It’s been dubbed a utopia, and a place most of us will be unable to avoid in the years
to come.
It will change your life in so many ways: But is that such a good thing?
What actually is the Metaverse?
It’s a word people keep on hearing these days yet we doubt many folks actually know
what it is.
One of the most outspoken proponents of the Metaverse is that chap that looks and acts
a bit like a cyborg, the man named Mark Zuckerberg.
He even changed his company name to Meta, so it seems his hopes are riding high on us
all getting on board with his idea of a tech utopia.
When he refers to this place, this new kind of tech universe, he’s really only talking
about a larger cyber space where immersion in our technology will allow us to be more
connected than ever before.
But how could we possibly be more connected than we already are?
It will mean more virtual and augmented reality in our lives.
For instance, in the Metaverse, you’d have an avatar, and that avatar would interact
with other avatars.
Let’s say you have a meeting online.
That could look like a bunch of avatars having a meeting, but they would interact with each
other in a very realistic-looking environment.
The point is, to make you feel the virtual reality is real.
You’ve probably seen something like this in the tech-dystopia series, Black Mirror.
One or a few of those episodes shows people living in this other world more than the real
world.
At times, they gain points for the things they do in this Metaverse.
Sometimes you are motivated to do those things because there’s a payoff.
We call this “gamification”.
You’ve already seen things close to that, like when you get badges for using certain
tech.
The reward is supposed to keep you going back to that application or page.
It shows others how great you are.
In the Metaverse, you’ll never stop competing to gain more points.
You might also gain other virtual items and those items can be traded, sold, or given
away, on various platforms.
In a true Metaverse, you’d have the ability to trade with anyone.
This avatar of yours will be able to interact with other avatars across all platforms, hence
you’d be in a Metaverse.
Sounds like fun, eh?
But just keep watching, we think by the end of this show you’ll think twice about signing
up to the Metaverse.
So, basically, the Metaverse is a way to immerse ourselves more in tech using applications
used in tandem with virtual and augmented reality devices.
You become part of this other world, just like you do in some games, such as The Sims.
But this time it’s not just a game, it’s your life.
Let’s say you work from home, and like us at the Infographics Show, you have a bunch
of people working together that rarely see each other, if at all.
When you have meetings, a bunch of virtual characters get together.
Maybe when you do something good, your virtual character gets a virtual pat on the back in
the form of a virtual reward that can be exchanged for something of value in the real world.
These virtual offices, we are told, are the future of work.
Hell, virtual schools could be the future.
Microsoft is already on this.
In 2022, it will release Mesh for Microsoft Teams, which will mean holograms meeting in
virtual spaces for work.
You might think, well, I have Slack and I have email and I have Zoom, so why the hell
do I need a virtual guy in a virtual office?
Good question.
Microsoft says there will be a “feeling of presence” when you use Mesh.
Your avatar is going to make you feel like you’re really there.
It will be just like being with people, but not quite.
Let’s say the Infographics Show boss, along with the writers and editors, want to talk
about why our Metaverse video was so popular and why the writer is so cool.
In the normal world, that would sometimes mean sending files to certain people or chatting
within an application, but all we will ever see is a name and some text or maybe some
video.
For Microsoft, that’s not good enough.
The company thinks people will work a lot better and be more creative if all the avatars
discuss ideas in this virtual world.
Here are some selling points Microsoft offers: “Connect with new depth and dimension.
Engage with eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures.
Your personality shines as technology fades away.”
“This common understanding ignites ideas, sparks creativity, and forms powerful bonds.”
Wow, it sounds fab, now I can’t wait to become an avatar and gossip at the virtual
water fountain with the other Infographics show employees.
Looking as usual like Data from Star Trek, Mark Zuckerberg outlined what he thought the
Metaverse would be in a video.
As always, Zucks used a lot of flowery language regarding us being closer together in a world
of “greater richness”.
“We’ll be able to feel present,” he explained, “like we’re right there with
people no matter how far apart we actually are.”
He talked about “the joyful, completely immersive” way we’ll communicate.
Just listening to him felt like taking a hit of virtual heroin.
He mentioned that with the help of headsets and other tech, when we share videos we’ll
feel like we’re in the room with the people in the video.
When we play a game, we’ll feel like we’re in the game itself, not just looking at it
on a screen.
When Charlie Brooker wrote Black Mirror, he had already seen this world.
But for him, it was a nightmare.
It was everything that’s wrong with the world.
Like a 19th century British poet, rather than be more out of this world, Brooker would say
we should be getting closer to nature.
Still, according to Zuckerberg, the Metaverse isn’t about spending more time looking at
screens, but having a better experience when we use our devices.
He failed to mention that some of his applications have been called digital opiates, even by
some former Facebook employees.
As usual, he didn’t talk about how much money he will make.
He wants you more connected, which will mean spending more money in his universe and making
Zucks richer than he already is.
The fact is, this more immersive world will make you more addicted.
Back in 2011, writing for the New York Times, the technophobe novelist Jonathan Franzen
wrote about this issue of us becoming addicted to tech.
At the time, he obviously didn’t know about the Metaverse but we think he saw one coming.
Here’s a snippet from that article: “To speak more generally, the ultimate goal
of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent
to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of
resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere
extension of the self.”
You see, you won’t have to be yourself in the Metaverse.
You will be replaced by an avatar, and that avatar as Franzen says won’t experience
some of the very human things we feel in the real world.
At first, this will feel great for you.
You’ll settle right in.
But then one day you’ll find yourself wanting to stay in this place of easy streets and
forgo reality.
As Franzen wrote, “the verb ‘to like’” on social media has changed “from a state
of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an
assertion of consumer choice.”
You yourself will dedicate your time to being liked in this virtual world, creating an unreal
character and this won’t make you happy.
No longer will you laugh at meetings at work, but your character will laugh.
Will that really feel like laughing?
We guess some of you are thinking, well, this sounds pretty good actually.
Maybe you’re comparing Jonathan Franzen to one of those Luddite folks from England
who went around factories during the industrial revolution smashing up machines because they
didn’t like the idea of machines replacing them.
You are thinking that the Metaverse is just an extension of the Internet that will undoubtedly
help you buy more things, and it might just help you to be more productive when you work.
It will enable you to look at someone’s video of a concert online and then you can
use your avatar to feel like you’re at the concert, too.
It sounds great, and Franzen, you think, is a snob from another age.
According to an article in Forbes, the Metaverse is undoubtedly coming, no matter how many
people like Franzen warn us of how dangerous it will be.
The writer for that Forbes article rightly finished the story, saying, side-effects,
“unknown.”
You spending a hell of a lot of time sitting in a room wearing a headset might not be a
great thing for your well-being.
You spending much more time on the internet than you already do may not turn out all hunky-dory.
In fact, your online life might be might take up most of your real life.
Do you really need that?
You will waste away on the couch like a rotten apple in a compost heap.
You will not be able to stop.
Whoever owns the Metaverse owns you.
It will be more powerful than a drug, more addictive than TV, more alluring than an oasis
in a time of great thirst.
It will have you running on a virtual treadmill and attending your friend’s funeral from
50 miles away.
And oh, how you’ll shed many virtual tears.
Now let’s talk about love.
Let’s face it, we all need a bit of love in our lives.
Did you know that since the advent of dating apps such as Tinder, fewer people are actually
in long-term relationships?
Vox magazine writes that “Consumerism has hijacked courtship.”
Instead of dating, you consume photographs within an app.
Many people spend a lot of time on apps chatting with someone they won’t actually meet.
Hey, if they don’t meet you face-to-face they’ll never know you used a photo-editor
to transform your imperfect face and they won’t know that in real-life you stutter
a little bit.
It’s safer staying your distance, but in the end, this relationship is completely unfulfilling.
That’s likely one reason why so many young people are so depressed these days.
Now imagine how dating and love would be transformed if Zuckerberg is right.
What if in the Metaverse you really feel like you are with someone else when you’re both
just avatars?
Will you ever take the risk of meeting face-to-face?
As the writer for Vox says, when you spend time in the unreal world with someone else,
“there’s a loss of connection with your own emotions, which is sad.
Because emotional connection is supposed to be the point of dating.”
Unlike real life, in the Metaverse you’d gain rewards for dating and gain more points
for buying something for your date.
You’d become a product, one that’s reviewed and one that goes to great lengths to accrue
more points.
Your point score might actually attract more people to you, and those with fewer points
might have to sit on the proverbial shelf, while in real life, good old-fashioned dating
is more complex than that.
You will become a slave in the Metaverse, doing things just to amass more points so
you can impress someone and perhaps one day give them a virtual hug.
Maybe when you go to the virtual office you can receive virtual compliments about getting
to first base with a bunch of ones and zeroes.
All the time, when you are virtually dating and maybe buying stuff online for your virtual
lover, you’re spending virtual currency, and guess who takes a cut of every transaction?
Mr. Zuckerberg of course, so no wonder he looks so over the moon with the Metaverse.
That’s not to mention that in the Metaverse everything you do is surveilled.
For God’s sake don’t curse or blaspheme or speak your mind and offend someone, because
that could get you locked out of many of the places you’ll want to be.
In the Metaverse there are rules, and you my friends, will abide by them.
That’s why the Metaverse will be a constellation of boring drones; not real people who have
nuance to their personalities.
And what will happen to all the people who can’t even afford to be in the Metaverse?
They will be like pariahs forsaken by the tech Gods.
They will be virtually homeless, and don’t think they’ll be employable if they’re
not in the Metaverse.
Employers will want to see your score, they’ll require your Metaverse handle.
For Zuckerberg, the Metaverse is a utopia, and it might be for a man that has about as
much personality as a plug.
The Metaverse will exploit the vulnerable, the lonely, and the weak.
We doubt Zuckerberg really thinks this way though.
He’s just in a position to monopolize your weaknesses.
To use Facebook parlance, Zuckerberg is in the process of mounting a “coordinated attack”
to devour your existence.
He said as much when he claimed the Metaverse will be the place “where people will live,
work and play.”
We don’t need more isolation.
The COVID-19 lockdowns were proof that isolation makes us depressed and for some, hit the bottle
or the prescription mind meds.
Good mental health depends on our close relationships with others.
Virtuality is no replacement for reality.
In the Metaverse we will suffocate under an avalanche of merciless terabytes if we are
careless enough to try and surf this bottomless web of enticing nonsense.
As a pundit on technology told the BBC about the Metaverse, “It's a bad idea, and the
fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it's normal should be alarming everyone.”
It’s not normal.
It’s everything science fiction has told you to be worried about.
Now you need to watch “Why Do You Even Exist?”
Or, have a look at “Why Is There A Universe?”