The “Metaverse” — Transformation or Regression?
Much is being made today about Facebook’s announcement that it wants to hire 10,000 people in Europe to develop the “metaverse,” an all-encompassing virtual environment where people can work, play, live, (and eat?) But is this “metaverse” truly Silicon Valley’s “next big thing?” or is it little more than interactive television, an escape from the trials of the real world for a few hours at a time, in between snack and pee breaks, the parlor walls with Seashells of Bradbury, where the masses are encouraged (or addicted) to spending their time, so that they stop questioning the social order?
I’m old enough to remember the children’s book The Wretched Stone by Chris Van Allsburg. The story is about a boy who joins a ship filled with adventure-seeking sailors. They come to a remote and exotic island where the sailors find a cubical, very shiny, glowing stone. They bring this stone aboard the ship, then weird things start to happen. One by one, the hard-working sailors lose their energy, and stop doing ship chores. The boy looks on with anxiety, as each of the sailors slowly transforms into a lazy hairy monkey, and he is left alone as the last human on this ship who cares about getting back home!
The Wretched Stone is, of course, an allegory to the perils of television, and of consuming too much of it. Back in my youth (the 1990s), I still remember parents being worried about their children becoming “couch potatoes” and watching the panic that children had stopped exercising. Now it seems we’re leaning into that reality, especially since there is so much goddamn money to be made from entertaining the neurons in our mind with moving images.
While there will surely be billions to be made in marketing tchotchkes to the world’s lower and middle classes, does this “metaverse” empower ecological civilization and facilitate our great transition to a regenerative existence on the earth? Or is it another method for plutocrats to pilfer the pockets of the world’s meekest and most naïve?
I don’t have the answers, and frankly, don’t particularly care. This whole brouhaha reminds me of my most favorite poem, Green Mountain, by 8th Century Chinese master Li Bai:
You ask me why I dwell in the Green Mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows downstream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.
While the world’s youth are investing their potential into Zuckerberg’s “metaverse,” you can find me in my green mountains, living and frolicking in the forests with real-life friends and good books, enjoying the last bit of Mother Earth’s gracious hospitality, with a heart free of care.
