01/10/2022

Make Way for the Metaverse

People would do well to think of it dispassionately

When Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, the company, was changing its name to Meta, and that the aim was to better position the company to develop the Metaverse, critics were quick to pounce. This was bound to be a bad, bad thing.

Writing in the The New York Times Jill Lepore, an experienced tech-hater, proclaimed that “The metaverse is at once an illustration of and a distraction from a broader and more troubling turn in the history of capitalism.” Another writer warns that we must be on guard: “The Metaverse is Coming and the World is not Ready for it.” In its news coverage, The Times solemnly declared that “As Meta and other companies bet big on an immersive digital world, questions about its harms are rising.” But we can all save ourselves a lot of time if we want to hear about dystopian technology and proceed immediately to The Atlantic, which titled an article “The Metaverse is Bad.”

These responses are understandable, if predictable, as a global consensus has emerged that Facebook is responsible for much that is bad about the world: Every day, more than one billion people log onto Meta/Facebook’s services in protest. The company has contributed to everything from the rise of Donald Trump to breakneck neoliberalism, racism, sexism, autocracy, the collapse of civil order and the insinuation of McDonald’s Happy Meals into the American diet. Meta/Facebook’s initiative must be stopped now. We were all such good people before Mark Zuckerberg entered our lives.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.