Big Tech companies are finally getting the names we thought dystopian megacorps would have

salarua@sopuli.xyz to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 1376 points –

Meta Platforms. X Corp. tell me those aren't straight from a strangely prescient cyberpunk classic

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I’m just waiting for Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to open in Detroit.

Omni is actually a Swedish news aggregator. They just need to expand and change a bit.

Don't forget Truth Social. Straight out of ministry of truth.

That's not new, it's just new to English. I lot of Soviet countries had pravda.

Especially when their main selling point is that they don't do fact checking.

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Now we just need companies to have their own militaries and then for someone to nuke one of their towers. We'd have the whole nine yards.

"He burned down half the city just to prove he was right and burned the other half just for fun."

Source? Please.

He burned down half the city just to prove he was right and burned the other half just for fun.

Cyberpunk

I could absolutely see a not-too-distant future where competitors of megacorps have their assets attacked by the government’s military.

This has already happened many times. It’s just that those “competitors” are usually referred to as “ordinary people.”

Sad upvote.

I was thinking more as a mundane mechanism to gain market share though, not necessarily punishment or collateral damage.

…but I guess it applies even then. Sigh.

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I still think it's hilarious that Facebook renamed to Meta, and anything they did with the "metaverse" was a huge failure. It's like they didn't learn their lesson from Second Life.

Second Life isn't owned by Meta. And just by the amount of money Second Life earned, and somehow still earns to this day, it was a pretty huge success. The only real success in the "virtual world" field. It's not surprising somebody else would try to emulate that success.

They don't own it, that means they can't know about it?

Why would they learn from a mistake that wasn't even a mistake and wasn't theirs to begin with? Like, what is the point you are trying to make?

I think the confusion begins with your statement that Meta didn't "learn their lesson from Second Life." What's the lesson they should have learned? Why should Meta have learned a lesson from something they didn't own?

The big lesson from Second Life to me is that it's a novelty for 95% of potential users, and a fixation for a few true believers.

VR and AR are in that era of radio in the 1920s, or personal computers in 1977. They're interesting, people might gawk at one for a little while if given access to it, but right now, the long-term audience is going to be primarily enthusiasts who are passionate about the technology for its own sake.

We're still waiting for a lot of details to snap into place to make it broadly appealing:

  • The hardware and setup needs to be turnkey. Newer kit is getting a lot closer, but I think it's going to be hard because you have to factor in things like "setting up a wide enough floor space to avoid injuring yourself when using it" and "we haven't really resolved that this gives a fair number of people violent sickness"

  • There need to be killer apps. Some of the VR experiences seem like they'd be fun, but eventually exhausting. It's sort of like the motion control (Wii/Kinect/PSMove) trend-- people enjoyed them, but it seemed like it burnt through quickly, rather than becoming a core part of new gaming experiences going forward.

AR likely has an easier road to "killer app" because it can be applied to a bunch of vertical use cases; I'm picturing a fry-cook with a heads-up display that tracks how long each patty has been on the grille and its internal temperature, for example. Even if mainstream consumers never buy AR gear, there might be a million devices sold to businesses. Makes me think of Windows CE; the consumer launch was muted, but it was on a billion scanner-oriented devices for years.

"There need to be killer apps" you say, but have you looked at the VR titles on Steam etc?

There are already a lot of fantastic VR games. Touristy cities even have VR gaming arcades where you can pay high prices to play on their VR kits.

The main barrier to wider adoption is the high price for good VR equipment, and the runner up is probably the complexity of setting up and using the systems. So yes that's similar to PCs in the early days, maybe like the 90s were with PCs and the Internet.

While there may be good apps, I tend to define "Killer App" as a specific program that people not already in the ecosystem will explicitly buy into a hardware platform to run. The classic being VisiCalc for the Apple II and Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC. On the gaming side, think about how many millions of Game Boys were sold so people could play Tetris; one suspects a significant number never saw another cartridge in their life. Or, perhaps less hyperbolically, Halo got a lot of people onto the Xbox platform, and FF7 did the same for the Playstation.

Does any VR title have the same degree of wide awareness and demand those programs had at their peak?

I could imagine someone trying to force the hand by moving a beloved franchise into VR-- imagine if the next Dragon Quest was VR-only, for example, and people who buy everything with that cute blue slime on it would also buy cute-blue-slime shape headsets. Meta has the resources to buy such a situation into existence, but it might not be what they're after because it's likely to still be only a narrow draw-- they're used to building a platform for All The People, not just the audience who followed a single beloved franchise over.

They should have learned a lesson from Second Life. It was so much graphically better, more sophisticated and immersive even in 2d .

Users had a world where they could build, interact, buy land, make, buy, sell items and art, go to concerts, have virtual sex, attend classes, build a castle , explore, etc, etc. It would have been awesome in 3d.

This was like 20 years ago! Meta had such an opportunity there but instead had half avatars and chat rooms. It sucked.

A lot of it comes down to the Quest processors as they are just not very powerful. It had to be backwards comparable with the 835 Snapdragon processor form the Quest 1 and that is a 2016 processor. Makes senses it was so basic as they wanted to have many avatars on screen at once so things had the get cut…like legs. Ahahahaha.

I am not defending Meta, but just stating the facts and one of those facts is Zuck has said this is a long game and that it will be at least a decade before the Metaverse becomes something half compelling. I agree with that assessment. It is just not there today, but it will be.

Don't forget the conglomerate names:

Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard

"Well, there was a bit of a stir when it was decided that since corporations are people, they could technically run for president. But President Walt Disney-Pepsi-Comcast has done wonders for the economy... given that it's... now the economy"

Oh and don't forget the cheeky suckers that explicitly named their nutritional supplement company Soylent Nutrition, Inc.

i do like soylent tho. i'm gonna go shake one up rn

You shouldn't shake it if it's made from babies.

Gotta tenderize them somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

is it better than Huel? Huel tasted awful

In my experience none of them taste great, but if you make them part of your daily flow you get over it pretty quickly. I've heard good things about the newer pre-mixed and flavored ones, but I got to a good place with my nutrition a few years ago and stopped using pretty much all meal replacements.

so I'm curious, do you just not eat any actual food anymore other than Soylent?

its an option, but most ppl do eat food still. simply because they enjoy the taste more.

Exact opposite! I know the language was flowery there but I basically never eat Huel/Soylent anymore

personally i want to get at least 1000 kcal a day in soylent, so that i'm sure i get SOME of my rdas. otherwise i eat a lot of bean and cheese burritos. they are maybe 1/3 of what i eat besides soylent. the rest is like... whatever my wife makes or fast food.

Honestly I never really got meal replacements like it's basically a drink so you are still eating your just not chewing so what's the point is the point to not cook is it that you just don't want to move your jaw is this just something I can't comprehend because I'm autistic what

i drank a lot of huel. none of the flavors were great (for me).

i switched to soylent this month. the "original" flavor is just completely inoffensive. it reminds me of milk. i just hit 1080 kcal on soylent today.

i did get some of the strawberry flavor that mixes into it. that was very good, but i don't need it every day. i'm happy just to drink the original.

Soylent is way better than Huel. I've been consuming at least a serving of Soylent a day for the past four or five years, I've tried a few different brands including huel and they were all significantly worse than Soylent ready to drink or Soylent powder.

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It's like whoever is offering up these names and convincing them to use them is trying to tell consumers and workers something in the countries they work and operate. That a rental service is literally named Hertz is pretty on the nose even without all the movie culture references.

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Pretty much. Welcome to the fucking future I guess. There's no flying cars and green cities and happiness or bloody universal healthcare, instead we have corpos trying to turn us into their consumer slaves and governments turning authoritarian. Just do what you're told and buy more. Don't ask questions don't think just browse TikTok, improve your social credit score, and imprint more ads into your psyche until WW3.

We're walking into hell with our eyes wide open fuck me it hurts.

I read this with the voice of Johnny Silverhand

It's definitely not all the utopia some thought it would be, but it's also definitely a lot better than the dystopia some predicted. Also, I personally prefer the internet to flying cars.

There are flying quadcopter taxis testing in Dubai

The only thing really keeping them from flying rich people in from their gated community and landing in the street in front of a restaurant is regulation.

With better battery life they'd be more flexible, but they're already technically capable, and compact enough.

Also when you try to speak against all this shit people ridicule you and ignore you. If they cant do that easily then its always just apathy and "it is what it is" whining.

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Those names were always parodying the names of actual corporations. I'm pretty sure Weyland Yutani is basically supposed to be like Lockheed Mitsubishi

Normal people reading dystopian fiction: “wow, the author really portrayed well the downfall of humanity if we were to go down the wrong path”

Billionaires reading dystopian fiction: “hey, you know what…”

When Weyland corp announce a merger with Yutani industries it's time to worry.

Or when Arisaka starts moving in on Militech turf.

Ngl I wouldn’t mind being chromed

That’s the worst part, we’re rapidly approaching the corporate dystopia of cyberpunk, without any of the crazy drugs or body mods.

Give me gorilla arms, damnit

I just want to live forever as a semi-coherent cloud of nanites. Is that really too much to ask?

We’ve got the crazy drugs and body mods coming, don’t you worry. Haven’t you seen the videos of people who make designer prosthetics and robotic hands for themselves?

Soon somebody’s gonna put roller skates in their feet and then it’s all over. That’s how you’ll know it’s the singularity.

Realistically speaking, we really need to start differenciating between restoring human functions (like artificial eye for the blind) and enhancements augmenting abilities normal human limits (that same eye having x-ray and nightvision).

Restoring functions, at least, should be treated as universal medicine and healthcare and be available for whoever needs it.

That requires defining normal function which is mega dangerous. Especially as we move away from default humanity.

Hope you don't mind being billed for the whole surgery, including amputation of limbs you never asked for in the first place. Shiny stuff with soul crushing debt - sounds like American colleges.

I never asked for this. Wrong game, I know :)

Mankind Divided had a very abrupt cliffhanger. Adam needs a proper closure to his story.

When runaway capitalism is the norm and all the shareholders care about is that bottomline, then they will lean into the dystopia and be blatant about it when nobody is stopping them laughing all the way to the bank.

You want a trip down “is this a cyberpunk dystopia company” name, go check out the data brokers on the data broker registries in Vermont and California.

Acxiom, Experian, TransUnion, Oracle Data Cloud, CoreLogic, Axle, Equifax, Foursquare Labs, Inc., OnAudience, Nielsen, ... ... ... ...

I always thought this for the financial market: Standard & Poor

Moody

The Fed (as in, the past tense of feed)

fannie mae and freddie mac have this distinct dystopyian taste to me

Those are just nicknames people use because the real names are long and boring.

"Fannie Mae" is actually the Federal National Mortgage Association (aka FNMA). "Freddie Mac" is actually the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.

There's also E Corp from Mr. Robot.

That one was clealy google, not the other way around

Is more Tencent or Samsung that Google.

Yeah but samsung in nowhere near Google's influence in US and worldwide. But I agree these companies are HUGE in Asia.

Samsung is EVERYTHING in Korea. Not so much in the west beyond phones and smart tv's, and Laundry machines or whatever, but in Korea, Samsung does EVERYTHING.

TVs, Phones, Washing Machines? Samsung! Cars, trucks? Also, Samsung! Heavy machine equipment, cranes, etc? Believe or not, also Samsung! The Chaebol that does it all!

And the characters called it evil corp anyways so it might as well have been the name.

Not exactly, most of the characters seem to call the company E Corp but the main character (who's also the narrator) "corrects it" in his head.

You didn't mention Facebook? That's super dystopian to me. What's a face book if not a large collection of identities being monitored?

It sounds like a cursed item in D&D or something.

The Book of Faces Wondrous Item, very rare

This enchanted tome magically records the likeness each humanoid slain in its vicinity, preserving a snapshot of their life and memories. The book can be read to glean superficial information about it's subjects. As an action, you can tear a page from the book to summon a ghostly spirit of its subject, which will be magically compelled to answer questions. The spirit knows nothing the owner did not know in life.

The Demon Lord Elgor Ithym is said to have a keen interest in this book...

What’s a face book if not a large collection of identities being monitored?

Well, historically (and I mean in the 1990s) it was a collection of names and photographs of all the new students at your college, to help in meeting people and/or to see who's hot.

I'm still waiting for the cool neon signs.

The lady eating a cherry is burned into my brain. In the Blade Runner point-n-click game she would appear every time you'd fly out from the marketplace, because it was a prerendered cutscene.

Nah, we got cheaper and brighter LED lights blasting 24/7 and annoying everyone trying to sleep instead. Neon signs are retro now.

I also like Alliant Techsystems, then merged with Orbital Sciences Corp into Orbital ATK.

They are part of NGIS (Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), so evil things might come from there.

Yea, X Corps definitely becomes the manufacturer of the protein bar machines on snowpiercer

And lab-grown artificiel pet snakes as in Blade Runner

I find it amusing how nobody noticed when Valve changed their name to Valve Corporation ages ago, and people keep referring to it as Valve Software.

If you think about it, all sorts of fucked up things that are happening now have been portrayed as a bad thing in past media: Virtual words, virtual-fuckin' land (not 100% sure this one is real, still really hoping its not), misuse of AI, smart houses, where everything is controlled by a remote (which relies on electricity / wi-fi), even stuff like alexa, which is listening to every word you say, at your home...

Haha yeah the virtual land was true thing. it was a crypto scam if I recall correctly. Everything nowadays is just crypto scam

You can just call it crypto. The scam bit is implied.

Art creates the future. Whatever we envision we steer ourselves toward, consciously or unconsciously. A vision has gravity, and pulls people toward it. The more a vision is etched into people’s minds, the more likely we will live it.

I’m convinced Apple’s overall aesthetic is based on Star Trek: TNG. Or at least it was for a phase, until we got bored with it and took it even further.

Nah, calling the visions of aging tech bros on HRT art is a stretch too far.

They're talking about the visions of sci-fi authors, filmmakers, and artists. The tech Bros are the ones being drawn towards those artists' visions.

It aint the same vision.

They smashed the Rose-colored glasees in favor of orher lenses, one tinted the color of money. The other a swirl of gluttony, power, and dopamine.

It must suck to spend all day hating

Nah, it mostly sucks to have watched the tech bro crowd take something wonderful, that bemefited everyone and twist it into personal profit streams devoid of any soul and/or humanity.

I know those types are going to destroy us all, but everyone sucks so just let the bad times roll. Then the heads will follow. Rolling on the floor.

Amazon web services

Doesnt sound so evil...

Amazon comes from the Greek meaning 'breastless'. Trans agenda confirmed 💯💯💯

Maybe not yet ... I bet they will soon catch up ... Btw in italian Ammazzo means to kill can u see some similarities... 😉

There's a company called Hashicorp that's been in the news recently. Literally perfect

Heh, people from 50 years ago hearing that my job is terraforming using Hashicorp equipment would be very disappointed.

Terraform it all. Pave the moon. Dairy Queens on Mars. Uber in the skies of Jupiter.

Hashicorp’s been around for years; since 2012 actually. Used to be a pretty cool company, looked up by many, like a shining beacon in the darkness. It’s unfortunate where they’ve gone to now.

I wondered what Badland was talking about, but I nodded along like I knew. Maybe the next words out of his mouth would be an explanation of what he’s just said. It could happen.

I don't know what part your unaware of - so let me do the ELI5. They (HashiCorp) created a tool called teraform which is used for defining what servers/other infrastructure you use in places like AWS. Up until recently this was open source under the Mozilla license to something that's not quite open, but not fully closed source (yet).

I intended to give an explanation, but since this community is pretty general, i.e. we have people from basically all walks of life here, many with little to no involvement or understanding of the tech industry, so I decided to leave it out cause it would be too much to explain.

rolauten@startrek.website has given us a pretty brief explanation, but I think it can be further simplified, though would require a lot more knowledge build up (i.e. more words). If anyone’s interested, I can try to write a fireplace story, though I can’t say I’m the most qualified person to do so, or give an absolutely accurate story.

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As long as we get coporate songs like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTR0BiFehA

Again

I had forgotten about that.

And it was good that way.

If I don't have that song out of my head by tomorrow, I'll stalk your account, find out your irl id, and send you muffins with raisins.

Do these also count: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-QThIoXfks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRVoJnxjpFg

Holy shizz I forgot about that song. thanks for the rememory

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Theranos sounded like a superhero villain. I guess it kind of was?

There's a company near me called the Telamon Corporation, which is the name of the Dragon from the Wheel of Time. So it's not just cyberpunk, there's fantasy as well

"Telemon" has an even more interesting history. He was a figure in Greek mythology, and generally around people like Hercules, Odysseus, and Jason. He is the son of a king and a mountain nymph.

As you may well know (but others don't) Robert Jordan, when building the world for his Wheel of Time series, pulled from all sorts of existing myths, legends, and memories. After all, it's just another turning of the Wheel, right?

Crazy to think they named Norse gods after the protagonist of the wheel of time.

Currently waiting for BiffCo to spice up our lives and give us floating long boards

I mean, they’re no Tessier-Ashpool,SA. or anything.

What's wrong with Tessier-Ashpool?

Nothing, I was just saying that it’s a cool cyberpunk corporation name. For me the gaudy names like Meta and X are a little on the nose, true evil lurks under a veneer of banality which I think names like TA have.

I had hoped, that you would notice my user name kind of resembles Count Zero, my avatar is taken straight from a Count Zero book cover, and my home instance is lemmy.villa-straylight.social

Well, you know what they say about explaing jokes and what that does to their funnyness. I guess it was not obvious enough.

Omg, I’m actually glad you mentioned it because I totally missed it!! I actually have to get around to reading the rest of the Sprawl books. Rereading Neuromancer now and might just keep going in the others.

What are things like at Starylight.social?

What are things like at Starylight.social?

Small and chill. Like it was an abandoned orbital revolving around the fediverse ;-)

I mean, they're all also chasing AI too doesn't that typically lead to our demise too?

Oh that’s no problem to solve. Just put Asimov’s five laws in your default instructions and your chatgpt bots will never manipulate you into overthrowing human civilization.

Isn't every book about how the laws don't work?

Most of the stories deal with edge cases or situations where the laws are untested or altered. They generally do work quite well, though not always as the characters expect.

I, robot is full of examples of the laws not working. I seem to recall one where they removed one of the rules for some mining bots.

Ultimate Marvel's Gregory Stark was supposed to be a caricature. He's spot on though.

I'm not a Christian, but can we start rapturing people away anyway? I gotta get out this bitch.

RAPTURE ME, PLEASE?! I WANT OFF THIS DYSTOPIAN HELLPLANET!

When I think about the fact that Facebook thought it was a good idea to name their online VR platform “the metaverse“ it still breaks my brain a little bit

Anaheim Electronics when? If I have to die in a war, I want to die in a Gundam.

That one is easy. Simply open up an electrics store in Anaheim, California.

Starting out small, so once I become rich, I can claim I got there through my own work, and not by having military contracts.

Real life is getting closer to cyberpunk but without the cool tech.

The meta rebranding made my skin craw. The X rebranding is dumb on Elon Musk's part. However you make a good point.

I believe Apple got its name from the biblical term of the forbidden fruit. Microsoft has a megacorp sounding name. Will Amazon rename itself to something dystopian?

AFAIK Microsoft came from the Neuromancer novel. A microsoft is a tool in the book.

Could be wrong though, but I feel Ike that book was written before Microsoft was a company.