Current Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Reading: ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ - Oliver Burke
Listening: ‘An Evening With Silk Sonic’ - Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, and Silk Sonic
In case you didn’t know, Facebook isn’t Facebook anymore.
The mercurial founder Mark Zuckerberg recently announced to the world that they were changing the name of the company from Facebook to Meta, and the mission to a bet on ‘the metaverse’.
This is not merely marketing speak, they announced that they would be investing around $10bn per year to make this happen. It’s a significant shift away from status updates and rigging elections. (kidding… sorta)
I had a similar reaction to many when hearing the news - it felt rather obnoxious. The metaverse is not a new term, and most associate it with Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash or Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. But to claim that a public company (not to mention Facebook with all its ethical conundrums) was going to unlock this revolutionary virtual world seemed a bit far-fetched.
The idea of the metaverse is that we’ll inhabit a shared virtual space, aided by VR or AR devices, where we can interact, meet, and communicate in real-time through the use of avatars - regardless of where we are physically. It’s that classic Sci-Fi trope that we’ve seen time and time again.
But to imagine it in reality? That’s much harder to do.
And so, when I saw the announcement, I laughed it off as a desperate attempt to rescue Facebook’s reputation which has taken a beating over the past couple of years.
But that was premature, I soon realized. The more I read about this idea, the closer this world appeared. The key turning point for me was acknowledging that we already have a pseudo-metaverse that we spend hours and hours in.
Our smartphones represent a digital avatar that allows us to enter virtual spaces and interact without needing to be in the same place. Whether it’s in a Zoom call, a WhatsApp group, an online game, or an Instagram feed, we’re constantly putting forward a digital version of ourselves that we then use to communicate with one another. And if you actually think about it, most of us spend far more hours in these virtual spaces than we do actually interacting with real-life humans.
If you look at it from that perspective, it’s not that far-fetched to imagine that we’ll eventually take on a VR-enabled avatar that looks lifelike, responds to our body language, and acts as our proxy in these virtual environments. The moment the technology gets there, it seems to be a natural next step.
If you accept that, then the next question has to be: ‘Is this a good thing?’
It’s complicated.
In some ways, spending more time in virtual worlds might exacerbate our disconnection with the physical world - much of which has caused some very poor mental and physical health outcomes in this time of the pandemic. And many are worrying (correctly so) about the Ready Player One dystopia where we waste away in the real world, addicted to our virtual lives and the dopamine engineering that is possible in them.
On the other side of the coin, if we accept that the future of the world is going to be more remote and distributed, then why not make that as lifelike and realistic as possible. It would be much more immersive to have a meeting with your hologram which is sitting across the table from me, than through a 2D video of your face on the Zoom call. Perhaps, the metaverse allows us to unlock a level of human connection that just isn’t possible right now and that could mitigate the effects of our geographic separation.
Either way, the metaverse is going to be a significant component of our technological discussions in the decades to come and I want to encourage you not to disregard it as I initially did. There is more here than meets the eye, and it’s important that we start reckoning with its impact on our world and our status as the human race.
Ok, you can go back to your TikToks now.
Links:
Have you ever wondered what birds would look like with human arms? Yeah, I thought so. Here you go. (Link)
Being highly ambitious is a double-edged sword, but I found this articulation (in the context of Effective Altruism) to be a wonderful discussion of the value of aiming higher than you think is possible. Add to this Jordan Peterson’s thesis and I think you’ve got a decent explanation for why taking on more than you can chew is actually a net positive. (Link)
Vitalik Buterin is potentially my favourite young thinker and his blog posts are always filled with insights that change my perceptions of concepts. In this one, he discusses the concept of legitimacy and what it looks like in a web3 world. I aspire to be able to write like this. (Link)
Will Smith is currently promoting his new memoir and he recently released a 6-part YouTube series entitled ‘Best Shape of My Life’. It masquerades as a post-pandemic fitness challenge, but quickly it becomes clear that it’s actually an exploration of what it takes to write a raw and honest autobiography when you’re one of the most famous faces in the world. It’s incredible and might just be the best book promotion I’ve ever seen. (Link)
That’s it for this week. I hope that all is well on your side and that you’re tackling the end of this year with the verve and enthusiasm of a thousand humans.
Be kind to yourself.
Barry