The Oasis of the Surreal - John "Pathfinder" Lester - H+ Summit @ Harvard
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Transcript of The Oasis of the Surreal - John "Pathfinder" Lester - H+ Summit @ Harvard
Synthetic Worlds: The Oasis of the Surreal
John LesterIndependent Consultant, Market Development in Virtual Worlds
[email protected]: @PathfinderLinkedIn: John Lester
2010 H+ Summit at Harvard University
My Perspective
2005 – 2010“Pathfinder Linden” at Linden LabMarket Development, Product EvangelistEducation, Healthcare, Business
1993 – 2005Massachusetts General Hospital, NeurologyHarvard Medical SchoolNeuroscience and Medical InformaticsPatient Support Communities
What are we talking about?
1. What is the Metaverse and why should I care?
2. What is the most common thing that goes wrong in the Metaverse?
3. What will make the Metaverse broadly successful?
1. The Metaverse(Synthetic/Virtual Multiuser 3D World)
“Snow Crash” “Neuromancer” “True Names”
Perceptual Immersion leads to Emotional Immersion.
Our brains need 3d.
Our hearts need an Oasis of the Surreal.
2. What is the most common thing that goes wrong in the Metaverse?
What goes most commonly goes wrong is directly related to something our mind desperately needs.
We need Meaningful Metaphors.
World: <here’s something>Brain: “What does this remind me of ?”
Failure of metaphors in the Metaverse.
“I want to build a virtual learning space. Where are the chairs?”
The Metaphor of the Avatar
“Hey, that’s me!”
Sharing identity
The Meaningfulness of Place and our presence in it.
Limbic system response
Mirror neurons
3. What will make the Metaverse broadly successful?
I think Neal Stephenson nailed it in his book “Snow Crash.”
Nobody who read “Snow Crash” seems to remember.
“Snow Crash”
Questions
Who has read Snow Crash?
Who remembers the one key thing that made the Metaverse broadly successful? (raise your hand)
What do you think was the one key thing?
A Programmer and her Grandmother
"I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. And then she figured out the whole situation in, maybe, ten minutes, just by watching my face across the dinner table. I didn't say more than ten words. I don’t know how my face conveyed that information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance."
Information Visualization and Transfer
"I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later, as. A grad student, trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly. I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Then I remembered my grandmother and realized, my God, the human mind can absorb and process an incredible amount of information - if it comes in the right format. The right interface. If you put the right face on it.”
It was Juanita’s faces
“And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs, soaking up the adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to the realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. It was Juanita's faces.”
Guess what made it tip for business?
“Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said a lot gets lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head - by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance.”
3. What will make the Metaverse broadly successful?
Empathy: The ability to share another human’s emotions and feelings.
Instant Messaging: The ability to immediately communicate with another human via an electronic medium.
Empathic Messaging: The ability to share human emotions and feelings via an electronic medium that conveys nuanced real life and real time facial expression and body language instantly, accurately, and realistically.
The Trick: Communicate this…
…using this.