(2023-11-23) Schroeder How To Save The Metaverseand Why

Karl Schroeder: How to Save the Metaverse (and Why). If you disregard all the people who ‘touched’ the Metaverse in some abstract, transactional way, who’s actually been there lately? I really want to know—because the vision of the Metaverse is as an alternate universe, a virtual playground of unlimited extent, as imagined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, Ernest Cline’s Ready, Player One; and in William Gibson’s Cyberspace, the Matrix or (going back to the dark ages of 1982 and Tron, “the Grid”).

Part of it is that today’s innovators seem to have inherited all of their ideas from last century’s science fiction. They’re trying to make the visions of the 1900s real.

The Metaverse is similarly atavistic. Back in the 80s, it was cool to think of being transported into a digital realm of infinite possibilities.

I’m finding it hard to read new articles on my phone; anything that isn’t poking my panic buttons to feed the engagement algorithms is an attempt to sell me something. Does anybody really think the Metaverse is going to be different? It’s going to be engagement-driven, just like social media.

as far as our real lives are concerned, just what is the Metaverse for?

I’ve talked before about how there are two kinds of apocalyptic imagery: negative, and positive. Society, city, garden, and sheepfold: these are the four components of apocalyptic imagery.

When you apply negative apocalyptic imagery to the online world, you get The Matrix

The Metaverse, on the other hand, directly, deliberately frames itself using the imagery of the positive apocalypse.

You might think this version would appeal to individuals, as a kind of virtual heaven. It really doesn’t seem to

But you can bet the Metaverse appeals to capitalists. I mean literal capitalists: people who own capital.

much as the tech bros hate to admit it, the authors of the Limits to Growth report were right. (meh)

This being an unacceptable (not to mention unimaginable) answer to the question of how to live in the real world, is it any surprise that the preferable answer is to create a virtual world that has no such limits?

The way that you attract people to your new world is by filling it with supernormal stimuli... For a great primer on supernormal stimuli, check out Deirdre Barrett’s book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. (fight-or-flight)

I don’t actually have a problem with Capitalism being bound in a nutshell, like Hamlet. What I do have a problem with is human beings checking out of real life en masse just when the planet needs their help the most.

If the Metaverse is a separate world, then entering that one means leaving this one. But what if the door to the Metaverse led back here—to the real, living world, just in metaphorical guise?

Instead of it being an exit, an escape from this world, we design it as a place where our real-world problems still exist but are transformed into entities on a human scale, that we can understand better cognitively, and cope with better both practically and emotionally.

Putting it another way, picture an open-source version of the Metaverse (open metaverse) where you own all the data about yourself. This version is a mirror image of your real life, but transformed into a Hero’s Journey.

Is such a version of the Metaverse possible? I believe that it is; in fact, I and a team of visionary experts and entrepreneurs have spent the past couple of years designing a service that follows these principles. We’re days away from a major announcement, so watch this space! (see announcement 2023-12-14-SchroederVivGamesIsLive)