Difference in Kindness
I hate to break it to you, but the metaverse is real, we use it every day, and our ability to effect control over it is being pulled out from under us slowly and steadily.
The metaverse is
not a single cartoonish world of play, limited in context to the purely digital, designed to addict and advertise to those who submit themselves to it in exchange for endorphins.
I present a different world. I propose that we actually use the "metaverse" every day, and its use in a lot of cases is interchangeable with how the term "Web" was used a crazy amount in 90s advertising.
We are now constantly connected to the internet - but we must continue to reimagine better or more natural structures for data and interactive media.
We can take the embalmed uniformity of material information and transform it into information systems that understand context, action, liveness, and malleability.
context: the ability for the computer to understand the environment, situation, your preference, your life and feelings - and further how all of these things inter-relate. All of our current devices are ignorant entirely to this.
action: the ability of the computer to support and strengthen your ability to act. A tool is the ability to enact at a distance or with greater effect. Our current devices are the antithesis of this, encouraging docility and non-action through "user training".
liveness/malleability: the ability of the computer to support and understand modifications to the system's running parameters and core behaviour while it is running, over and over, with the goal of never leaving the user waiting for a response. If you push the clay - the clay pushes back.
Requiring one medium to imitate the other
inevitably pits strengths of the old medium against the weaknesses of the new
— Hollan, Jim, and Scott Stornetta
"Beyond being there." SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. 1992.
There are no commercial computer systems that establish and maintain user context, allow the user to extend their abilities, and almost no systems that are malleable.
Currently, some commercial systems give the user the ability to take action with some limited context - but always in exchange for privacy.
The context is maintained by a server who functionally serves as a corporate spy, in return, you get to email or instant message people.
Many companies exist solely to harvest data, while charging for basic things like limited text interchange that could be completely peer to peer.
Anyone over 40 could talk about BBS or IRC, anyone over 30 could talk about Ventrillo or Teamspeak, while those who have no knowledge of those is left to pay or be spied upon.
Specific arguments could be made in favor of Discord's features - but I mention it to establish a pattern across all sites (especially apps).
Now, upon visiting sites like Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Tumblr, Pinterest, and especially Twitter - all demand a login before page contents can even be viewed.
Further, almost any app first requires a login of a user, and some listed as "free" are "free to download" but require a login, subscription to use.
Facebook Gold
TM used to be a joke, now it is just the status quo for the entirety of social media.
On the other hand, rapidly growing services like Tiktok do not require a login for viewing because they are so good at pinning and tracking users, and they want as many people watching on their platform as possible - but they will still nag you to log in.
Social Media's series of narcissistic funhouse mirrors and buzzword-infused micro-commoditized communiqué is dangerous to society.
Conversation and understanding does not occur alone within oneself, or with only people you agree with and approve of.
Engagement (as measured) does not actually mean engaging (as experienced).
We hold a hyper-fascination with screens because we are apes with a visually-focused consciousness.
Whats the big idea?
If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
— Ted Nelson (1974)
The Metaverse is much larger than Virtual Reality. VR is only a screen, some clever tracking, and a set of interaction concepts.
If the display is the surfboard as Mr. Nelson proposes, I say we are ignoring the ocean - a surfer failing to notice the ocean is subjected to its dangers all the same.
VR is still not the best way to read a book, while most of human knowledge is still locked away in books.
We need to build systems that encourage proliferation of context, value challenges as a society, and work against our own common sense which has misled us for millenia as to what the nature of reality truly is.
There have been systems in the past that have some of the properties I mentioned above, and we must continue to look back to understand them, their ideas, their dreams, and wrench them forward into the present.
We must be wary of worshipping something simply because it is old, or succumbing to base idol worship of the tools of the trade.
Bret Victor puts it the best when he describes how people reacted to Doug Engelbart's death, either reducing him to the inventor of the computer mouse, or hitting the reader over the head with a laundry list of "inventions" whose meaning and use has completely degraded over time.
When I read tech writers' interviews with Engelbart, I imagine these writers interviewing George Orwell, asking in-depth probing questions about his typewriter.
- Bret Victor (source)
We are in need of a deeper understanding of the true dynamic medium of the computer.
We have to invent systems that will surprise and inform us, devise with us, extend our cognitive functions, "play ball" with ideas, so that we may all fly together, ever closer to the sun.
This is in no way a new concept - it is at the heart of what the computer could be - and it is at the heart of what Doug Engelbart wanted for the world - what we should all want.
Doug's Paper
Doug's 1968 Demo