Venture capitalist and author Matthew Ball debates whether landing humans on Mars or creating a full-scale virtual reality world like Ready Player One will happen first.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ball: Quantum Computing Will Be Solved Within Our Lifetime
“The field of quantum computing is one of those other areas where we think in terms of fantastical ideas, this is a Jetsons thing, it's not a human thing, but there's increasing consensus that that technological problem will solve within our lifetime, in which …”
Insight
Ball: Build Compelling Social Products First, Not Consumer Computing Platforms
“We have this ongoing lesson that trying to build the next big platform in computing, especially on the consumer side, less so on the enterprise side, you shouldn't seek to do it.
And by that, I mean, there's this classic example of we've always known that a qu…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ball: Metaverse will exacerbate existing internet harms like disinformation and platform power
“I think we can fairly look at the state of the internet today and identify many problems, mis and disinformation, radicalization, toxicity, harassment, abuse. Data rights, data security, data literacy, platform power, platform regulation. And we can understand…”
Insight
Ball: Virtual world developers should pioneer 3D tools, not reinvent governance
“The enormity of what we want to build requires extraordinary trust in the system, extraordinary investment, and we actually have these frameworks we need not reinvent. We can iterate on, but even there, we should pioneer on the three D tools, not the societal …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ball: Web3 will supplement the future, not replace TCP/IP
“I'm not one of the revisionists that believes that we're going to strip out TCP IP and replace it with web three. But I do believe and am quite optimistic that parts of our future are going to be supplemented by these technologies. But I do think it's still a …”
Opinion
Ball: Dystopian Sci-Fi Negatively Colors Public Perceptions of the Metaverse
“Does it have a negative effect? Absolutely. And certainly if you are suffering from some form of confirmation bias, it reiterates that confirmation or that bias.”