12 Comments

It feels like someone in their development team read Ready Player One and slightly missed the point.

Expand full comment
author

Yes indeed! And you're not the first person to point this out. But I guess the Metaverse team don't watch or read a lot of scifi...

I mean, there's all sorts of things here that bring to mind scifi classics: The Matrix, Logan's Run, etc etc. And this is aimed primarily at technology-lovers, so of *course* they've grown up steeped in all those stories. It's baffling they didn't work harder to avoid looking like any of that stuff - or to at least throw a few knowing winks in its direction.

Expand full comment

Massive, wild applause to this, Mike. Surely a year stuck at home will have taught us we don't need a virtual life, but a real one? She says hopefully....

Expand full comment
author

Thank you Annette! And you'd think, right? But it's a presentation that seems to say "Hey, you know that staying-indoors-until-you're-going-loopy thing? What if we made that EVEN BETTER next time?" It's a weird take for the years we've been living in. I'm amazed they didn't recognise this and change it to be all "The Metaverse will help us all connect with each other outside in the outdoors after this traumatic time!" But nope. 🤷

Expand full comment
founding

This is exactly the response I needed to hear! I hadn't even thought about the advertising -- of course it will have to be covered in it.

One of my big frustrations is that nobody ever talks about the energy draw of technology like this. How many ecosystems will be crushed under the weight of the need for hydropower or burned coal or whatever is used to power these things?

Expand full comment
author

So glad it resonated. :) And yes, the energy side is hugely relevant right now (I wonder if they're talking about it anywhere at COP26?) I've been interested in cryptocurrency's impact for this reason. Some good, balanced studies done recently on this: https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume But...it's a discussion worth having. I am presuming that the next few years will see incredible leaps in computing power efficiency, plus a big shift towards renewables, and I'm guessing that's why there's nothing about it in the presentation - it's tech still to be invented. But I don't know. And it needs to be laid out up front, when it's possible to do that.

But the advertising side? That's not going to change. And he could have said something. And the fact he didn't? That yells troubling things, to my ears...

Expand full comment
founding

You're still the only person I have seen bring up the advertising. Just the fact that nobody seems to be talking about it speaks volumes, though I'm not sure what it says!

Expand full comment
founding

Also I was sure you were referring to Hyperion when talking about people walking into different realities at first, but it's clearly not that one. I don't think I've read the book you're talking about!

Expand full comment
author

I wasn;'t, but now you mention it, point! But it was a short story somewhere - could be something by Greg Egan, but I think it was much older than his work, maybe a 70s/80s era piece (not Le Guin, but in her circles).

Re. energy from the previous comment - I'm also reading AK Larkwood's 2020 debut, "The Unspoken Name" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unspoken_Name) which I'm enjoying - and is features a fantasy setting mixed with a Stargate-like scenario where the various worlds of the story are connected through a hub-world. And there seems to be a kind of conservation of energy setup going on, where the hub is draining each world unless a balance is actively maintained from the other end, using...erm, *waves hands* magic and stuff. It's all very interesting in a vaguely thermodynamic/entropic way. It's nice to see a story like this where the "power" of whatever kind isn't being treated as an infinite rersource. I wonder if that's going to become even more of a theme in speculative fiction that'll be written over the next few decades?

(I did read somewhere that trending themes tend to reflect escapist longings in readers, hence dystopian novels are popular in times of relative prosperity and peace, and optimistic flights of fancy during troubled times in the real world. So maybe 'hopepunk' is going to be the big thing in scifi over the next half-century?)

Expand full comment
founding

That's like three fascinating things in a row! Especially about them in dystopia/sci fi and what it says about escapist longings. (I cannot stop circling around how horribly prescient The Parable of the Sower is and how much I want a different narrative that feels even close to as probable.)

I think the only thing I've read of Greg Egan's was Quarantine. Wow, that was a long time ago.

Expand full comment

This is really superb, thank you! I didn't know anything about Meta or the Metaverse (other than what I now realise was a satirical cartoon at the bottom of the documentally.substack.com newsletter) so thank you for introducing me to this absolute horrorshow in such a thoughtful and funny way. It's actually bone-grindingly relevant to a play that I'm writing at the moment, so good timing!

Expand full comment
author

Oh, fantastic! (And thank you!) Glad I could point you in the right (ie. fairly horrible) direction. Please ping me when that play is into the light of day, I'd love to take a look.

Re. the Metaverse, the whole thing is a little too bizarre for my brain to process, hence the delay in writing this (which I think is a bit of self-therapy more than anything, a reminder that we're allowed to say Hah No Stuff THAT to this kind of tech as it leaches into our lives. And since this technology is so pervasive and so immensely moneyed, Art is going to be the main source of psuhing back against its worst excesses. So I'm so glad to be able to add a little grist to that mill...

Expand full comment