Passing through a park in Manhattan recently, I spotted a plaque with a poem on it, “Nature Poem,” by Tommy Pico. It includes these lines:
When Nature palms my neck I can’t tell if it’s a/romantic comedy or a scary movie
I feel a similar ambivalence contemplating the “metaverse,” a concept being floated by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other tech moguls. It calls for a much more immersive experience for consumers of social media, games and other digital technologies. The metaverse gets us into the sci-fi territory of The Matrix, in which evil robots pump a fake reality into the brains of captive humans. Is the metaverse so implausible that it’s silly? Or is it scary? I can’t decide.
According to tech pundit Ben Thompson, Neal Stephenson introduced the term metaverse in his science-fiction novelSnow Crash in 1992. Stephenson describes the metaverse as a three-dimensional virtual reality generated by goggles worn by the novel’s hero, Hiro. The metaverse is “a computer-generated universe that [Hiro’s] computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned the metaverse at a conference last May, but only after Zuckerberg discussed it last July did it really generate buzz. Zuckerberg describes the metaverse as “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content–you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.” That sounds like a rom-com version of The Matrix.
Zuckerberg might be touting the metaverse to distract the public from his company’s ongoing scandals. The latest whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified to Congress that “the company’s products harm children and stoke division,” as National Public Radio put it.
If the metaverse is a public-relations ploy, not everyone is fooled. In August Jessa Crispin, a columnist for The Guardian, published a fiery critique of the metaverse. Lumping it together with the space programs of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, Crispin calls the metaverse another escapist fantasy of “tech billionaires trying to leave the world to evade responsibility for their malevolent influence on it.”
As the Netflix film Social Dilemma points out, Facebook and other tech companies care more about profits than social well-being. These companies already wield enormous power over us, which grows as they gather more data on us, and the metaverse could amplify that power. Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, warned in 2017 that the metaverse could become a dystopian nightmare if it is controlled by a small number of corporations. And Sweeney has promoted the metaverse.
The metaverse poses technical as well as public-relations problems. The most immersive current interface for digital simulations is virtual-technology goggles of the kind produced by Oculus, which Facebook purchased in 2014. Tech companies are exploring so-called brain-machine interfaces that go beyond virtual-reality goggles. These interfaces could further blur the line between us and our devices.
Some brain-machine interfaces detect neural signals via external electrodes or optical sensors attached to the skull or other parts of the body. Such interfaces can also manipulate thoughts with transcranial electromagnetic pulses. These non-invasive devices, however, enable only crude mind-reading and mind-control.
Tech firms are investigating far more ambitious interfaces, which work via electrodes implanted into the brain through holes drilled in the skull. The devices can read signals from and transmit them to neurons directly, potentially enabling the kind of precise mind-reading and control envisioned in The Matrix and other science fictions. Facebook has funded research on both non-invasive and invasive brain-machine interfaces.
I’ve raised doubts about the potential of brain implants. Implants designed to treat depression and other mental disorders by stimulating neural tissue have not lived up to their hype. And influencing mood via direct neural stimulation should be much easier than creating detailed hallucinations and boosting intelligence, memory and other cognitive capacities.
Facebook has reportedly discontinued, at least temporarily, research on brain-machine interfaces, which has produced disappointing results. But other companies, notably Elon Musk’s Neuralink, continue to develop implanted interfaces. Here’s another disturbing fact to keep in mind: The Pentagon has pumped tens of millions of dollars into research on brain-machine interfaces.
I wish I could dismiss the metaverse—and especially the version based on brain implants–as silly techno-hype. But scary things, which once seemed inconceivable, have been happening lately. A thuggish buffoon becomes the most powerful man on earth. A plague sweeps across the planet, killing millions and forcing survivors to wear masks and keep a wary distance from each other.
Given the world’s unpredictability, I have a hard time ruling out the possibility that an unholy alliance of big tech and the military will foist an implant-enabled metaverse on us. After all, as the real world gets scarier, the metaverse might become more and more appealing. In our frightening future, the metaverse, not religion, might serve as the opiate of the masses.
Scientific Curmudgeon is an Opinion column written by CAL Professor and Director of the Stevens Center for Science Writings, John Horgan. Columns are adapted from ones originally published on ScientificAmerican.com.
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