Why We Should Fear Zuck's Metaverse

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Description:

What does 'meta' really mean? What can we make of Facebook's change to 'Meta'? Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote about the decline of metanarratives in 1979's 'The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'. Can we learn anything about Zuckerberg's aspirations from this classic postmodern text?

Lyotard was prescient. He noticed in the 70s that quote ‘the miniaturization and commercialization of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited.’ He also that ‘Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.’

Sources:

Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

#metaverse #zuckerberg #facebook
CREDITS

[ozzymandias]

Most discussions of data and technology these days reminds me of Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control." The ways in which data is used to make our lives seemingly easier (communicating via social media, for example) usually end up obscuring the ways in which our lives are more and more outside of our control (people being led down political pipelines by the videos in their recommendations).

[NoContextRDH]

There comes a point where you have to sit down and think, is this really the way we want our world to go?

[invictus]

[Then and Now] - your work is brilliant. Thank you and please keep generating such astute, eloquent, reflective and insightful media artefacts.

[StudentOfEleos]

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway is a really interesting (and disturbing) novel set in a metaverse like society, but more than that individuals within it have shared responsibility for decisions within the system. Well worth a read even though it's a long read

[dialaskisel]

Another side of the conversation I would like to see more of is education in schools that is designed to raise awareness of the psychological tricks and strategies that corporations and political parties use to manipulate their consumers/constituents. After all, informed consumers can use their wallets to fight back against bad practices in a capitalist society, and a democracy where the voters are easily controlled by aggressive emotionally driven messaging is really no democracy at all.

[barbarne]

WOW, this video is so incredibly relevant! I think a lot of us have had these thoughts and worries brewing in our minds during the last few years - but you managed to put words to them so elegantly through the lens of Lyotard. Thank you so much for your work, this might be my favourite of yours yet!

[SlyJustChilling]

if a metaverse is to replace the internet it must not be owned by someone

[Rexcarsalot]

It still rubs me the wrong way that Mark Zuckerberg shamelessly took the both the name and the concept of the Metaverse from Snow Crash. It's like an oligarch tech billionaire openly embracing his role as a cyberpunk villian.

[giniwelle]

Thank you so much for the analysis. These are so valuable for students all over the world.... Sending gratitude from Sri Lanka.

[ges]

Your videos are great, and I think this is the best one you've made thus far.

[littleredruri]

"Do zuckerburgs dream of electric algorithms" good reference

[fowchiiiliedpuppiesdied]

Is this, um, marketing “delusion”? I think what Mark needs, is to be sent to his room, and grounded. He has been a very bad little boy.

[weltenrandwanderer]

Thanks for these great videos! Please keep on making them.

[leealexander]

I like playing VR games once in awhile. There was one on Oculus Prime that had me shaking and sweating landing a WW2 plane in a field and I enjoyed the memories invoked reliving the moon landing with the added feature of going along for the trip. Some of the graphics weren't so good while other parts were actual footage from the event including President Kennedy announcing that we were going to land men on the moon. Still, I very much prefer the Vive system although it takes some room to play properly. I don't really care for playing with others because I can no longer speak but some individual games are great. I think I'd rather avoid anything run by Facebook after my experience with the Facebook platform itself.

[garyskyner]

Facebook, et al are like smoking - no one can claim ignorance as to there dangers. If you want to partake then you have to accept the consequences.

[chuyramirez]

A Matrix within a Matrix. A box 📦 within a box 📦.

[robsands]

I say let them have the metaverse. I don't know about everybody else but I thought the matrix was like... bad?

[Light-at-Dawn]

Well, that didn't go very well for Marc, Did it?

[richardhines]

Limbic System vs the prefrontal cortex.
There, fixed it for ya.

[geekmeee]

Metaverse is another step closer to science fiction, where you can pretend to be something you are not.