh, she's just logging into Instagram verse or what, you know what I mean? Like if there is this scale versus copyright that real quick, it's diverse, it's diverse. Dot com sold, uh, as VC there's VCs listening. Um, and I will pray your Insta. We have a great name. [00:34:14] Frank: We don't know what to write, but we have a great name and we have [00:34:16] James: ideas. Yeah. What you do is any photo that you take, what we'll do is we'll turn that into a virtual experience for you and your friends. And it was great about that. And then you can host audio. Uh, chat rooms in real time in this verse that we've created for you in this like amphitheater or wherever you're at in the world. And then you come and commoditize that and monetize it. And then, you know, you can do things like that. But you know, it's basically a hybrid of, of clubhouse and Instagram and second life. So there you go. That's. Uh, let's see if it's diverse in the, [00:34:52] Frank: you sold me. Here's my $10 million. Uh, let me know how it [00:34:55] James: goes. I don't think anyone owns it. I'm thinking about the buy it frightening. [00:35:00] Frank: Um, more co buying it. I want in, on this racket. [00:35:04] James: I mean, [00:35:07] Frank: where were we before we totally sidetrack with the Insta verse? Well, uh, I was saying I'm excited. I'll I'll just repeat that. Um, I think it's going to work out. You can't predict technology shifts. I, it will be something though. I think the phone in our pocket. While it's been amazing and I've made a career off of it. It's not the right form factor. We need more kind of wearable tech. And as we get more wearable tech, woah, expected to integrate with the environment more, hence the AR stuff. And everything's going to be social. Everything is social. Whether we like it or not. I was trying to do some PCB board design, but I had. Create an account and they have a social element. And now I have a profile with a profile picture because, oh my God, what software can you have these days without a profile? So I think all the chromogens like myself are going to be annoyed, but social is definitely the future. And at least the young ENS have been raised in a social world and they know how to protect themselves and [00:36:09] James: manage it. Well, totally. There's our metaverse. We will obviously pick up on metaverse stuff as metaverse continues. Cause I'm, I'm excited about this last part that we sorta talked about, which is really the extending, the developer opportunities. I believe that we're at we're where we are today because we took a look at these new experiences that were emerging. Cell phones and cell phones and heard them period, specifically iPads, iPads, iPads, smartphones, and iPads. We looked at them. We said, Hey. This is going to be a thing and I want to be part of it. So when we were developing during the rough early years and where everything was really crazy, you know, we fell in love with that. So I hope that this is the, I'm always not necessarily always looking for the next thing, but you know, I've been building mobile apps for 10 years, 11 years. I feel pretty good about that. I'll, I'll continue to build them and do things with them. I think there's a long journey with them, but I do, um, feel like I have some excitement. Is there a next developer opportunity in some verse? Cause I haven't felt it yet. I haven't felt it with anything. You know, there's lots of happening in the blockchain and there's other stuff happening. I haven't really, it hasn't really spoken to me and I feel like maybe the metaverse will speak to me similar to how smartphones spoke to me early on. You have to be determined because to me, AR and VR, haven't spoke to me. In a way that I want to go develop stuff for them yet. So we'll say what comes from it? Yeah. [00:37:37] Frank: We're not normal people, us developers, but I wasn't sold on smartphones until I realized I could program them. It was once they enabled that developer experience, then I'm like, oh, now I can put whatever I want on this puppy. And I think a bit will hinge on Facebook or whatever it's called, whatever their thing is. Uh, if they create a good developer experience, 'cause they can't build the whole thing. No. And if they do the whole, oh, you can upload an app. Like I have made a career off of the app store, but I don't know if it'll be good enough for this one. I don't know if we can just have an app store and treat it like games, like. Equipment, they treat it like an app store and they treat it like games. So it's tricky to become a publisher. You get something up on the store and all that stuff. I'm not sure if the app model is a hundred percent correct for the metaverse. Um, I would much rather see the worldwide web model. Um, but if you're interested in those kinds of questions and thoughts, please go see the John Carmack lecture keynote, uh, at the last, uh, Facebook event, whatever in the world they called it. [00:38:44] James: Uh, I think fate fate eight. Oh, that's what FAA is. Right. All right. I will go watch that. Um, and then maybe we'll do a little Patriot on next week for that one and give it a little recap. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in and let us know what you think of the metaverse and where it's going and it's the buzzword of the day, but Hey. That's what we do here. We love buzz. Yeah. I love words. And then put them together, buzz and words. Uh, let us know. You can write into the show, merge conflict that FM, and you can comment and you can tweet at us and, you know, things, discord, uh, patron I'll I'll, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the things do it, share this. If you have a friend that's like interest, so, you know, socially hop in the verse and then we'll do, you can tell us in your virtual digital avatar. Sweet and virtual dog Millie would come bark at you anyways. Uh, if, if, uh, you liked this episode, share it with friend, like, Hey, Hey, you're interested Sam in the metaverse. What do you think Sam? And then Samuel should be like, Hey yeah. Um, Joan, you like the metaverse check this podcast and then she'll send to, to, to, to George and then George is interested in and then we'll grow our new broken altogether. Um, there we go. Let's do it for this week's merge conflict. Tell next time. I'm James Matson mag now. And [00:39:57] Frank: I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening. Peace.