I've seen the metaverse - and I don't want it

[intrepidity]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/25/ive-seen-the-metaverse-and-i-dont-want-it

I would feel better about the idea of the metaverse if it wasn’t currently dominated by companies and disaster capitalists trying to figure out a way to make more money as the real world’s resources are dwindling. The metaverse as envisioned by these people, by the tech giants, is not some promising new frontier for humanity. It is another place to spend money on things, except in this place the empty promise that buying stuff will make you happy is left even more exposed by the fact that the things in question do not physically exist.

As far as I can work out, the idea is to take the principle of artificial scarcity to an absurdist extreme – to make you want things you absolutely don’t need. The problem is not that I think this won’t work. The problem is that I think it will. The current NFT gold rush proves that people will pay tens of thousands of dollars for links to jpegs of monkeys generated by a computer, and honestly it is eroding my faith in humanity. What gaping deficiency are we living with that makes us feel the need to spend serious money on tokens that prove ownership of a procedurally generated image, just to feel part of something? This is all happening, of course, while the Earth continues to heat up, and at enormous environmental cost. I can’t help but wonder if these giant companies are so intent on selling us and the markets on the idea of a virtual future in order to distract us all from what they are doing to the real one..

I have seen what virtual worlds can do for people. I have spent my entire adult life reporting on them, and what people do in them and the meaning that they find there. So the fact that I’m now the one standing here saying that we don’t want this, feels significant. Meta has patented technology that could track what you look at and how your body moves in virtual reality in order to target ads at you. Is that the future of video games and all the other virtual places where we spend time – to have our attention continually tracked and monetised, even more so than it is in real life?

Lots of great points that I can't argue against.

[modrepub]

1. Low Interest Rate/Easy Money

Some folks have wondered if the exorbitantly long period of time that interest rates have remained low to nonexistent has caused folks to loose their mind and invest in risky propositions they wouldn't otherwise do if interest rates were higher. Higher interest rates have a tendency to block investments in projects whose return horizons are far off into the future.

Cheap money, or low interest rates, could therefore be responsible for crypto currency popularity and these alternative reality theme parks we've been seeing. There's so much money flying around people are just investing in hare-brained schemes they'd normally laugh off.

[empedocles]

2. Low interest rates enable governments to run deficits

[Progress4ever]

3. Break 'em up!

Elizabeth Warren is right! Break them up with anti-trust.

[KPN]

4. Darn tootin!

[GB_RN]

5. Anything Fuckerberg Is Involved With

I tend to avoid like the plague. If his name is attached to it, it generally means that he’s found a way to screw you.

[Ford_Prefect]

6. Donald Fagen: I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World It Will Be)

I can’t help but wonder if these giant companies are so intent on selling us and the markets on the idea of a virtual future in order to distract us all from what they are doing to the real one..

Donald Fagen's ode to the future-that-never-was as seen from the vantage point of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years - a vision fueled by the bounty of the Nuclear Age and the Space Age, with perhaps a cautionary note or two.

*****************************************************************

IMO they learned a trick or two from monetizing the early days of the internet and "anything was possible". Anyone not in on the deal was going for a ride controlled and edited by those who built it.

When cell phones were an exotic item and cost several months salary for mid-level executives to use there were such things as Public Phones on which a local call could be made for 10 cents (later as much as 25 cents). They were everywhere and anyone could use them. Now that everyone "must" have a smartphone the fee has gone to $35.00 a month IF you have service where you need to make the call. And for this service you are tracked and recorded and sold to the marketeers. Your call may not even be as private as you imagine.

That is a basic assumption of the metaverse: you don't deserve privacy unless you can pay quite a lot for it, and even then there is no real guarantee (As Rupert Murdoch's Trolls have proven).