We checked the VR lab this morning and there it was, smashed on the 3D floor, fallen from its vial token. Who killed the metaverse star?

An internet phenomenon is hardly anything until someone declares it dead. With the rocketing attention surrounding the concept of metaverse, we feel safe to go ahead already. Plus, solid reasons exist to place its future along the MiniDisc and Google Glasses, rather than the blockchain and Netflix. Zuck, are you listening? You’re up!

Mark Zuckerberg Killed All the Metaverse Fun

For a year or two, the metaverse future seemed great. It had the right blend of tech, futurism, and ambiguity to get everyone in the valley excited. Then came Zuckerberg’s presentation of Meta, the new overarching brand for the Facebook group, in a sort of self-proclaimed takeover on the very concept. 

If you’ve been exposed to this, the word metaverse might never invoke anything else than an existential malaise, along with that question: what was going on with his posture? 

The fatal blow occurred at 7m30s when Mark said that the metaverse was going to take ecosystem building, norms setting, and new forms of governance, and this is something that we’re going to focus on. Fool me once! 

Trusting Facebook to build a fair, healthy ecosystem and governance? This would be like entrusting Bernie Madoff to reform corporate America! Should the metaverse be monopolized by one tech company, some other candidate might be better at this:

• Fortnite and Epic Game: This is the closest thing to the Metaverse today, along with Roblox. 
• Microsoft: From Windows to Office to LinkedIn, the work metaverse could be theirs. 
• Decentraland: Together with a few other crypto metaverse projects, this platform might have the right tech for this.
• NFT projects: Sorare and Sandbox could take the crypto vibe one step further toward gaming.
• Unity: This leading 3D game engine is well poised to build the gaming metaverse. 

And yet, each decade in the digital biz brings its own giants. The future boss of the metaverse might still be learning c# or c++. Yet for it to work, should the metaverse actually have any boss?

The Metaverse Died Because It Was Unfit for Our World

The Metaverse is a portmanteau word for meta, meaning beyond or after, and the universe. According to Wikipedia and 28 debating experts, it will (or won’t) offer a virtual experience spanning across the physical and digital worlds, where everyone will be able to connect, play, work and some more, at the same time, from anywhere, on any device.

But in the real world, solutions to connect live and synchronously hundreds of millions of users and devices don’t exist. From server architecture to computing capabilities, it might take decades to comply with Matthew Ball’s attributes of a persistent, live, synchronous metaverse. 

Also, agreeing on interoperable standards seems quite a stretch in a tech economy where Facebook, Apple and consort rely on closed proprietary standards and don’t share data. Governments would also need to agree on how such an open world would be regulated and its content moderated.

In fact, the good old Internet standards are still the best shot at reaching at least some sort of metaverse. Crypto and blockchain open and verifiable standards should help too with massive identification, data, and financial exchanges needed. 

Oh, and did we mention the level of energy that meta whale would need? The digital world electricity bills have already become problematic, with cloud computing, 5G and the Internet of Things on their way. Will the world simply be able to afford this? By the time all these barriers get sorted, everyone will have probably moved to another fad. 

The Metaverse Rests in Hollywood

Even before Facebook was the new cool kid on the block, the idea of the metaverse already existed. The metaverse has been envisioned by futurists and technology experts as a place where our physical realities combine with numerous virtual experiences in a shared virtual realm. 

Still, this concept has been explored by science-fiction authors and Hollywood filmmakers in many ways over past decades. The basic concept of the metaverse is recognizable in several movies, such as The Matrix, Ready Player One and Stranger Times. And their vision is much harder to stomach than the glorious future we’ve been presented with.

The Matrix (1999)

This science fiction action film was directed and written by the Wachowski brothers. It is the first film in The Matrix series and depicts a dystopian future in which humans are unknowingly trapped inside a virtual world, the Matrix, built by intelligent machines to distract humans while utilizing their bodies as a source of energy.

With its themes of existentialism, free will, predetermined futures, the rejection of groupthink, and a mixture of numerous religious ideologies, such as prophecy, The Matrix is a thought-provoking conversation starter with a creepy futuristic twist. This movie presents a  strong case against the excesses and abuses that such invasive technology would lead to.  

Ready Player One (2018)

Set in a rather dreary 2045, Ready Player One is based on Ernest Cline’s best-selling 2011 sci-fi novel, where most people live in poverty and spend significant amounts of time online in a virtual realm: known as the OASIS. While the OASIS is a virtual reality, the individuals who play it are real, and their actions have real-world implications.

Although Ready Player One blurs the line between reality and illusion, the film stresses the importance of staying connected to reality and gives the viewer the opportunity to recognize the implications of living in a virtual realm. The world it depicts, where most of the population compensate for a miserable life by escaping into a virtual one, does not advocate for pursuing the way of the metaverse.

Strange Days (1995)

An old gem you that should watch. Strange Days, set in the last two days of 1999, depicts a Los Angeles torn apart by crime and violence, where the ultimate high is to “jack in” by attaching a “SQUID” to your skull – a brain wave transmitter that gives the impression that you are experiencing someone else’s experiences. This is a film about virtual reality that deals with technology’s ramifications in a tough way. It conveys so much of VR’s power (and dangers) within a movie.

Of course, drama sells, but artists consistently share a rather gloomy vision of such a concept of alternate reality. Here are some other movies that are worth the watch :

• Surrogates: A somewhat reverse version of the Metaverse, where robotic versions of each human take up our daily tasks in the real world.
• Tron: Made in 1982, this sci-fi movie is regarded as one of the first to explore the connection of modern computing and virtual realities.
• Her: A poetic, bittersweet take on the relation between humans and virtual personalities powered by AI, and their respective mental and physical limitations.
• Free Guy: A humorous version of the Matrix where the principal character discovers he lives in a video game.
• Summer Wars: A Japanese animation with elements of  teenage romance combined with the collision between our real world and a parallel one.

As technology evolves to simulate the physical world with increasing detail, we must wonder if virtual reality will someday be superior to reality. Will society eventually turn its back on the real world? If Hollywood has provided us with a taste of what’s to come for us as a species, it may be wise to give Zuck the boot and keep such a world in the movies. 

The Metaverse Died So That People Could Live

The metaverse appeals to tech magnates because it connects to a science-fictional dream of control. CEOs realize that no corporation, no matter how large, can conquer the whole planet. But there is an alternative: If the public could be enticed to abandon atoms for bits, the material for the symbolic… leaving only the pristine virtual world in its place. 

If achieved, the metaverse would be a corporate’s Seventh Heaven, a gigantic Amazon that unifies production, distribution, and all associated operations, into a single service. The ultimate black hole of consumption. It would be birthed in a world of unrestrained surveillance capitalism, where companies will want to write the rules and own the natural monopoly on offer. But guess what: the people of the world won’t have any of such a cybernetic-corporate nightmare. And that’s why it won’t happen.

Not on their watch

Shortly after Facebook announced its decision to change its corporate name to Meta, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested the name was short for. “We are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society…for profit!”

Her astute insights hit the nail precisely on its head. And Ocasia-Cortez won’t be fighting that cause alone! Health experts have already pointed to the mental impact of virtual environments, and their social repercussions on kids. Many parts of society are already standing against what can be described as the most privacy-destroying machine humanity has ever developed. 

From the Chinese government limiting online gaming for children to 3 hours a day, to religious communities opposing the very concept of Metaverse, Ocasia-Cortez will find many allies from all sides. Making sure we keep enjoying living in the real world and a free society, rather than being trapped into a virtual tyranny, is the ultimate motive behind the death of the Metaverse.

Extra Time: A Real Thing for the Entertainment Business 

At the outset, the concept of the Metaverse appears to be a not so new, arbitrary rebranding of business domination fantasies around digital technologies and video games. While our daily life is unlikely to be affected, the same cannot be said for the corporate side of life.

There will be massive investment in this space. Organizations are throwing their weight and budgets behind the idea. Marketers will flood Slack and Zoom with PowerPoint presentations of the next metaverse unicorn. From that perspective, it will certainly be a game-changer for firms operating in entertainment industries such as gaming, video and sports.

Until the Metaverse joins the history of world revolutionary failures, that should keep CEOs, business angels and tech consultants entertained for a while. With a feeling that what they do is immensely crucial for humanity. Isn’t that sense of a greater purpose, enabling to cover the vacuity and sometimes toxicity of their actions in the real world, what business leaders are chasing with the Metaverse?

*****

Written by Nicolas Morel and Prenelle Pillay.
Feature photo by Steve Johnson.