Humans and the Metaverse: An Anthropologists View
That technologies have a direct impact on human cultures is well known. That they are both good and bad is also well known. Communications technologies play a huge role in our cultures and societies. When we invented writing, its first main use was to record crop yields and for kings to control populations. And so it has gone for thousands of years. But perhaps no communication technology has had and is having, such a profound impact on global culture as the internet and of course, social media. Looming ahead of us is the metaverse. It is not a single technology, but rather, a collection of communications technologies designed to create a layer between humans and reality.
We can safely say that the metaverse will be both good and bad. We can also say with some confidence, that it will not turn out the way the pundits are predicting it will. When the hippies built computing networks, the first internet, they predicted a free and open place, a great awakening of society without corporations. The military saw it as a secondary communications tool in case of nuclear war. The corporations have taken over the internet now. Today we are inundated with advertising and social media is a mess, but it’s also good. The metaverse holds an interesting allure and could be something quite beneficial to human society and culture.
Mark Zuckerberg and thus Facebook, has declared the metaverse to be their next big thing. Unfortunately, the evidence has shown that Facebook has little regard for the beneficial side of communications technologies. They understand very well that triggering the fight/flight response of our brains and appealing to our serpent brain is highly profitable. Arguably, Facebook has monetized the dark side of social media exceptionally well and thus done more damage to cultures around the world than any other communications platform. They did not know how Facebook would impact global culture when they started. But as they learned, they shrugged and carried on anyway. Facebook does not design digital products for humans, it designs them for users, who are, in their eyes, products.
Facebook creating or playing a pivotal role in shaping the metaverse should be a warning sign to all who are on that bandwagon. The opportunity with the metaverse is being hailed in the same way that the internet was being hailed. Open. Free. Decentralized. New economic models and free from corporatization. Human cultures will abound in entirely new ways. Perhaps.
I’ver no axe to grind, lest it seem that way. I think the metaverse is a great concept and could spark a new global cultural Renaissance. It offers opportunitis to connect human cultures in new and interesting ways. But we would be naive at best to not take lessons from how the internet and social media have been coopted and how we’ve properly messed them up. Indeed, the metaverse relies at its very base on Tech Giants, to provide the infrastructure and the tools we will use to connect to it. From VR goggles to AR glasses and other devices. And they are businesses. The purpose of a business is to create a profit and that is good and necessary for our economic system. But for social media companies, profit came from turning humans into products.
One important benefit of the metaverse is that the use of decentralized technologies may result in a new form of reciprocity that does return some humanity and a degree of free will. All cultures have some form of reciprocity, it helps us to establish values in our cultures. I’ll be exploring the cultural implications of the metaverse in another post. For the metaverse to not be controlled by the interests of corporations, we must design it for humans, not users.
Using the internet today can be a nightmare. Especially when it comes to accessing many content sites. To get to an article, one must navigate through a barrage of pop-ups for newsletter sign-ups, subscription offers, floating videos with of course, two or three ads rolling first, middle and end, sudden drop down ads in the middle of reading. On mobile, the latest tactic is very long vertical ads that are hard to scroll by. Surely, this is not the metaverse humans want.
We have a chance to do this from a human perspective. Right now, we’re largely talking about the technologies that will come together to create the final destination of the metaverse. From blockchain to software to the network infrastructure. But we’re not yet discussing it in terms of humans. From societies and cultures, how it could expand the digital divide between the haves and have-nots. How will we give access to the metaverse to the disadvantaged in society who may be able to make powerful contributions through their ideas. A significant benefit of the metaverse is that those with physical disabilities will be able to easily access, contribute and benefit from it. Finally, we will have a space where all can participate, regardless of race, culture, abilities and disabilities. But that also means we have to design it in a way all humans can access it. So far, that has not been considered very much.
The metaverse holds some tantalizing promises. As technologies exponentially improve, the metaverse becomes ever more realizable. But will we realize the human aspects alongside the technologies? That is what we must consider.
