Everyone is familiar with Facebook. Many but fewer may be aware that it’s now formally called Meta and that Facebook is now regarded as a secondary platform, being phased out in favor of the ‘Metaverse’. If Facebook is a two-dimensional world, Metaverse is supposed to be the three – (or more) dimensional successor to Facebook. To experience it, one would have to have on proprietary goggles to interact with the ‘world’ but that might eventually be superseded by something like brain implants. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg isn’t already trialing a version based on his odd mono-expressions in every photo posted in the news. He really does appear to be listening to something in the back of his head or something scrolling across his eyes. The Metaverse is a virtual land where everything exists in your mind and senses. To go there is ’free’, but as a substitute life environment, most every elevated virtual pleasure will cost something – meaning, real money. While Mark Zuckerberg seems to be the primary emperor and gatekeeper of these experiences, I’d assume that much would eventually be outsourced, maybe open sourced for an a price, nevertheless, the world as imagined by Zuckerberg has problems and I have questions.
Keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg is under full scale attack for presiding over his 2-D (Facebook, Instagram, etc) world in a manner that ruins some peoples lives. As emperor of that domain, he has done a horrible job of policing the online conduct of roughly three billion users. The fact that he’s been in a position to try is hugely problematic just from an antitrust perspective. While others have documented his Facebook trials and tribulations well, the point here is that he’ll attempt to be the sole emperor of his 3-D world. This is not in humanities best interest.
Initially at least, virtual people will be floating torsos and heads; no legs, no pesky sexuality. The prudish here might be delighted with that omission but what about the impact on the whole person that’s exchanging significant portions of their existence into a fake world? How much disengagement from procreation can the human race survive, especially as we begin our irreversible geometric slip into depopulation by about the year 2050? If and when teladildonic sex is introduced to the Metaverse, what keeps people from fully abandoning human interaction in mass, permanently, ala Brave New World? What happens when the sexualized virtual version turns into a perpetual rape-fest? ….but it was just fake rape, right?
Where there is property, cannot there also be theft or violation of boundaries? What about laws? What will constitute a crime, and can it be prosecuted in the Metaverse? Will justice be meted out by Mark Zuckerberg or his robots alone, far from any other real civil authority – just like Facebook? Since the Metaverse will involve real equivalents to money and a real person can experience real forms of violation even if in a virtual world, what will happen when the interior Metaverse has to share domain with a real justice system?
Given Zuckerberg’s problems in 2-D, how does he hope to rule over the 3-D? Will it be a lawless land because none of it is real, or will it be a dystopian world where everything is hypercontrolled (like Facebook) and real people become its fully submissive addicted slaves? Will there me mediation for everything or mediation for nothing?
How will we treat miscreants that misbehave on the inside once they’re on the outside? If everyone is immersed as much as some and Mark Zuckerberg say and hope that we are, what will we do with the meat popsicles with their heads and bodies immobilized while in the metaverse? Who will feed them? What use to society are the atrophied bodies and limbs of millions or billions of ‘users’ that have foregone any useful occupation other than their own sensory fulfillment (or destruction) while in the Metaverse? Will they be eligible for welfare on the backs of those that elect to not dive in?
I have a problem with the futuristic fun-loving imaginative boys that delight in all the possibilities of the Metaverse that yet fail to ask any of the questions raised here. It’s all delight, limitless potential, limitless wealth, free enterprise, good clean fun. The boosters for the Metaverse are free to ignore and deny all the consequences of their little worlds made entirely in their own image and at the neglect or violation of the real world that they’ve left behind. And so far, no one else cares to cross examine the developers or the fanboys.