In a real-life bedtime story to his son, the protagonist of Tron Legacy, Kevin Flynn recaps the plotline of the original Tron movie: “We built a new grid for programs and users. Now, I couldn’t be in there all the time, so I created a program in my own image that could think, like you and me.”
In the film ‘The Matrix’, Morpheus offers Neo a red pill and a blue pill. By choosing a pill, Neo is making a decision about whether he wants to go on living his life in ignorance or learn about the true nature of reality, that we’re all living a virtual existence while our bodies are attached to machines.
“You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
You’re about to take the red pill.
Table of Contents
What Is the Metaverse?
If you’ve been paying attention to recent news, you may be aware that the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus has recently changed its name to Meta. They have done this as their business pushes past the realm of being just the largest social media company in the world.
In his recent Black Mirroresque keynote, Mark Zuckerberg talked at great length about how Meta is currently building a new internet, although it goes under a different name, this is the web 3.0. To achieve this aim, Meta will be employing an additional 10,000 workers and investing billions of dollars to do so. In doing this, this single corporation that was born in 2004 out of a malicious act of revenge and was initially run from a Harvard dorm room will own our entire futures and play host to every aspect of our waking lives.
Although Meta is not the only company working on this type of plan, they are potentially the ones with the greatest capacity to achieve it first and, as a result, rule the world.
This new iteration of the web, known as the metaverse is a totally immersive experience that promises to change the way we live, socialise, and work while cutting carbon emissions in the process.
Using mixed reality which incorporates elements of virtual reality, real life, and augmented reality, users will be able to interact in a fully-formed digital world that incorporates elements of our physical reality. Expanding on our recently honed ability to work from home, businesses will be able to set up virtual office spaces which will make the need for a real-world place of work redundant.
How Far Away Is the Metaverse?
The technology used to access the new world is almost with us. We already have 5G internet and ultra-fast fibre broadband and developers are very close to perfecting the glasses or even the contact lenses that will connect to the web whilst projecting images.
Meta has announced that all of the technology required to join the metaverse will be subsidised or sold at cost so that nobody gets left behind.
Building a New World
Ripples have already been felt in the Blockchain as large sums of cryptocurrency have been exchanged by entrepreneurs with their fingers on the pulse and the foresight to see where society is heading. The digital land grab has begun. Big bucks are being spent on portioned-out pixelated real estate that promises great future wealth to the conquistadors of this brave new world.
Over the coming years, our lives will truly be uploaded to the net where we will coexist with apps that promise to numb our metaphysical pain. Existential dread can be remedied by investing in upgrades for your avatar and through the acquisition of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)- a digital property that can be bought and that does not exist in the real world.
The issues surrounding screen time will be a thing of the past. In a few short years, we will become tethered and fused to technology. Mixed reality glasses will mean we’re always able to see the metaverse and special gloves will mean we can feel it too.
The new world will transcend language, geographical, financial, and political boundaries spreading across Europe, Asia, and America, and even finding prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Governed over by technocrats and making governments redundant, the concept of universal basic income may become a reality globally as artificial intelligence and advanced robotics remove the need for many jobs.
As a copywriter, I am already acutely aware of a growing demand for cheap AI-written content as well as the existence of several apps that can effortlessly spin perfect search engine-optimized material that is indistinguishable from anything written by a human. Within the Metaverse, we’ll all need to find new purpose and meaning to fill our lives.
A Generation Primed for the Metaverse
But the seeds of the metaverse have already been planted over the last decade or so. Generations Z and Alpha are pre-primed for this universe through their exposure to sandbox video games with totally immersive worlds such as Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Animal Crossing as well as through augmented reality games such as Pokemon Go. Today’s children have no memory of a life without a smartphone attached to their hands.
Drip-fed digital dopamine from the day they were born, the children of today are the cyborgs of tomorrow living physical lives with wearable artificial intelligence devices that enhance their ability to interact with our perceived reality.
Last year the singer Travis Scott performed a concert in the video game Fortnite and 28 million people dropped their guns in the game and attended the live event virtually. Unlike Travis Scott’s recent appearance at the real-life Astroworld festival, nobody was crushed to death.
The possibilities for our new meta-realities are without boundaries and they are already being tested today.
Are You Ready for the Metaverse?
What do you think of the metaverse? Will it enhance our lives, or cause further mental health problems and widen the divisions in society?
Like this article? Be sure to like, share, and check out the rest of the blog for more.
Photo by Remy Gieling on Unsplash