PS: I can also give a short introductory workshop to the metaverse, programming WebXR relying on self-hosted and federated solutions, no headset required.
Hi @Iterative_exploatio and welcome, at OFFDEM we only discuss free and decentralised software not for the metaverse, we feel others have already enough places where they can be discussed.
But you might be interested by this conversation topic:
https://ps.zoethical.org/t/privilege-capacite-dagir-desertion-sabotage-et-logiciel-libre/6283
Didn’t get that email translated to forum posts automatically so just in case there was a confusion I meant the metaverse (lowercase “m”), not “M̷̮̅à̶̤t̶͚͐â̴̯ (formally known as F̶̥̈ȧ̶͜k̸̤̋ê̶̦b̸̠̎ơ̴̠ọ̸̍z̷̝̎) Metaverse” as a product from a large surveillance capitalism based corporation.
I won’t argue but in case others still are curious about the topic stumbling upon this thread (despite the wrong title I can’t fix) I warmly recommend Immers https://immers.space that is built on ActivityPub (same protocol running the Mastodon federated network and more) self-hostable free software (AGPL-3) and maintained by a Co-op. I personally believe it is a reliable decentralized (federated) alternative, in fact a politically better one, to commercial products that I don’t even need to mention.
indeed thanks for clarifying lets see if we can find a room for such a workshop how long would you need?
I would be curious about two points:
- whether it makes sense to keep using a term, “metaverse”, that has been preempted by the worst of all: why is it good to keep using it?
- what articulation does the 3D web entertains with the Small Web – that might be part of an answer wrt 1.
@aral what do you think?
I believe 1h is sufficient to have a working setup that people can “bring home” and showcase to others. It could last longer but there are plenty of other interesting topics to explore.
- the term existed before preemption but indeed it makes it loaded, instead of having a generative, positive conversation about how we tend to focus on the negative or protective aspect of not doing it at all or how to at least not do it poorly. I believe most interesting terms, when they became popular, were the subject of etymological or epistemological battles but I’m personally fine using “Self-Hosted (3D) Cooperative Web” or “Federated immersive Web” or even metaverse as long as there is an actual experimentation on a novel, 3D or immersive, way to explore content on the Web together. I’m not adamant one way or another as long as we do investigate the governance model, namely who controls the actual flow of information, how do people using and modifying the application itself are in control of their own behavior and data, and if not what can be changed about it.
- I think it would be particularly interesting to investigate why people (and maybe it’s related to point 1) the topic with the idea of scale or growth. I believe it might be part of the zeitgeist from VC funded startups or examples like TikTok and other social media (e.g Twitter default views visible since few days) that somehow huge numbers mean success. From a technical standpoint and especially with federation in mind, it can both scale while remaining self-hosted and limited to the participation of small self governed groups. I’m personally still working on that specific aspect for my project #72 - deployment setup - text-code-xr-engine - Gitea: Git with a cup of tea and I can’t promise a “1-click” setup could be ready for such a workshop but I’m, as the issue shows, certainly interested in facilitating that aspect.
Quick note also that as I gave a workshop for TADA https://www.tada.brussels/?lang=en to ~30 10yo kids focusing more on discovery of the medium, thus about VR more than “just” 3D, so it could also be something to consider for the kids corner. I also tried with kids as young as 3yo, with parental supervision, and they did enjoy it. It would still be networked but offline (local WiFi only, no Internet used) for privacy concerns.