[ftwynn]

I'm always surprised that people don't cite the economic and physical limits for the metaverse more often.

Light only moves so fast through cables. Average ping time between New York and LA is in the high 60's, and that's assuming a wired connection.

I think often about the old talk [1] Web Design - The First 100 Years, that talks about why planes never went supersonic. The alternatives were good enough, and the costs rose exponentially for linear (or sib-linear) gains. Transmitting information across the wire is an obvious win on value. Transmitting experience seems like a whole different order of magnitude that might just not be worth it.

[1] https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

[polio]

If people are avatars, then the amount of information exchanged in a conversation between them is the streaming audio and vectors describing the position of the avatar's bodies; I feel like this would be less bandwidth than is required for video chat, although the expectation of low latency will likely be greater due to the immersion.