WEBVTT

00:00:01.969 --> 00:00:04.469
(light music)

00:00:11.392 --> 00:00:14.892
(upbeat electronic music)

00:00:35.956 --> 00:00:37.716
- We all know why we\'re
here and we all know

00:00:37.716 --> 00:00:38.554
what we\'re talking about.

00:00:38.554 --> 00:00:40.140
We\'re talking about cyberspace.

00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:43.140
In the beginning was the
wire, the first layer,

00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:46.053
the base layer of the Noosphere, slide.

00:00:47.070 --> 00:00:48.643
Hey, Bruce.

00:00:48.643 --> 00:00:51.143
(light music)

00:00:59.142 --> 00:01:00.800
- [Narrator] In the mid 1990s,

00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:03.306
the utopian rhetoric
around the worldwide web

00:01:03.306 --> 00:01:04.606
had reached a fever pitch.

00:01:05.583 --> 00:01:07.260
Rapid advances in personal home computing

00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:08.820
and networking infrastructure

00:01:08.820 --> 00:01:12.243
were causing dramatic
cultural and economic shifts.

00:01:13.121 --> 00:01:16.320
Unprecedented amounts of
investment money poured

00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:18.870
into Silicon Valley and a new archetype

00:01:18.870 --> 00:01:20.850
of technologist was born.

00:01:20.850 --> 00:01:22.680
The evangelist.

00:01:22.680 --> 00:01:25.237
Evangelists were a combination

00:01:25.237 --> 00:01:28.350
of free floating salesmen
and public intellectual.

00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:30.240
They adopted particular technologies

00:01:30.240 --> 00:01:32.133
and acted as spokespersons for them.

00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:35.970
Some were employed by
particular tech companies

00:01:35.970 --> 00:01:38.320
and some worked for themselves.

00:01:38.320 --> 00:01:39.518
But either way,

00:01:39.518 --> 00:01:41.640
the goal was the same to
create a network effect

00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:44.250
whereby the more people
bought into their technology,

00:01:44.250 --> 00:01:46.920
the faster its value rose.

00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:48.600
Through sheer force of hype,

00:01:48.600 --> 00:01:50.850
they opened up their
own space in the market.

00:01:54.496 --> 00:01:55.329
We spoke with a former evangelist

00:01:55.329 --> 00:01:58.800
for Virtual World Technology, Bruce Damer,

00:01:58.800 --> 00:02:01.500
seeing the potential for
the Internet\'s website-based

00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:03.180
user experience to transition

00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:06.840
to a futuristic place-based
mode of interaction.

00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:09.390
In 1995, Damer simultaneously formed

00:02:09.390 --> 00:02:13.140
a virtual world company and a
nonprofit consortium dedicated

00:02:13.140 --> 00:02:14.943
to advancing virtual worlds.

00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:17.790
A neo hippie, a technologist,

00:02:17.790 --> 00:02:19.860
and a science fiction enthusiast.

00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:23.010
Bruce was a synthesis of some
of the most potent cultural

00:02:23.010 --> 00:02:24.990
and ideological currents at play

00:02:24.990 --> 00:02:26.823
in the Bay Area at that time.

00:02:28.650 --> 00:02:29.850
Bruce\'s nonprofit,

00:02:29.850 --> 00:02:32.500
the Contact Consortium was an offshoot

00:02:33.643 --> 00:02:36.102
of a longstanding group
called Contact dedicated

00:02:36.102 --> 00:02:39.060
to preparing for first contact
with extraterrestrials.

00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:41.940
Though small, the consortium
had an outsized impact

00:02:41.940 --> 00:02:43.770
on the ways our culture received

00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:45.903
and understood virtual worlds.

00:02:48.203 --> 00:02:50.070
We spoke with Bruce about
the consortium\'s experiments

00:02:50.070 --> 00:02:54.090
with the 1995 Virtual
World Platform Alpha World,

00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:56.160
later known as Active Worlds,

00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:59.103
to learn about the scene
around the creation

00:02:59.103 --> 00:03:01.110
of the first graphical virtual worlds

00:03:01.110 --> 00:03:04.503
and consider their early promise
from today\'s perspective.

00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:13.950
- My name is Dr. Bruce Damer.

00:03:13.950 --> 00:03:16.560
I am currently a scientist

00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:18.870
with University of California Santa Cruz.

00:03:18.870 --> 00:03:22.410
25 years ago I was
enthralled by the possibility

00:03:22.410 --> 00:03:25.140
of virtual worlds coming into existence

00:03:25.140 --> 00:03:30.114
and I was living in
Prague and in 1991 or \'92,

00:03:30.114 --> 00:03:32.670
I read \"Snow Crash\", Neal
Stephenson\'s great novel,

00:03:32.670 --> 00:03:34.773
which he introduces the term metaverse.

00:03:36.439 --> 00:03:39.030
And I thought, wow, this
has to exist sometime.

00:03:39.030 --> 00:03:40.410
This has to happen.

00:03:40.410 --> 00:03:42.720
And so out of this original core group,

00:03:42.720 --> 00:03:44.820
which was called Contact,

00:03:44.820 --> 00:03:49.230
we formed a new initiative
called the Contact Consortium,

00:03:49.230 --> 00:03:51.090
which would take all these people

00:03:51.090 --> 00:03:53.730
who had this online experience

00:03:53.730 --> 00:03:57.870
and apply them to the
coming of metaverses,

00:03:57.870 --> 00:04:00.960
of graphical representations of people

00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:05.960
and landscapes, i.e.
avatars per Neal Stephenson.

00:04:07.631 --> 00:04:10.410
And we are in the midst of
forming the organization

00:04:10.410 --> 00:04:13.380
and we are having
meetings in March of \'95.

00:04:13.380 --> 00:04:15.720
And then in May of \'95,
the first virtual world

00:04:15.720 --> 00:04:17.810
actually appeared on the internet.

00:04:17.810 --> 00:04:19.320
We thought it might take several years.

00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:21.240
And then in August of 1995,

00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:25.020
the same company which was
named Worlds Incorporated,

00:04:25.020 --> 00:04:26.643
launched Alpha World.

00:04:28.174 --> 00:04:30.208
And I realized Alpha World has it.

00:04:30.208 --> 00:04:32.280
It was just a green
plane with a few objects,

00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:34.080
but you could pick them up,

00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:37.560
make a copy of them, rotate them,

00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:39.360
raise and lower them and stack them

00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:41.010
and you could build stuff.

00:04:41.010 --> 00:04:42.570
It was that simple.

00:04:42.570 --> 00:04:44.430
Alpha world just exploded.

00:04:44.430 --> 00:04:48.030
It was only a few thousand
users by the end of 1995.

00:04:48.030 --> 00:04:52.590
But they took a satellite
image of the alpha world

00:04:52.590 --> 00:04:54.930
population of objects
that have been placed down

00:04:54.930 --> 00:04:57.000
and you can make out rivers

00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:00.000
and towns and all kinds of things.

00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:01.440
Hundreds of thousands or millions

00:05:01.440 --> 00:05:03.450
of objects have been placed down,

00:05:03.450 --> 00:05:06.360
building little homesteads
and the user just poured

00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:07.810
in through the central part

00:05:09.132 --> 00:05:12.090
and you could watch the
morphology of this world change.

00:05:12.090 --> 00:05:15.730
In about the same time the
Burning Man Festival was starting

00:05:15.730 --> 00:05:18.180
in the desert and it was very much

00:05:18.180 --> 00:05:22.980
like Alpha World in that people
arrived, pick their plot.

00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:25.170
They used the worldwide web to coordinate

00:05:25.170 --> 00:05:27.630
and camps just appeared everywhere.

00:05:27.630 --> 00:05:30.090
Camps would appear
around the central part,

00:05:30.090 --> 00:05:33.030
but it was distributed peer-to-peer,

00:05:33.030 --> 00:05:35.790
completely emergent phenomenon.

00:05:35.790 --> 00:05:39.450
And so that\'s the fascination
of when the Contact Consortium

00:05:39.450 --> 00:05:43.407
picked Active Worlds as
our experimental platform.

00:05:43.407 --> 00:05:45.480
And we worked with a
developer to create things

00:05:45.480 --> 00:05:48.390
like the Telegram interface or an easy way

00:05:48.390 --> 00:05:52.980
to right click on a username
and join them in a world.

00:05:52.980 --> 00:05:57.150
And they gave us worlds
to do experiments with.

00:05:57.150 --> 00:05:59.910
We did our first community build.

00:05:59.910 --> 00:06:01.500
We said to ourselves,

00:06:01.500 --> 00:06:05.040
what if you gave building
rights to a group of people,

00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:08.670
not just have one person dragging
objects around a building,

00:06:08.670 --> 00:06:13.440
but 10 people that each
would build part of a world?

00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:15.990
And that was Sherwood Forest Town,

00:06:15.990 --> 00:06:20.670
which I started laying out in
January of \'96 by basically

00:06:20.670 --> 00:06:24.390
placing a whole bunch of trees
in an area to reserve it.

00:06:24.390 --> 00:06:27.840
\'Cause if you put an object
down, it became your territory.

00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:30.120
And then people came in to Sherwood Forest

00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:33.270
and we removed the trees and
then they started building.

00:06:33.270 --> 00:06:34.350
And if you\'re interested,

00:06:34.350 --> 00:06:37.263
we can teleport over to Sherwood Forest.

00:06:38.220 --> 00:06:39.480
This is the front gate.

00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:42.960
And there were these news
stands where if you clicked,

00:06:42.960 --> 00:06:46.140
you could get Sherwood
Forest News and you\'ll get

00:06:46.140 --> 00:06:48.960
a web popup that shows you the news

00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:53.643
for the town in very 1990s
hand built website style.

00:06:54.780 --> 00:06:57.180
There\'s been a little
vandalism to our site

00:06:57.180 --> 00:06:59.650
because I don\'t know if it\'s

00:07:00.781 --> 00:07:02.610
because Sherwood was kind of famous.

00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:04.050
I mean, Sherwood won an award

00:07:04.050 --> 00:07:07.920
at the Ars Electronica
festival in Austria.

00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:09.450
Perhaps people visited

00:07:09.450 --> 00:07:11.553
and wanted to leave an artifact there.

00:07:12.803 --> 00:07:15.810
Luckily we did cover up most of the land,

00:07:15.810 --> 00:07:17.610
so we didn\'t get vandalized.

00:07:17.610 --> 00:07:22.170
Other people found cracks and
and put stuff in the cracks.

00:07:22.170 --> 00:07:24.780
But there is this sort of peaceful

00:07:24.780 --> 00:07:27.780
environment inside the walls.

00:07:27.780 --> 00:07:31.410
I wanna walk in through
this stone arch here.

00:07:31.410 --> 00:07:35.220
You\'ll see there\'s this
sort of a blue dot.

00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:37.980
What we decided was there
had to be an easy way to get

00:07:37.980 --> 00:07:39.720
people together in world.

00:07:39.720 --> 00:07:41.700
And we coined the term in world,

00:07:41.700 --> 00:07:43.080
this was all being invented.

00:07:43.080 --> 00:07:44.580
Like what is your experience?

00:07:44.580 --> 00:07:45.990
While I\'m in world,

00:07:45.990 --> 00:07:49.050
I\'m with people inside a virtual world.

00:07:49.050 --> 00:07:52.256
So we arranged these pots in a circle

00:07:52.256 --> 00:07:55.020
and people stood at each pot.

00:07:55.020 --> 00:07:58.530
There could be a dozen people
or two dozen people standing

00:07:58.530 --> 00:08:00.690
in here so that their text was separated.

00:08:00.690 --> 00:08:02.400
So if I type below,

00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:06.210
my text is above my head and
I could be in bird\'s eye view

00:08:06.210 --> 00:08:09.810
and I can watch the text
above multiple people\'s heads

00:08:09.810 --> 00:08:12.360
as well as down in the chat.

00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:14.970
There was no chat actually initially.

00:08:14.970 --> 00:08:18.360
So it\'s only text above the avatar head.

00:08:18.360 --> 00:08:20.550
So this is the first talking circle.

00:08:20.550 --> 00:08:25.350
It was like trying to create
user interface innovations

00:08:25.350 --> 00:08:27.243
to make the community work.

00:08:31.110 --> 00:08:33.720
So all of these objects are super old.

00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:37.230
They\'re like an old
archeological ruin in a way.

00:08:37.230 --> 00:08:39.240
Here are some of the
trees that we put down

00:08:39.240 --> 00:08:41.760
and if I right click actually on a tree,

00:08:41.760 --> 00:08:45.360
sometimes it tells you the
date the object was put there.

00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:50.360
Tuesday, February 13th, 1996,
that tree was put there.

00:08:51.750 --> 00:08:53.853
Talk about ancient stuff.

00:08:55.350 --> 00:08:57.450
And this is Laurel\'s Herb Garden.

00:08:57.450 --> 00:08:59.520
So now I\'m in Laurel\'s house.

00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:02.853
She wanted to make like
a garden setting house.

00:09:05.010 --> 00:09:08.340
So this is Sherwood Forest,
was experiment number one.

00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:12.060
Can we handle a group of
people with common privileges

00:09:12.060 --> 00:09:14.850
building a common place?

00:09:14.850 --> 00:09:18.300
We had Community Day on March 24th, 1996,

00:09:18.300 --> 00:09:21.210
and we showed this live
at the contact conference,

00:09:21.210 --> 00:09:23.838
our original parent organization

00:09:23.838 --> 00:09:26.700
so they could see that
this is actually happening.

00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:29.820
And part of contact included
science fiction writers

00:09:29.820 --> 00:09:31.870
like Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven

00:09:33.324 --> 00:09:36.174
because this is all inspired
by science fiction in a way.

00:09:37.244 --> 00:09:40.080
So the science fiction
writers were there witnessing

00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:42.240
the birth of a kind of new cyberspace

00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:43.680
that wasn\'t just an interface,

00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:45.840
it wasn\'t just a
worldwide web and buttons,

00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:49.803
it was a place, I called it
cyberspace with a human face.

00:09:51.273 --> 00:09:53.856
(upbeat music)

00:10:02.580 --> 00:10:04.793
So we were off and running,

00:10:04.793 --> 00:10:09.180
we could do experiments inside
a virtual world platform.

00:10:09.180 --> 00:10:12.300
We realized that as a
community we could build

00:10:12.300 --> 00:10:16.170
a common thing and have it
coherence and have a life to it,

00:10:16.170 --> 00:10:19.111
like have meetings of a poetry reading

00:10:19.111 --> 00:10:21.210
in it with a live poet on a stage.

00:10:21.210 --> 00:10:23.070
At that time in 1996,

00:10:23.070 --> 00:10:26.786
we were going to host
our first conference,

00:10:26.786 --> 00:10:28.860
it was called Earth to Avatars,

00:10:28.860 --> 00:10:32.190
saying, \"Hello, you
know, Earth to avatars.

00:10:32.190 --> 00:10:35.580
And from that conference
we had financed then

00:10:35.580 --> 00:10:39.270
to do activities and I traveled the world.

00:10:39.270 --> 00:10:42.270
I wrote a book about avatars
and I just was sort of

00:10:42.270 --> 00:10:46.680
the Johnny Appleseed of
avatar virtual worlds,

00:10:46.680 --> 00:10:48.840
avatar cyberspace

00:10:48.840 --> 00:10:52.053
for several years and helped spread it.

00:10:53.880 --> 00:10:55.770
- [Narrator] Damer is known
as one of the pioneers

00:10:55.770 --> 00:10:57.213
of the virtual worlds.

00:10:58.284 --> 00:10:59.700
He says Second life is nothing new.

00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:01.140
He\'s been following the trend since

00:11:01.140 --> 00:11:03.930
the early nineties and
even wrote a book about it.

00:11:03.930 --> 00:11:08.220
- This book was written as
a user\'s guide to avatar,

00:11:08.220 --> 00:11:10.620
cyberspace and all the different worlds

00:11:10.620 --> 00:11:11.760
that you can go into.

00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:14.560
- [Narrator] Bruce Damer
says virtual worlds

00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:17.460
like \"Second Life\" will become mainstream.

00:11:17.460 --> 00:11:18.821
- But I\'m hoping that we\'re gonna move

00:11:18.821 --> 00:11:21.570
in virtual worlds to like
where movies were by 1930.

00:11:21.570 --> 00:11:24.510
You know, you had voice and
sound and it was a business.

00:11:24.510 --> 00:11:27.543
You had a studio system,
it was a mature thing.

00:11:27.543 --> 00:11:30.320
And I think that we\'re gonna get there,

00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:31.957
that virtual worlds will be

00:11:31.957 --> 00:11:33.757
this new way of being in cyberspace.

00:11:35.161 --> 00:11:36.630
So we held the conference in San Francisco

00:11:36.630 --> 00:11:38.280
and then we held a second conference

00:11:38.280 --> 00:11:41.370
in 1997 at a university in San Francisco.

00:11:41.370 --> 00:11:43.680
And I realized it is expensive.

00:11:43.680 --> 00:11:48.060
We needed $200,000 and a
huge amount of logistics

00:11:48.060 --> 00:11:50.340
and 500 people would come.

00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:53.190
So we then decided in \'98

00:11:53.190 --> 00:11:56.100
to put our money where our mouth is,

00:11:56.100 --> 00:11:57.870
to take our own drugs in the sense

00:11:57.870 --> 00:12:01.380
and move the entire
event inside cyberspace.

00:12:01.380 --> 00:12:03.260
So let\'s go to AV98.

00:12:15.488 --> 00:12:17.988
(light music)

00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:24.720
Where you\'re standing,

00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.760
you\'ll see it looks like a big building

00:12:29.056 --> 00:12:32.280
and it\'s actually modeled
on Heathrow Terminal Four

00:12:32.280 --> 00:12:34.083
in the Heathrow Airport in London.

00:12:35.118 --> 00:12:38.490
Stuart Gold is the architect
behind a lot of this

00:12:38.490 --> 00:12:41.463
and a team of volunteers
made all these objects.

00:12:42.790 --> 00:12:45.060
And you can see there is
Avatars98 at the Digigarden.

00:12:45.060 --> 00:12:47.730
That was our live webcam from here

00:12:47.730 --> 00:12:51.300
at Ancient Oaks Farm in November of 1998.

00:12:51.300 --> 00:12:53.730
And everyone was on modem connections.

00:12:53.730 --> 00:12:58.663
So this world was streaming
over 24K, 96K modems,

00:13:00.930 --> 00:13:03.120
but doing just fine.

00:13:03.120 --> 00:13:06.420
I\'m wearing my conference chair avatar.

00:13:06.420 --> 00:13:09.510
Avatars98 had dozens of innovations

00:13:09.510 --> 00:13:11.970
that were done on a shoestring budget

00:13:11.970 --> 00:13:14.733
with tech that was barely there.

00:13:15.812 --> 00:13:17.512
But we did a lot of social design.

00:13:18.430 --> 00:13:20.934
One of the elements was Digigardener,

00:13:20.934 --> 00:13:22.650
his avatar should be like 12 feet tall,

00:13:22.650 --> 00:13:24.390
so he has some authority.

00:13:24.390 --> 00:13:26.820
So if I\'m going and there\'s somebody

00:13:26.820 --> 00:13:30.900
who\'s cussing off a speaker
or offending an exhibitor,

00:13:30.900 --> 00:13:33.930
I can go and read the law to them.

00:13:33.930 --> 00:13:35.790
So they made my avatar this big,

00:13:35.790 --> 00:13:38.343
this kind of robot with my picture on it.

00:13:46.051 --> 00:13:49.170
These booths were laid
out with a web form.

00:13:49.170 --> 00:13:53.940
What we realized is that users
having to learn a 3D tool,

00:13:53.940 --> 00:13:57.450
design their booths and wire
frame it up and then submit it.

00:13:57.450 --> 00:14:00.090
Very few people would want to do that.

00:14:00.090 --> 00:14:01.860
In a sense, 3D modeling tools

00:14:01.860 --> 00:14:04.552
are the killer app in that they kill

00:14:04.552 --> 00:14:07.410
access to virtual worlds.

00:14:07.410 --> 00:14:08.640
If you\'re requiring them,

00:14:08.640 --> 00:14:10.110
you wanna build your own world here,

00:14:10.110 --> 00:14:12.270
here, take 3D Studio Max

00:14:12.270 --> 00:14:15.540
or take some simple web
tool and build your world.

00:14:15.540 --> 00:14:17.071
Good luck.

00:14:17.071 --> 00:14:18.480
You know, you\'re gonna
get very little content

00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:20.850
and I think that\'s been borne out.

00:14:20.850 --> 00:14:23.577
But what if you said
it\'s like \"Burning Man\"?

00:14:25.134 --> 00:14:27.570
You can pick your camp
location on a website

00:14:27.570 --> 00:14:30.420
and then you can lay it
out with standard parts.

00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:32.040
You could pick this pillar

00:14:32.040 --> 00:14:34.800
and put your image of your company,

00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:37.710
expoworld.net, pick a couple of objects,

00:14:37.710 --> 00:14:41.340
like a web link there,
URLs to all your resources.

00:14:41.340 --> 00:14:44.250
And boom, when you arrive
in the exhibit hall,

00:14:44.250 --> 00:14:46.110
your booth is built for you.

00:14:46.110 --> 00:14:48.390
So it was the idea of democratizing

00:14:48.390 --> 00:14:52.473
the ability of users to make
3D content quickly and easily.

00:14:55.350 --> 00:14:57.240
So now what I\'m gonna do is take you over

00:14:57.240 --> 00:15:02.240
to an important part of
Avatars98, which is the big board.

00:15:03.270 --> 00:15:05.220
I\'m gonna warp over there.

00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:07.113
You guys can warp along with me.

00:15:08.010 --> 00:15:12.180
And what it is, it\'s a big floating board

00:15:12.180 --> 00:15:14.433
that shows all the events
that are happening.

00:15:15.469 --> 00:15:18.510
And if I click on the
little icon down there,

00:15:18.510 --> 00:15:21.870
I will get the big board
schedule pops up in the web.

00:15:21.870 --> 00:15:23.160
It\'s like my conference book,

00:15:23.160 --> 00:15:25.680
but I can float right up to this

00:15:25.680 --> 00:15:28.530
and click on the big board itself.

00:15:28.530 --> 00:15:31.140
And now I\'ve warped
over to the speaker pod.

00:15:31.140 --> 00:15:34.290
These pods are little speaker areas

00:15:34.290 --> 00:15:36.720
that are populated by bots.

00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:39.510
People said, well I
need to have my slides.

00:15:39.510 --> 00:15:42.330
The presenters up front,
a couple of things,

00:15:42.330 --> 00:15:45.567
a couple of logos and
audio link that would allow

00:15:45.567 --> 00:15:49.530
live audio to stream
out through Talkspace.

00:15:49.530 --> 00:15:51.090
This is 1998.

00:15:51.090 --> 00:15:53.793
There\'s no YouTube, none
of that sort of stuff.

00:15:55.950 --> 00:15:56.880
- [Interviewer] Was this the first

00:15:56.880 --> 00:15:59.373
all online conference in a 3D space?

00:16:00.825 --> 00:16:03.810
- [Bruce] This was, and we didn\'t know

00:16:03.810 --> 00:16:05.880
what the numbers would be,

00:16:05.880 --> 00:16:09.214
because the platforms were
less than two years old.

00:16:09.214 --> 00:16:12.270
And the maturity, we didn\'t
know whether we could handle it.

00:16:12.270 --> 00:16:14.610
But it turns out that this world,

00:16:14.610 --> 00:16:17.070
this single AV98 world all dialed

00:16:17.070 --> 00:16:18.870
in through modem connection.

00:16:18.870 --> 00:16:23.870
We peaked out at maybe 850
simultaneous users in this space,

00:16:24.210 --> 00:16:26.220
the developer of the world.

00:16:26.220 --> 00:16:29.850
Ron Britvich, sat on the
server and just monitored it

00:16:29.850 --> 00:16:33.030
and said it went to the
biggest numbers he\'d ever seen.

00:16:33.030 --> 00:16:36.330
But it was totally stable and the content

00:16:36.330 --> 00:16:38.340
was totally stable streaming out.

00:16:38.340 --> 00:16:40.233
So yeah, it was was great.

00:16:42.544 --> 00:16:45.870
I\'m gonna zoom over to
the art gallery now.

00:16:45.870 --> 00:16:48.600
This is for people to put their artwork up

00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:50.250
just as you see at a conference.

00:16:50.250 --> 00:16:55.250
And as was done at the
Contact Conference since 1982,

00:16:55.770 --> 00:16:58.470
we\'re looking at Nancy Zuidema\'s art.

00:16:58.470 --> 00:17:01.740
She was an early member
of the Contact Consortium.

00:17:01.740 --> 00:17:04.110
All the other artwork is sort of offline

00:17:04.110 --> 00:17:07.530
because it\'s URLs directly to JPEGs

00:17:07.530 --> 00:17:11.370
or gifts or something
on sites that are gone.

00:17:11.370 --> 00:17:14.010
But Nancy\'s site\'s still live.

00:17:14.010 --> 00:17:17.133
So there\'s her artwork
served after all these years.

00:17:21.708 --> 00:17:25.077
And I\'m gonna zip over
to another fun area,

00:17:25.077 --> 00:17:27.570
the the webcam wall.

00:17:27.570 --> 00:17:30.286
And what we decided to do is sort of bring

00:17:30.286 --> 00:17:33.094
a bit of the real world into the virtual.

00:17:33.094 --> 00:17:35.790
Webcams were a new thing
and they generally spruce

00:17:35.790 --> 00:17:37.623
an image every few seconds.

00:17:39.547 --> 00:17:41.820
And we decided to put a wall of them up

00:17:41.820 --> 00:17:44.245
and build scripts that would go

00:17:44.245 --> 00:17:47.370
and pull these cam images
from all over the net.

00:17:47.370 --> 00:17:49.050
This was completely populated

00:17:49.050 --> 00:17:50.853
with views from all over the world.

00:17:51.724 --> 00:17:54.420
I\'ll actually stand next
to our cam that we had.

00:17:54.420 --> 00:17:56.250
And there\'s still like the last image

00:17:56.250 --> 00:17:59.673
when we were shutting down is still there.

00:18:01.560 --> 00:18:03.240
Digi\'s place, Digigardener\'s place,

00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:06.900
that\'s in the old farmhouse
here at Ancient Oaks Farm.

00:18:06.900 --> 00:18:11.820
That\'s me and my more
hippiness 20-some years ago.

00:18:11.820 --> 00:18:14.700
And several people who were at our node.

00:18:14.700 --> 00:18:17.280
Avatars98 had nodes all over the world.

00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:20.760
It had individuals dialing
in from their computers,

00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:24.150
but also an electronic
cafe in Santa Monica.

00:18:24.150 --> 00:18:25.770
Art Museum in Helsinki,

00:18:25.770 --> 00:18:28.020
Finland had it on a huge screen

00:18:28.020 --> 00:18:30.030
and there were like 200 people there.

00:18:30.030 --> 00:18:31.140
So there were these nodes

00:18:31.140 --> 00:18:34.653
all over the planet and
several thousand users.

00:18:36.242 --> 00:18:39.480
But there were well-known
scientists in here,

00:18:39.480 --> 00:18:44.480
political people,
anthropologists, and also CNN.

00:18:44.970 --> 00:18:48.090
So if you look over
here, this CNN Live Feed,

00:18:48.090 --> 00:18:52.905
CNN actually did a coverage
of Avatars98 as well.

00:18:52.905 --> 00:18:55.903
Maybe this is gonna be the
way we meet in the future.

00:18:55.903 --> 00:18:59.550
When CNN went live with a
broadcast about Avatars98,

00:18:59.550 --> 00:19:02.190
we watched it in webcam,

00:19:02.190 --> 00:19:05.430
kind of occasional
screenshots in the world.

00:19:05.430 --> 00:19:09.930
So we had 200 people standing
here in Avatar watching

00:19:09.930 --> 00:19:13.410
themselves being shown on broadcast TV.

00:19:13.410 --> 00:19:15.573
And that was kind of a first as well,

00:19:16.616 --> 00:19:17.983
that was later kind of replicated with MTV

00:19:17.983 --> 00:19:19.713
and Onlive Traveler.

00:19:21.416 --> 00:19:23.103
But that was pretty thrilling.

00:19:28.330 --> 00:19:31.920
What you\'re seeing here are
images of other technologies,

00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:33.840
other virtual world platforms,

00:19:33.840 --> 00:19:35.950
\'cause Alpha World and Active World

00:19:36.828 --> 00:19:37.740
wasn\'t the only platform,

00:19:37.740 --> 00:19:42.000
but each of these platforms
held Avatars98 events,

00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:43.590
at the same time as the event

00:19:43.590 --> 00:19:45.003
that was in Active Worlds.

00:19:46.110 --> 00:19:48.125
So if I look around,

00:19:48.125 --> 00:19:48.958
I\'ll see Outer Worlds.

00:19:48.958 --> 00:19:51.180
There\'s Blaxxun Interactive named

00:19:51.180 --> 00:19:55.380
after the famous Blaxxun
Cafe in Snow Crash.

00:19:55.380 --> 00:19:59.190
There\'s Worlds Away, the
successor to Habitat,

00:19:59.190 --> 00:20:01.770
which was the first avatar environment.

00:20:01.770 --> 00:20:03.706
There\'s Vnet,

00:20:03.706 --> 00:20:06.156
which was a Java-based
M00 that joined the event.

00:20:07.567 --> 00:20:10.500
And there\'s the Palace, which
was quite a big platform.

00:20:10.500 --> 00:20:13.590
It was 2D artwork with chat.

00:20:13.590 --> 00:20:15.873
Roomancer was a new platform.

00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:20.190
There was a platform right
here called Traveler,

00:20:20.190 --> 00:20:22.230
which I actually bought after

00:20:22.230 --> 00:20:24.900
the company went bankrupt in 2000.

00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:27.570
And Traveler is a voice world

00:20:27.570 --> 00:20:29.700
with avatars that do lip syncing.

00:20:29.700 --> 00:20:32.490
And there\'s 3D specialized voice,

00:20:32.490 --> 00:20:34.950
just a tremendous technology.

00:20:34.950 --> 00:20:37.470
I did hundreds of talks on virtual worlds.

00:20:37.470 --> 00:20:39.060
I would open with Traveler

00:20:39.060 --> 00:20:41.700
because people could
completely relate to it.

00:20:41.700 --> 00:20:44.700
Here\'s a clown and a seahorse

00:20:44.700 --> 00:20:46.770
moving around with lip syncing.

00:20:46.770 --> 00:20:48.453
And real voices are coming out,

00:20:49.847 --> 00:20:52.428
floating in a specialized cocktail party.

00:20:52.428 --> 00:20:54.240
Specialized audio, people could rock it.

00:20:54.240 --> 00:20:56.220
That\'s what an avatar is.

00:20:56.220 --> 00:20:59.040
Those are people, they built this place.

00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:01.110
And in fact, there\'s a team right now

00:21:01.110 --> 00:21:03.600
to get Traveler back and running.

00:21:03.600 --> 00:21:07.710
So Traveler\'s gonna come
back alive for the 2020s due

00:21:07.710 --> 00:21:10.050
to some really good work\'s been done

00:21:10.050 --> 00:21:12.303
to get it working on modern platforms.

00:21:14.310 --> 00:21:15.810
So if you clicked on these things,

00:21:15.810 --> 00:21:18.390
it told you how to get to the clients.

00:21:18.390 --> 00:21:22.026
There was no compatibility
between these worlds.

00:21:22.026 --> 00:21:25.024
So you couldn\'t take
your avatar to WorldsAway

00:21:25.024 --> 00:21:27.240
and then go on into Blaxxun.

00:21:27.240 --> 00:21:29.250
The content\'s incompatible.

00:21:29.250 --> 00:21:32.542
Everything is custom
just as we have today.

00:21:32.542 --> 00:21:34.920
So there is no universal metaverse.

00:21:34.920 --> 00:21:36.762
And as you know,

00:21:36.762 --> 00:21:38.520
Facebook takes on the moniker

00:21:38.520 --> 00:21:40.920
and the challenge of
creating a true Metaverse,

00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:44.574
which I doubt if anyone can at this point,

00:21:44.574 --> 00:21:47.400
they\'d have to create universal standards,

00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:49.143
which I just don\'t see happening.

00:21:50.078 --> 00:21:51.900
At our 1996 physical conference,

00:21:51.900 --> 00:21:56.340
we had a special half day on
standards, avatar standards.

00:21:56.340 --> 00:21:57.570
You know, could this ever happen?

00:21:57.570 --> 00:21:59.730
Could you walk through worlds,

00:21:59.730 --> 00:22:02.343
visit multiple worlds from
multiple technologies?

00:22:14.338 --> 00:22:16.950
It\'s been so much fun to
actually go around these spaces.

00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:19.830
I haven\'t been in for a decade.

00:22:19.830 --> 00:22:21.810
I\'m grateful to the Active Worlds company

00:22:21.810 --> 00:22:24.813
for keeping these worlds alive
and online all this time.

00:22:25.972 --> 00:22:26.805
(indistinct) Absolutely.

00:22:26.805 --> 00:22:28.953
Why do you suppose they are still online?

00:22:30.126 --> 00:22:31.800
- There was a period in
which Worlds Incorporated

00:22:31.800 --> 00:22:35.220
was going into its form of bankruptcy.

00:22:35.220 --> 00:22:38.460
As all early companies do.

00:22:38.460 --> 00:22:40.080
Their pioneering companies,

00:22:40.080 --> 00:22:42.120
they run out of investment dollars.

00:22:42.120 --> 00:22:46.170
Two users purchased the
technology back in, gosh,

00:22:46.170 --> 00:22:51.170
I guess it was \'98, and
they just kept it going.

00:22:51.540 --> 00:22:52.980
And they used the platform

00:22:52.980 --> 00:22:55.260
to develop business projects and whatnot.

00:22:55.260 --> 00:22:57.153
And they\'re still doing it.

00:22:57.153 --> 00:23:00.420
I mean, the company was
based in Newburyport.

00:23:00.420 --> 00:23:02.850
I got in touch with one of
the guys at the company just

00:23:02.850 --> 00:23:07.293
to get my username all redone
and they\'re still around.

00:23:08.134 --> 00:23:09.660
So I think that with modest projects,

00:23:09.660 --> 00:23:12.000
they could keep the thing going.

00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:13.830
I think Rick Noll said,

00:23:13.830 --> 00:23:15.750
as long as I can keep having a chicken

00:23:15.750 --> 00:23:19.350
in the oven for my family, I\'m fine.

00:23:19.350 --> 00:23:20.493
Something like that.

00:23:21.330 --> 00:23:23.250
So it keeps going.

00:23:23.250 --> 00:23:26.550
Whereas all the other
platforms do die off.

00:23:26.550 --> 00:23:30.960
And then the users and all
their experiences go with them.

00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:32.970
I think that if the content

00:23:32.970 --> 00:23:36.120
and the care of the servers is solely

00:23:36.120 --> 00:23:39.780
in the company\'s hands,
it\'s less likely to survive.

00:23:39.780 --> 00:23:43.470
Whereas if users are running
servers on a distributed basis

00:23:43.470 --> 00:23:47.580
and doing their own content,
it\'s got more potential.

00:23:47.580 --> 00:23:50.250
If the company goes away
that owns the technology,

00:23:50.250 --> 00:23:52.563
they can probably keep
their servers running.

00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:54.840
It\'s like if it\'s peer to peer,

00:23:54.840 --> 00:23:56.373
rather than being centralized.

00:24:02.850 --> 00:24:05.750
We\'re gonna finish up at the Avvy Awards.

00:24:07.634 --> 00:24:11.610
What we had, and you can
see images of this online,

00:24:11.610 --> 00:24:13.410
it was actually 600 people waiting

00:24:13.410 --> 00:24:18.120
to see who was voted
the best avatar of 1998.

00:24:18.120 --> 00:24:22.560
Winners of the all virtual
Avvy Awards was Summer,

00:24:22.560 --> 00:24:26.160
who was a almost naked female avatar

00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:28.980
with animated butterflies for clothing.

00:24:28.980 --> 00:24:32.460
And then the category
winners on the right.

00:24:32.460 --> 00:24:34.743
So as our version of sort of the Oscars.

00:24:36.840 --> 00:24:39.120
Let\'s pay attention folks,

00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:43.440
here we go with 1998
Avatar Avvy Award winners.

00:24:43.440 --> 00:24:45.780
And they\'re saying everyone
is a silent pin drop,

00:24:45.780 --> 00:24:48.153
and the envelope is clang.

00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:54.140
The file I\'m gonna put up
is called Summer-SM.jpg.

00:24:54.360 --> 00:24:56.314
And they\'re all gonna see that

00:24:56.314 --> 00:24:58.283
and they\'re all gonna go
completely el bonkers.

00:24:59.940 --> 00:25:01.590
- Judges must have all been male.

00:25:04.001 --> 00:25:07.183
(light music)

00:25:07.183 --> 00:25:08.370
- [Bruce] What you\'re seeing here

00:25:10.033 --> 00:25:11.990
is a platform from the innocent,

00:25:11.990 --> 00:25:14.943
fresh, breathless pioneer
period of the internet.

00:25:16.380 --> 00:25:19.290
The dotcom crash happened in 2000.

00:25:19.290 --> 00:25:21.780
The dotcom bomb, they called it.

00:25:21.780 --> 00:25:24.150
And these companies just got vacuumed up.

00:25:24.150 --> 00:25:28.620
They either went full
bankruptcy or they just vanished

00:25:28.620 --> 00:25:31.353
with exception of a couple
of the Active Worlds.

00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:34.320
So a lot of that early experience

00:25:34.320 --> 00:25:36.420
was lost and virtual worlds ended,

00:25:36.420 --> 00:25:39.660
what some people call the winter period

00:25:39.660 --> 00:25:44.100
around 2000 to 2004,
creative things happen,

00:25:44.100 --> 00:25:46.920
but then first generation
integrators go away

00:25:46.920 --> 00:25:48.690
and then there\'s a second coming

00:25:48.690 --> 00:25:51.990
and the second coming included their.com

00:25:51.990 --> 00:25:54.300
and included Adobe\'s atmosphere platform,

00:25:54.300 --> 00:25:58.740
which I became an evangelist
for to help development.

00:25:58.740 --> 00:26:02.550
And then Phillip Rosedale
founded \"Second Life\".

00:26:02.550 --> 00:26:06.090
So I went up to \"Second
Life\" in 2003 or so.

00:26:06.090 --> 00:26:07.687
I remember asking Phillip Rosedale,

00:26:07.687 --> 00:26:10.380
\"What are you gonna call the names

00:26:10.380 --> 00:26:12.450
of the characters representing people?\"

00:26:12.450 --> 00:26:14.790
I said, \"Could you call them avatars?\"

00:26:14.790 --> 00:26:16.440
And he said, \"Oh sure, yeah.\"

00:26:16.440 --> 00:26:17.577
I said, \"Thank you.\"

00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:20.040
Because I wanted to try
to maintain a through line

00:26:20.040 --> 00:26:22.890
between the avatars of Habitat

00:26:22.890 --> 00:26:25.570
in the eighties and Neil
Stevenson\'s Metaverse

00:26:27.108 --> 00:26:30.510
and then the use of avatars
in the late, in the nineties.

00:26:30.510 --> 00:26:33.630
And that \"Second Life\"
also use the term avatars.

00:26:33.630 --> 00:26:35.820
So there was a lineage,

00:26:35.820 --> 00:26:37.590
but it kind of all sort of faded.

00:26:37.590 --> 00:26:39.993
The social virtual worlds faded again.

00:26:41.543 --> 00:26:43.020
And then VR was returning, you know,

00:26:43.020 --> 00:26:45.870
with Oculus and with
all the other platforms

00:26:45.870 --> 00:26:47.220
and huge investment.

00:26:47.220 --> 00:26:52.020
And so when we see in 2022
or 2021 Facebook renaming

00:26:52.020 --> 00:26:55.821
themselves Meta and
wanting to do a metaverse,

00:26:55.821 --> 00:26:57.203
you know, what are they trying to do?

00:26:58.080 --> 00:27:01.078
You know, do they have all
the background they need

00:27:01.078 --> 00:27:03.120
to create a truly social dynamic,

00:27:03.120 --> 00:27:06.600
event-filled, really
interesting cyberspace

00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:09.060
that\'s social packed with things to do

00:27:09.060 --> 00:27:10.470
and it\'s very dynamic.

00:27:10.470 --> 00:27:11.763
Do they understand that?

00:27:12.960 --> 00:27:17.193
I mean, if it\'s just VR
head mounted displays,

00:27:18.660 --> 00:27:22.020
if it\'s just that it\'s not
gonna go much anywhere.

00:27:22.020 --> 00:27:24.780
VR went into vertical applications

00:27:24.780 --> 00:27:27.630
a long time ago where
it\'s very, very effective

00:27:27.630 --> 00:27:30.990
in gaming and in health and healing,

00:27:30.990 --> 00:27:35.730
in psychology and in training
and things like this.

00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:40.380
But it has so many
encumbrances on the user

00:27:40.380 --> 00:27:42.330
it\'s competing with the mobile phone

00:27:42.330 --> 00:27:44.430
you pull out of your pocket
and just look down at,

00:27:44.430 --> 00:27:45.900
and you have done a hundred things

00:27:45.900 --> 00:27:48.603
already with a 2D interface.

00:27:49.500 --> 00:27:53.190
There\'s a sense that
3D and immersive worlds

00:27:53.190 --> 00:27:56.190
are somehow more powerful
informational interfaces

00:27:56.190 --> 00:27:58.620
and social interfaces, and they\'re not.

00:27:58.620 --> 00:28:01.533
I think that the jury is
completely back on that.

00:28:02.372 --> 00:28:06.033
That 3D, while it can immerse
you like this event did,

00:28:06.990 --> 00:28:11.990
it is also cognitively taxing
to move around and orient

00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:15.469
your virtual body as an orientation

00:28:15.469 --> 00:28:19.410
of your physical body, and
it is taxing cognitively.

00:28:19.410 --> 00:28:21.540
When I would come out of these events,

00:28:21.540 --> 00:28:22.890
this one, I was exhausted.

00:28:22.890 --> 00:28:25.620
I was literally bedridden for two days.

00:28:25.620 --> 00:28:27.900
There was so much that I had to do

00:28:27.900 --> 00:28:29.790
to keep present and keep

00:28:29.790 --> 00:28:32.430
a virtual body present
and a group of people,

00:28:32.430 --> 00:28:35.340
as you can see on this
screen all around me

00:28:35.340 --> 00:28:36.960
and the tech working,

00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:40.290
this stuff is hard, not easy to get right.

00:28:40.290 --> 00:28:43.170
So if it\'s hard and not easy to get right,

00:28:43.170 --> 00:28:45.210
the adoption\'s gonna be low.

00:28:45.210 --> 00:28:47.760
They\'re gonna be dedicated users,

00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:50.250
but it\'s not gonna be the tens to hundreds

00:28:50.250 --> 00:28:51.930
of millions of people use Facebook

00:28:51.930 --> 00:28:54.510
or Instagram or anything else.

00:28:54.510 --> 00:28:57.240
It\'s just not, it\'s
because it\'s cumbersome.

00:28:57.240 --> 00:29:01.500
I\'m not sure where Zuckerberg
or Facebook are going with it.

00:29:01.500 --> 00:29:04.170
It\'s my lack of connection to all this

00:29:04.170 --> 00:29:06.922
that I haven\'t read up
on what their plans are,

00:29:06.922 --> 00:29:10.230
I mean, I should just watch
Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan

00:29:10.230 --> 00:29:12.360
or something and then I\'ll know.

00:29:12.360 --> 00:29:13.263
I just don\'t know.

00:29:14.340 --> 00:29:15.900
I mean, I dunno what
they mean by metaverse.

00:29:15.900 --> 00:29:17.670
Do they mean an environment like this?

00:29:17.670 --> 00:29:21.000
Do they mean something beyond
the web, beyond Facebook,

00:29:21.000 --> 00:29:23.310
beyond 2D cell phone interfaces?

00:29:23.310 --> 00:29:25.020
What do they mean?

00:29:25.020 --> 00:29:27.240
You know, maybe it\'s a overreach,

00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:30.450
it\'s a reach from a,
maybe a dying platform.

00:29:30.450 --> 00:29:33.420
They reach for something for rejuvenation,

00:29:33.420 --> 00:29:37.593
for a platform that is maybe
seen its time, its best days.

00:29:38.721 --> 00:29:40.230
I don\'t know, I\'ve, you know,

00:29:40.230 --> 00:29:41.940
I\'ve not talked to Mark Zuckerberg

00:29:41.940 --> 00:29:44.130
or I haven\'t talked to anyone in years.

00:29:44.130 --> 00:29:45.630
You guys are the first people I\'ve talked

00:29:45.630 --> 00:29:49.620
to in 10 or 12 years about this.

00:29:49.620 --> 00:29:53.070
So perhaps this is
providing some opportunity

00:29:53.070 --> 00:29:56.553
to communicate something from
the deep past to the future.

00:29:57.408 --> 00:29:59.908
(light music)

00:30:13.650 --> 00:30:16.863
The total run time of the
event was about 20 hours.

00:30:17.820 --> 00:30:20.400
So I was out very early in the morning

00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:23.310
and most people were very well behaved.

00:30:23.310 --> 00:30:25.710
But people described the event later

00:30:25.710 --> 00:30:27.900
as being kind of like a trip.

00:30:27.900 --> 00:30:30.240
They were totally immersed for hours

00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:33.810
and hours on end because there
was always something to do.

00:30:33.810 --> 00:30:36.750
They were always being
prompted with something,

00:30:36.750 --> 00:30:38.910
go over here and there\'s
this person talking

00:30:38.910 --> 00:30:41.370
and there\'s an award and there\'s some art,

00:30:41.370 --> 00:30:43.080
you know, et cetera, et cetera.

00:30:43.080 --> 00:30:47.010
And that\'s sort of a lesson for modern VR

00:30:47.010 --> 00:30:50.287
or virtual world platforms
that I found when,

00:30:50.287 --> 00:30:53.160
you know, I tried all these platforms

00:30:53.160 --> 00:30:55.290
even the last two years.

00:30:55.290 --> 00:30:58.080
I don\'t think they\'ve
got the social thing.

00:30:58.080 --> 00:30:59.190
Like it\'s really,

00:30:59.190 --> 00:31:00.480
it\'s all about the people

00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:02.700
and it\'s all about being greeted

00:31:02.700 --> 00:31:04.650
and having meaningful interactions

00:31:04.650 --> 00:31:07.200
and having meaningful things to do.

00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:08.370
And it\'s a lot of work.

00:31:08.370 --> 00:31:10.500
You can\'t just sort of put content out

00:31:10.500 --> 00:31:12.990
with random users
entering at random times.

00:31:12.990 --> 00:31:15.450
You have to create events, happenings,

00:31:15.450 --> 00:31:17.220
they\'d be called in the sixties

00:31:17.220 --> 00:31:18.390
and then you can leave people

00:31:18.390 --> 00:31:21.140
with a sense they\'ve been
somewhere and done something.

00:31:26.166 --> 00:31:28.020
I am changing my avatar
around to see what I\'ve got.

00:31:28.020 --> 00:31:30.843
I haven\'t worn any of
these avatars in years.

00:31:31.980 --> 00:31:33.721
That\'s so crazy.

00:31:33.721 --> 00:31:34.650
Wizard, there we go.

00:31:34.650 --> 00:31:36.870
That\'s more me these days.

00:31:36.870 --> 00:31:38.763
As the beard grows in length.

00:31:42.041 --> 00:31:44.700
You know, the future is
distinguished by complex technology

00:31:44.700 --> 00:31:45.960
that seems to be magic.

00:31:45.960 --> 00:31:48.630
And if that was Arthur C. Clarke or not,

00:31:48.630 --> 00:31:50.223
but we live in that world.

00:31:51.384 --> 00:31:53.460
The magic machine was created.

00:31:53.460 --> 00:31:55.860
And then of course what happens

00:31:55.860 --> 00:32:00.860
is things enter the space
to game it in a sense.

00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:06.150
So anything, any medium is
gonna reflect the outside world.

00:32:06.150 --> 00:32:11.040
So we get malicious intent
to manipulate individuals

00:32:11.040 --> 00:32:16.040
for commercial gain,
for capturing attention,

00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:20.163
for the changing of
politics and elections.

00:32:21.841 --> 00:32:24.780
So various visions of dystopian sci-fi,

00:32:24.780 --> 00:32:29.220
just like a company or religion
or even whole countries

00:32:29.220 --> 00:32:33.000
or societies, they go
through stages of growth

00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:34.740
and optimism and innovation.

00:32:34.740 --> 00:32:38.820
And then they go of stages
of corruption where perhaps

00:32:38.820 --> 00:32:43.580
the objectives of money and
finance and psychopathy frankly,

00:32:43.580 --> 00:32:48.480
go hand in hand with
finance come in and extract

00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:53.480
from users and they can
leave a hollow shell behind.

00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:56.340
And it happens to technologies.

00:32:56.340 --> 00:32:59.010
They go through these phases
and then there\'s a degradation.

00:32:59.010 --> 00:33:01.150
And so you get these wave after wave

00:33:02.010 --> 00:33:03.510
of things that happen.

00:33:03.510 --> 00:33:05.583
And I think it\'s inevitable.

00:33:06.630 --> 00:33:10.260
But some of the original
ethos of the internet,

00:33:10.260 --> 00:33:15.260
which was the ethos of sharing
and disclosure and openness,

00:33:16.170 --> 00:33:20.280
when I first got on the
ARPANET in the mid 1980s,

00:33:20.280 --> 00:33:22.230
it was there and it\'s still there.

00:33:22.230 --> 00:33:24.180
So I\'m pretty optimistic,

00:33:24.180 --> 00:33:28.320
I think that things
could have gone better.

00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:31.440
But we have this new nervous system

00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:33.930
that if we don\'t break it or game it

00:33:33.930 --> 00:33:36.720
out of existence or out of trust,

00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:40.560
it will serve humanity
for hundreds of years.

00:33:40.560 --> 00:33:42.360
We have to watch how much we use it,

00:33:42.360 --> 00:33:45.180
how much we drain our personal energy

00:33:45.180 --> 00:33:47.310
into it and our attention.

00:33:47.310 --> 00:33:49.841
But it\'s a mesmer.

00:33:49.841 --> 00:33:53.130
And a mesmer is something
that fascinates monkeys

00:33:53.130 --> 00:33:57.180
or apes or any animal
that\'s looking at a flashy,

00:33:57.180 --> 00:33:59.010
colorful thing.

00:33:59.010 --> 00:34:03.573
It can elucidate us, but it
can also trap us and drain us.

00:34:04.980 --> 00:34:06.839
And we just have to learn to live with it.

00:34:06.839 --> 00:34:10.100
And I think of the internet
as like the colorful snake

00:34:10.100 --> 00:34:13.018
scales on serpents that we\'re
living in the rainforest

00:34:13.018 --> 00:34:15.180
with us as our number one predator

00:34:15.180 --> 00:34:19.590
for 60 million years
from the Prosimian era.

00:34:19.590 --> 00:34:22.770
90 million years ago, the first prototype,

00:34:22.770 --> 00:34:26.220
our ancestors had to watch
out for these serpents.

00:34:26.220 --> 00:34:31.204
And one of the reasons we have
3D color spacial vision is

00:34:31.204 --> 00:34:34.020
because we had to resolve
their scale patterns

00:34:34.020 --> 00:34:37.293
in low light or we\'d be snapped down.

00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:42.458
And that\'s how we got our
ability to see pixels.

00:34:42.458 --> 00:34:45.390
This is a conjecture I have
about why we\'re so good at this.

00:34:45.390 --> 00:34:48.120
So this is sort of like the serpent,

00:34:48.120 --> 00:34:51.870
the virtual world\'s
internet, cyberspace, pixels,

00:34:51.870 --> 00:34:56.670
all this media, it mesmerizes
us like the snake scales,

00:34:56.670 --> 00:34:58.500
but there\'s also a biting end.

00:34:58.500 --> 00:35:00.150
There\'s a risk to it,

00:35:00.150 --> 00:35:02.940
but it evolves us at the same time,

00:35:02.940 --> 00:35:04.683
it\'s an existential risk.

00:35:10.620 --> 00:35:12.370
- The main thing I was thinking was

00:35:13.242 --> 00:35:14.075
why is it that we\'re doing this?

00:35:14.075 --> 00:35:19.075
What is the attraction and the
allure of the virtual for us?

00:35:19.242 --> 00:35:21.870
And are we melding the
virtual and the real?

00:35:21.870 --> 00:35:23.460
Are they exactly the same?

00:35:23.460 --> 00:35:25.196
Are they different?

00:35:25.196 --> 00:35:26.029
Should they coexist?

00:35:26.029 --> 00:35:28.770
What I wanna do is just
get people to reflect

00:35:28.770 --> 00:35:30.450
on why it is that we\'re doing this

00:35:30.450 --> 00:35:33.060
and why are we doing it
at this moment in history.

00:35:33.060 --> 00:35:34.710
And I don\'t have the answers to that,

00:35:34.710 --> 00:35:35.760
but I was kind of reflecting

00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:38.370
on our relationship to
nature and thinking,

00:35:38.370 --> 00:35:40.770
because we have destroyed so much of it

00:35:40.770 --> 00:35:42.690
because it\'s literally going right now.

00:35:42.690 --> 00:35:45.120
Even as we sit here and as we speak,

00:35:45.120 --> 00:35:47.490
we are perhaps creating
these virtual worlds

00:35:47.490 --> 00:35:49.530
which are intended to replace

00:35:49.530 --> 00:35:51.540
our ancient relationship to nature.

00:35:51.540 --> 00:35:54.122
And again, I think we should think

00:35:54.122 --> 00:35:55.043
about why that\'s happening.

00:35:57.780 --> 00:36:01.830
- [Bruce] So what we decided
to do after Avatars98

00:36:01.830 --> 00:36:04.290
was let\'s do Avatars99.

00:36:04.290 --> 00:36:05.880
And it was similar to this,

00:36:05.880 --> 00:36:09.123
but beautifully designed hall, very Asian.

00:36:10.090 --> 00:36:14.520
But in the time we have left,
but let\'s go to Avatars 2001.

00:36:14.520 --> 00:36:17.430
What we decided to do is
something pretty dramatic.

00:36:17.430 --> 00:36:20.430
The banner on the left is Avatars 2001,

00:36:20.430 --> 00:36:22.800
A Cyberspace Odyssey.

00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:27.180
We reproduced the film for
as the next cyber conference.

00:36:27.180 --> 00:36:29.250
So we took them on a journey,

00:36:29.250 --> 00:36:31.740
and you can see this
beautiful thing behind us.

00:36:31.740 --> 00:36:35.523
It\'s the Stanley Kubrick
\"2001\" space station.

00:36:36.366 --> 00:36:38.310
And you guys know what
happens next, right?

00:36:38.310 --> 00:36:42.003
You go to the Moon, so I\'m
gonna teleport to the Moon,

00:36:43.170 --> 00:36:46.830
and you\'re in the monolith on the Moon.

00:36:46.830 --> 00:36:49.710
The United States has dug
up this black monolith

00:36:49.710 --> 00:36:51.690
that was originally on Earth.

00:36:51.690 --> 00:36:53.973
It sparked intelligence.

00:36:59.080 --> 00:37:01.470
What we decided to do the
year before Avatars 2001,

00:37:01.470 --> 00:37:04.500
is to build a full space station world.

00:37:04.500 --> 00:37:08.250
By 2004, we did AvaMars,
which was on Mars.

00:37:08.250 --> 00:37:12.090
In 2003 we did Rivendell.

00:37:12.090 --> 00:37:13.773
I\'m gonna click on Hobbiton,

00:37:15.299 --> 00:37:17.178
see are hobbits there?

00:37:17.178 --> 00:37:19.175
I think I\'m glare or something.

00:37:19.175 --> 00:37:21.070
And you can see the
textures are getting better.

00:37:21.070 --> 00:37:23.673
You know, this is technology
from 2002 versus \'98,

00:37:24.570 --> 00:37:26.973
so the trees look better
and things like that.

00:37:27.870 --> 00:37:31.773
But we did something
different in Avatars 2002,

00:37:31.773 --> 00:37:33.960
which was we said, you know,

00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:36.577
people have been given a free ride.

00:37:36.577 --> 00:37:38.130
They\'ve been allowed to teleport

00:37:38.130 --> 00:37:41.160
and warp between different zones.

00:37:41.160 --> 00:37:44.220
In Avatars 2002, everyone had to walk.

00:37:44.220 --> 00:37:45.390
There are no warpers.

00:37:45.390 --> 00:37:48.360
You have to walk immense landscapes

00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:50.463
to try to find your way around.

00:37:52.410 --> 00:37:53.823
This was kind of the end.

00:37:54.754 --> 00:37:57.520
I mean, we did AvaMars in 2004

00:37:58.408 --> 00:38:01.470
because I was part of
Mars programs by then.

00:38:01.470 --> 00:38:05.523
I was often doing space work
with NASA by that point.

00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:09.453
I figured it was done.

00:38:10.455 --> 00:38:12.391
Sort of the innovation was,

00:38:12.391 --> 00:38:14.241
it was about all we could do I think.

00:38:16.392 --> 00:38:18.357
The consortium sort of ran its course

00:38:18.357 --> 00:38:19.980
and then I morphed it
into something different,

00:38:19.980 --> 00:38:23.940
which is today the Biota
Institute working on the origin

00:38:23.940 --> 00:38:27.840
of life and the implications
for that new science

00:38:27.840 --> 00:38:30.090
and discoveries, really trying to say,

00:38:30.090 --> 00:38:32.430
can we crack the code of how life began?

00:38:32.430 --> 00:38:35.250
And we think it\'s in
hot springing settings,

00:38:35.250 --> 00:38:36.420
not in the ocean,

00:38:36.420 --> 00:38:38.610
not at the hydrothermal
vents in the ocean,

00:38:38.610 --> 00:38:41.220
but hydrothermal springs on land.

00:38:41.220 --> 00:38:44.850
And we started taking our
science out to hot springs all

00:38:44.850 --> 00:38:48.780
over the planet from Yellowstone
to Rotorua, New Zealand,

00:38:48.780 --> 00:38:52.950
and recently to Fly Geyser
near Burning Man\'s location,

00:38:52.950 --> 00:38:57.243
ironically, and getting the
formation of protocells,

00:38:58.436 --> 00:39:00.180
little compartments
made out of fatty acids

00:39:00.180 --> 00:39:04.530
that can contain polymers
like RNA or peptides or DNA.

00:39:04.530 --> 00:39:07.330
And we think we might have
found the engine of creation.

00:39:08.340 --> 00:39:10.833
So that\'s what I\'m working on these days.

00:39:12.268 --> 00:39:14.768
(light music)

00:39:16.348 --> 00:39:17.940
I am going to the Cy Awards,

00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:21.303
Cy was the original name
of the first avatar.

00:39:22.140 --> 00:39:25.923
And I think they still have
awards for the best worlds.

00:39:27.763 --> 00:39:29.400
So you can see there\'s
sort of better animations

00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:32.313
and they\'re featuring good design.

00:39:34.260 --> 00:39:37.380
And I haven\'t been here in forever.

00:39:37.380 --> 00:39:39.359
Back in sort of the glory days,

00:39:39.359 --> 00:39:42.033
there would be two to
400 people all the time.

00:39:43.140 --> 00:39:44.970
Early on we sort of asked

00:39:44.970 --> 00:39:48.480
what characterizes the
users of these places.

00:39:48.480 --> 00:39:51.660
And there was a section of the user base

00:39:51.660 --> 00:39:53.190
that were self described

00:39:53.190 --> 00:39:56.100
as socially awkward or socially anxious.

00:39:56.100 --> 00:40:00.750
But in in the world they
were sort of super organizing

00:40:00.750 --> 00:40:04.110
beings to have great social
skills that they felt

00:40:04.110 --> 00:40:08.803
comfortable expressing in
world that they didn\'t out

00:40:10.404 --> 00:40:11.589
there in shopping malls

00:40:11.589 --> 00:40:13.589
and gas stations and things like this.

00:40:13.589 --> 00:40:16.020
The world that they felt was overwhelming.

00:40:16.020 --> 00:40:17.940
And then there were
people that were isolated

00:40:17.940 --> 00:40:21.090
and sort of locked in
or people were in jobs

00:40:21.090 --> 00:40:23.550
that they felt trapped in

00:40:23.550 --> 00:40:25.530
and they felt liberated in these worlds.

00:40:25.530 --> 00:40:29.580
There were also users
that were wheelchair bound

00:40:29.580 --> 00:40:32.340
or bound through illness.

00:40:32.340 --> 00:40:37.340
But then there were users that
were just an auto mechanic

00:40:37.620 --> 00:40:41.790
that felt that this was like
an incredibly high-tech,

00:40:41.790 --> 00:40:44.970
creative, delicious
way to spend their time

00:40:44.970 --> 00:40:48.213
beyond what was a fairly
routine job for them.

00:40:49.170 --> 00:40:51.603
And they became an incredible designer,

00:40:54.510 --> 00:40:56.700
In user built worlds where you really

00:40:56.700 --> 00:40:58.350
are controlling your environments.

00:40:58.350 --> 00:40:59.640
Not a fed thing,

00:40:59.640 --> 00:41:01.350
it\'s not an experience designed

00:41:01.350 --> 00:41:04.260
by somebody else that you go through,

00:41:04.260 --> 00:41:06.960
you own your own words as
Clifford Stoll would say.

00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:10.343
But it\'s your pride of point that you make

00:41:10.343 --> 00:41:13.380
a beautiful space and
that it works for people.

00:41:13.380 --> 00:41:16.710
And that\'s why we jumped on this platform,

00:41:16.710 --> 00:41:19.980
especially early on because
we realized it, the company,

00:41:19.980 --> 00:41:22.380
because it didn\'t really commercialize

00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:25.860
this platform as it was doing
with its other platform,

00:41:25.860 --> 00:41:28.470
it left it to the users to do it.

00:41:28.470 --> 00:41:32.520
And so the creative potential
and the human impact

00:41:32.520 --> 00:41:37.440
of this platform was far greater
than the company platform,

00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:39.750
which is called WorldsChat.

00:41:39.750 --> 00:41:44.750
So it was just a testament to what people

00:41:44.760 --> 00:41:48.240
can do on their own, working together,

00:41:48.240 --> 00:41:50.523
being creative, self organizing.

00:41:55.680 --> 00:41:58.920
As big institutions
crumble to some degree,

00:41:58.920 --> 00:42:01.830
even like big science universities,

00:42:01.830 --> 00:42:03.930
companies as we knew them,

00:42:03.930 --> 00:42:06.720
government as we knew it crumbles

00:42:06.720 --> 00:42:09.180
under the weight of change.

00:42:09.180 --> 00:42:12.690
It\'s the users coming together
that create the content,

00:42:12.690 --> 00:42:13.770
that create the networks,

00:42:13.770 --> 00:42:16.080
that create the political dialogue,

00:42:16.080 --> 00:42:19.860
the intellectual
achievements, the solutions.

00:42:19.860 --> 00:42:21.243
And so virtual worlds,

00:42:22.531 --> 00:42:24.903
were approving ground for ordinary people,

00:42:25.933 --> 00:42:28.020
having experiences with each other

00:42:28.020 --> 00:42:30.273
and making magnificent things.

00:42:31.605 --> 00:42:34.188
(upbeat music)

00:42:42.230 --> 00:42:46.067
The avatar medium and the
virtual world\'s medium struggle

00:42:46.067 --> 00:42:47.694
is to sort of push up through

00:42:47.694 --> 00:42:49.972
the concrete of the World Wide Web

00:42:49.972 --> 00:42:52.410
that\'s been laid down,
de-socializing the internet,

00:42:52.410 --> 00:42:54.510
and making it into a big billboard.

00:42:54.510 --> 00:42:55.980
We know what happened

00:42:55.980 --> 00:42:58.830
in the spring with all the
companies running into problems.

00:42:58.830 --> 00:43:00.090
And we know everyone\'s struggling,

00:43:00.090 --> 00:43:01.560
but we\'re using these worlds.

00:43:01.560 --> 00:43:02.463
We love them.

00:43:03.488 --> 00:43:04.950
We\'re doing things in them,
they\'re changing our lives.

00:43:04.950 --> 00:43:07.080
We\'re gonna talk about it and tell you

00:43:07.080 --> 00:43:08.760
that you should keep going

00:43:08.760 --> 00:43:11.760
and put a human face on cyberspace.

00:43:11.760 --> 00:43:15.750
Because in the 21st century,
when we\'re all in our dotage,

00:43:15.750 --> 00:43:18.120
do we still want to be surfing webpages

00:43:18.120 --> 00:43:20.603
and interfacing with databases?

00:43:20.603 --> 00:43:21.840
- [All] No, no!

00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:23.280
- Is that cyberspace?

00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:24.113
- [All] No, no!

00:43:25.050 --> 00:43:27.633
- So who\'s gonna build
the real cyberspace?

00:43:29.076 --> 00:43:31.983
You guys are building the real cyberspace.

00:43:33.271 --> 00:43:34.770
This community is going
to build the metaverse

00:43:34.770 --> 00:43:35.760
and you\'re gonna do it better

00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:38.133
than Stephenson or
Gibson could ever dream.

00:43:39.371 --> 00:43:40.408
And that\'s what this is about.

00:43:40.408 --> 00:43:42.690
It\'s about a new place
for human beings to meet,

00:43:42.690 --> 00:43:44.869
for their imagination, for their dreams,

00:43:44.869 --> 00:43:46.617
and for their work.

00:43:46.617 --> 00:43:49.320
And it\'s going to be a bigger place,

00:43:49.320 --> 00:43:51.783
the biggest place that we have ever made.

00:43:52.985 --> 00:43:54.676
(audience cheers)

00:43:54.676 --> 00:43:57.676
(audience applauds)

00:44:01.437 --> 00:44:04.020
(upbeat music)

00:44:19.298 --> 00:44:22.798
(upbeat electronic music)

00:44:31.680 --> 00:44:35.280
- I want to provide an orifice
through which impossible,

00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:37.440
absolute unattainable realms can be seen,

00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:39.480
touched and felt in a way

00:44:39.480 --> 00:44:42.300
that could not be conveyed
to any other (indistinct).

00:44:42.300 --> 00:44:43.920
The kinds of things that I visualize

00:44:43.920 --> 00:44:45.765
being part of this new world.

00:44:45.765 --> 00:44:46.598
And I\'ll read you.

00:44:46.598 --> 00:44:47.880
Virtual entertainment and virtual world,

00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:49.770
self-evolving personality organelles,

00:44:49.770 --> 00:44:51.510
virtual emotion constructors,

00:44:51.510 --> 00:44:54.630
emotional extensions as an
entertainment commodity.

00:44:54.630 --> 00:44:57.270
Virtual shopping malls,
amusement parks and cyberspace,

00:44:57.270 --> 00:44:58.260
rentable organisms,

00:44:58.260 --> 00:45:00.750
avatars on loan, disposable
personality entities.

00:45:00.750 --> 00:45:03.180
I want to buy, purchase
and remodify a persona

00:45:03.180 --> 00:45:04.830
that represents my vicarious experience

00:45:04.830 --> 00:45:06.360
in an interactive world.

00:45:06.360 --> 00:45:08.070
You think I\'m joking?

00:45:08.070 --> 00:45:09.210
Now, if I have any more time,

00:45:09.210 --> 00:45:10.043
even a little bit.

00:45:10.043 --> 00:45:10.950
I do have a few transparent,

00:45:10.950 --> 00:45:11.880
how am I doing?

00:45:11.880 --> 00:45:12.900
None.

00:45:12.900 --> 00:45:13.950
I\'m out of time. Ugh.

00:45:14.820 --> 00:45:15.653
Oh, well.