The 'Metaverse' is a tacky dream

Notes from a weary sceptic

Wait! Just Listen is a weekly Sunday newsletter on living a purposeful and meaningful life, in a digitised world of opinion polarisation, gratuitous commentary and click-bait.

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I remain sceptical of the ‘new and improved Internet’, now widely referred to as the ‘metaverse’. For those who aren’t as acquainted with this refashioned concept, first coined by sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson, fret not.

The metaverse is an envisioned network of virtual worlds focused on social connection. It is a futuristic utopian vision of understanding the Internet as a single, universal virtual world experienced through novel technological gizmos such as augmented reality headsets. It claims to afford the freedom of vacillating between the real and virtual without enforced boundaries. Think of the metaverse as a boundless virtual room where you could order a pizza and iced tea, bid for virtual real estate with bitcoin in a live auction whilst listening to a song from the Top 100 Billboard’s list on Spotify, without ever leaving your physical space.

The entire project is unabashedly borrowed from the 1990s science-fiction novel, ‘Snow Crash’, now wrapped in a more palatable Gen-z relevant narrative, that promises to bring ones’ virtual and material (physical) realms of existence ever so closer. The avalanche of editorial enthusiasm for its potential has largely overawed its critics, who view it as an assault on our very essence of being.

If the metaverse was to be accurately depicted in a sales brochure, it would feature a typical semi-affluent suburban family rooted to their their couch, strapped into a V.R, headset, whilst tucking into one of Costco’s frozen TV dinners. The novelty and spirit of the Metaverse wafts away the moment one realises that it is, in essence, nothing more than yet another glorified mediated transaction between man and machine. This is no Matrix type new age thriller or a world of chartered hovercrafts and space cowboys.

It is however still a piece of design fiction that lazily toys with the fantastical but offers very little in the way of practical solutions to the age old conundrums in human relationships with technology. The metaverse may offer a blitzkrieg of ideas, a cacophony of sci-fi and a kaleidoscope of half-baked philosophical concepts, but remains eerily mum on how this entire enterprise will eventuate. It is everything and yet nothing at all.