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THELook at all of our tech billionaires trying to leave the world to escape responsibility for their malevolent influence on it. Everything to avoid being confronted with the workers they exploit or the victims of ethnic and religious clashes facilitated by their platforms. Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson throw themselves into space; Elon Musk sinks into the earth; now Mark Zuckerberg is retreating into a virtual “metaverse”.
What is a metaverse, you ask? Well, late last year, former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang accused the company of knowing – and failing to prevent – attempts by heads of state and government other political actors in Honduras, India, Azerbaijan and elsewhere to manipulate and mislead their populations, resulting in political instability, harassment of activists and possibly preventable deaths. Instead of immediately tackling these issues, Zuckerberg decided to try renaming his platform – currently inundated with bullies and conspiracy theorists and photos of your adorable little niece you never met because your sister read things on Facebook that led her to believe that Covid is a hoax and that vaccinated people like you have a tracking device in your arm – in an idea from a 30-year-old sci-fi novel years.
Word metaverse was coined in 1992 in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which was very influential in Silicon Valley circles despite satirical ideas that are now being taken up literally and with great enthusiasm by our tech visionaries. The book imagines a space that mixes the real and the projected, the physical world augmented by virtual constructions and sensations, an environment enriched and improved by the imaginative powers of people who work in technological companies. Zuckerberg describes it as “an Internet personified”, a physical space accessed through expensive technology like VR glasses, where you can buy things that actually exist or don’t exist, play games, and talk to virtual representations. real people but also probably a lot of bots too. If you haven’t seen Ready Player One, imagine a massive, perpetual Sims game combined with Pokemon Go, an unseen world of interaction and engagement that surrounds you that you can’t see or use if you don’t have appropriate technology.
It’s not just Facebook, of course. Apple, Google, and other companies are investing huge resources in the virtual and augmented reality technology and infrastructure needed for the Metaverse, though they never really work and scare a lot of people along the way. . And of course, despite the fact that the very idea – of living in an inconsequential space of your own imagination, physically and psychologically separated from your fellow citizens to strut around with avatars and ghosts – is philosophically and psychologically wrong.
This is a predictable goal for an industry that has decided its workers are too valuable to take real public transport to work and created special buses to take them straight from home to the workplace. . An industry that has complained fiercely about the real issues of the real world it exists in, like San Francisco’s homeless population, while working hard to avoid taxes that would help create the housing and social services needed to take care of the less fortunate. Of course, their solution to a disappointing world is not to wade through a mess trying to create stability and security for all, but to avoid, to escape, to erase, to replace, to flee.
As much as these self-proclaimed geniuses like to imagine that they are inventing something entirely new, there is historical precedent. Power-mad rulers, once they meet the limits of their ability to rewrite reality to their liking, often construct mockeries better suited to their delicate sensibilities. There was the Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who turned his castle into a fantastic opera house with a series of water features, despite the leaks, floods and floods his servants and guests had to contend with. Or the fake peasant village of Marie-Antoinette where she recreated rural life. Instead of cholera and bad harvests, there were endless cottagecore clothes and little lambs frolicking around. Or our former President Trump, cropping photos from his inauguration celebration to fill the uneven crowds. What kind of world will Zuckerberg create? One without congressional hearings, one imagines. We are drowning in the blood of the massacred Burmese, we suppose.
There is, of course, a utopian glow in the metaverse. The idea of transcending one’s physical boundaries to engage with new ideas and new populations and exchange information and resources is appealing. These are the same fantasies, however, that have brought social media platforms to where they are today. They were going to spread democracy and freedom! Instead, they amassed wealth while dismantling their labor unions, wreaking havoc by spreading conspiracy theories and providing the perfect environment to harass, intimidate and torment those already vulnerable.
Much like the reasonable responses to Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars, the reasonable response to the plan for a Facebook-facilitated metaverse should be: shouldn’t we fix this world, before we embark on creation – and then probably in destroy – others? But cleaning up after billionaires will be our job – the job of those who can barely afford real housing, let alone virtual property. Like always.
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