Transcription
Be it from Mark Zuckerberg, Apple, or whoever, there is a large push to erase the lines between our physical and our digital lives. This push is often framed in future or abstract terms; these are products in development in experimental labs being constructed for some not-too-distant future. But this is untrue. We are already in a metaverse, one which has been snuck into our lives, injected behind our retina with needles so narrow that we barely have felt the pain of each injection. Each day, we inch further into an entire simulation; our interests and interactions are becoming hyperreal, existing in a world which is slowly being blanketed over the one we can touch and experience with true physical senses. The metaverse is already here; you are already in it.
These are bold claims, so to help us understand them in a concrete way, we can begin with some literature. "Simulacra and Simulation" is a 1981 book authored by Jean Baudrillard. This book and its ideas served as the philosophical basis for the "Matrix" series of films, but we'll talk more about that later. "Simulacra and Simulation" discusses the nature of reality in an increasingly commodified and media-drenched world. Specifically, Baudrillard discusses how media images create a new reality and systematically stamp out the already established world in which we live. The book can be complex and labyrinthine, so Baudrillard simplifies much of his theory by pointing to an old parable. If we understand this thought experiment and expand on it just slightly, we can begin to understand our current predicament, and believe me when I say it is a predicament indeed.
Imagine there's a great empire, and a crazed cartographer creates a map of that empire—a full-scale 1:1 topographical map. On the map, 1,000 ft mountains are 1,000 ft tall, 100 ft rivers are 100 ft wide, etc. The cartographer further decides that the landscape on the map should change with the real landscape of the empire. If a cliff collapses, that same cliff must collapse on the map. At this point, the map becomes indiscernible from the landscape of the empire itself. But the map is so large that the only place to put it is on top of the empire. We must understand this is, of course, physically impossible, but this parable exists in the metaphorical, not the physical. So the cartographer puts his giant perfect map on top of the empire, and now it essentially replaces the empire, being that the map is indistinguishable from the empire. This is acceptable enough; what difference does it really make?
But then our mad cartographer gets an idea: he can actually make the map better than the empire which it represents. Trees can be greener, mountains taller, flowers can bloom every day instead of every year. So he does just that. Now the cartographer has a map which, in many measures, is experientially better than the reality it represents. The cartographer gets very famous for the map he's created; he becomes very rich and very greedy, and so he develops this lavish lifestyle which he must maintain. The cartographer can't let people see under the map; they need to live on the map and bask in the glory of his perfect creation. This is precisely what happens. Meanwhile, the empire itself begins to crumble; it has been rejected by those in power as the map has come to replace the empire as a living space, as a world. The empire eventually falls apart from disuse and lack of maintenance, while the map remains on top of it, greater than the empire ever was.
Now, which is the real empire? Is it the world, or is it the map? What happens when society, present or future, needs a map of their new empire? They will produce only a map of a map. Furthermore, when future generations describe the empire after the map has crumbled to pieces, will they imagine the world, or will they imagine the map? Does it matter? Does this transmute the original map into being real? What becomes of the empire? This is an expanded version of the tale Baudrillard used in his writing. For Baudrillard, the map was a simulation, but as it took the place of the empire, it became simulacra—that is, a copy which no longer has an original.
Today, we can say that technology is like this map of our empire. It offers products, communities, social circles, trends; it has videos of events which occur in real life. It too has stores, banks, games, and sports. Today, the internet can even produce artwork, writing, and music. Like the mad cartographer's map, the internet presents things better than they exist. Everything is easier and more beautiful and more perfect. We must also keep in mind that the internet is no longer a mere network we can access and exit from physical entry points; it is something which permeates almost everything we do. The map has been laid over the empire in earnest.
Consider the phenomenon of fake news. This is the clearest point where we see our map concealing reality. Stories are fabricated online with no basis in the real world, designed to appease the sensibilities of an audience and delivered with attached messaging that the real, actual version of events is somehow false. In the most severe cases, people get elected, policy is enacted, change happens based on things which have tenuous grounds in reality. Social media influencers and celebrities also exemplify this blurring of lines. Facetuned images, glamorous and false depictions of life, and fake candid photoshoots mask the reality of living. But these influencers don't need to look how they actually look because their entire existence is on screens in the digital world. Perhaps 1,000th of 1% of their audience will ever have any real face-to-face interaction with these people, and so the digital representation of these influencers and their lives becomes real.
These images create tangible effects; they alter what we expect from life. They alter how we see reality itself. AI produces images which are not real, but more and more we are unable to distinguish between the actual and the artificial. Indeed, progress for the people who engineer these algorithms is exemplified by the public's inability to distinguish between AI-generated imagery and reality. These images erode the real, pushing our actual world towards insufficiency and irrelevance. Why bother with the real thing? Virtual reality devices like the Apple Vision Pro are said to close down distance and time and geography. In a moment, you can be transported to distant corners of the world. Given their say, technocrats would have everyone use these devices, and they would have these devices portray virtual space as entirely indistinguishable from physical space. These people would abandon the real world, rendering geography and physical space irrelevant in favor of their virtual reality.
Of course, these devices are not yet ubiquitous, so this is kind of a hypothetical point. More concretely and immediately, the proliferation of these devices, applications, and technologies harms our planet in very real ways. But still, these companies proclaim nonsense green messaging each time they communicate about their products. When Apple, for example, proclaims they are decreasing their carbon emissions by 50%, we should not be fooled. Even if this statistic has merit and is earnest, we're still left with 50% of enormous harm for our planet. We are too left with the myriad other ways Apple and its peers exploit and molest our environment. So these companies actively engage in the destruction of our planet, lying to us while building their false reality. Our cartographers allow the empire to decay so they can construct their map.
All of these pieces create a whole. As tech oligarchs grow more ambitious, the line between our empire and our map blurs. Technology is only optional until it isn't. We can no longer check out of the internet; we are affected by the digital landscape with every moment we wake and sleep. We live in a world which is not true enough to be real, but also too tangible to be purely digital. It is neither real nor unreal. What we have is a new and third version of space: the hyperreal. This is our metaverse. It has already been drawn, and the technocrats are our mad cartographers. We didn't ask for this metaverse; we did not want it. So it has been sold to us with a veneer of never-ending function for the consumer. We are expected to believe that our metaverse enriches our lives, that it satisfies our needs, that it can continue to do so forever. In truth, it provides heroin and diamonds which placate our most superficial desires. We impress our peers and enrich some abstract version of social credit. We hunt material possessions which bring little reward.
Think of the last time you bought a new X or the latest Y. There is the rush of accomplishment that wanes, and we pursue this high once more. So we are left with a constant tinge of dissatisfaction which is to be solved only by further consumption. The metaverse ensures we do not dip our toes into the water; it forces us to keep moving forward, like the man who commits suicide by walking into the ocean. The real function our metaverse serves is to strengthen itself; it pumps capital into the pockets of the few, ensuring control and power while entrapping the masses in a loop-like structure. The more that we engage in our metaverse, the more it demands from us. We work to buy more, and bizarrely, we work to accrue allotted vacation time. Thereby, we constantly sacrifice resources and time that could be spent considering life outside of this increasingly unreal landscape.
Baudrillard's ideas served as the loose basis for the "Matrix" series of movies, in which our protagonists learn that all of reality is a digital simulation. The main character, Neo, can enter into the Matrix by plugging a large cable into the back of his neck. Our Matrix is not so antique and clumsy as the one depicted by this film; ours does not require a cable. Our flesh is in the air; it is in our relationships, our social dynamics, our everyday routines. It is in every tangible and intangible molecule of our lives. In 1967, French philosopher Guy Debord wrote "The Society of the Spectacle." The book is a series of short passages which discuss consumerism, media, and specifically how authentic life is being replaced by representations of reality. Debord writes, "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images." Today, we can take images to mean any combination of consumer-focused media: advertisements, films, magazines, newspapers, digital content, videos like this one, etc.
The spectacle is an amorphous sort of thing, difficult but not impossible to define. It is the capital-seeking, consumer-targeting landscape of our lives. The spectacle is motivated by economic growth; it is the show put on for us by moneyed interests and the way that show alters our relationships to one another and to life itself. The spectacle is both the rhetoric which produces media and the media which produces rhetoric. The spectacle is okay in small amounts; technology can help us, the market too can be beneficial in many ways. Some spectacle can provide consumers with safety, choice, opportunity, and even agency over their lives. But the trouble begins when the spectacle does not exist alongside our world and instead takes it over entirely.
Debord noted that living in the real world was replaced by contemplating the spectacle. We can understand the word "contemplating" as basically participating. We spend our days working so we can buy this or that new thing, house, or car, which the spectacle has told us we need. Conversations occur increasingly via privately owned objects and software. Social media becomes an integral part of any hobby. Through the spectacle, our lives are transmuted into a sequence of exchanges with commercial goods and for-profit enterprises, whose only feedback is that we must engage more. Every action we take now has some vestigial creature trying to attach itself, seeking to insert itself as a middleman between us and reality. Much like Baudrillard's map, this spectacle helps create a false world.
Consider the sport of baseball. It started as a game; indeed, at one point, baseball players were not allowed to be paid. But over time, the spectacle wrapped its arms around the sport. Slowly, each surface at a baseball park became covered in advertisements, which all hope to influence the viewer in some way. Each statistic displayed on television broadcasts is now brought to you by some company. Jerseys are emblazoned with irrelevant corporate symbolism. Baseball stadiums themselves are not named after founders or cities, but after the companies who want your attention. In recent years, even more curious changes have been made. Baseball, being a slow, tedious, and quiet game, was losing popularity among modern audiences, which meant diminished returns for advertisers and stakeholders. Without these, the sport would have died a slow death, vanished from our world because of its inability to satisfy the spectacle.
So these stakeholders simply changed baseball. They added a set of rules to increase the pace of play and shorten the length of a baseball game. After the spectacle infected the game, it fundamentally altered baseball itself. So too is our world. Just like baseball, and just like the mad cartographer changed his map, the spectacle alters what it means to be human. It replaces lived reality with contemplation and engagement in the spectacle. Every decision we make, from the media we watch to the shirt we wear to the events we attend, becomes fuel for the spectacle itself. The spectacle rejects representation of reality, as Debord notes; that which the spectacle shows is important, and that which is important the spectacle shows. Appearing is the goal, not being.
Images, be they advertisements, internet content, or movies, influence our decisions, beliefs, and ideals, regardless of whether or not these images are actually based in reality. News cycles filter out parts of the world and filter in others based on what gets attention and ad dollars. We are told to buy this or that because it will make us happy. Our social lives have been infected by social networks, by a pure onslaught of media. The spectacle engineers our behavior; our lives and minds become moldable clay. Again, a little bit of this may be good. The market has satisfied our basic needs in the Western world; food, shelter, and water are easy to access for most people. But the spectacle cannot stop; it demands infinite growth.
So it has then created new desires and new ambitions for the consumer. It has built us a metaverse of values. It implores us to need a faster car or a larger house, so we must further partake. Life itself is no longer sufficient; we now must aspire. Of course, this creates alienation. Debord notes, "The more his life is now his product, the more he is separated from his life." We are strangers to our own world, to what it means to exist as humans. We are further strangers to each other. We cannot be with or for our fellow humans; we must be with and for the spectacle. Achievements are increasingly difficult to measure by connection, service, or esteem for your fellow man. The spectacle does not offer prizes for the happiest man or the closest friends. Instead, to achieve is now synonymous with diplomas, possessions, and high ranks in large organizations.
Ultimately, when we combine this huge amount of circumstances and effects, we get our metaverse. We find ourselves living not in reality, but in a sort of simulation thereof. For the modern human, conceiving of life unattached to this simulation strikes as basically nonsense. So how are we to spend our days then? Staring into the sky, sitting and doing nothing? It's unimaginable. Thereby, we have reached a difficult truth: this simulation and all of its trappings are reality. The map has become the empire. This swirl of simulacra, hyperreality, and spectacle all combine to build our modern metaverse.
But why do we accept it as so? Certainly, it is easy enough to state that this is all nonsense, that it's all unhealthy. Yet our metaverse is effective. Why? Well, we should not ignore the mechanical realities; it is engineered to work. Billions of dollars and genius-level intellects are plunged into this new metaverse to ensure that it preys on our most intense psychological impulses. But more abstractly, our metaverse provides us with ostensible benefits. In southern parts of the United States, greyhound racing has been an event to behold and gamble upon. These races, a fake lure, are towed at speed around a track, and the dogs, beholden to their instinct and training, chase the lure as quickly as they can.
I once had a greyhound as a pet, a retired racing dog. When I adopted the dog, I was told that the greyhounds are not, in fact, abused in captivity at the racetracks; quite the opposite. To race well, a greyhound needs to be happy. I don't know if this is true, but I ask the viewer to let it stand hypothetically. You see, with this in mind, greyhound racing doesn't become more kind; it becomes more cruel. These dogs are placated and pacified and encouraged by the false notion that one day they might catch the lure. They are kept stupid all the while and never allowed to run free. They are distracted from the sheer concept of running free, from their desires to do so.
Our simulation turns us all into racing greyhounds, pacified by material wants so that we can continue to race faster and chase our lures. We are given a sort of freedom; we are free to live our lives however we so choose according to the metaverse, which is represented by the bevy of options we have in the marketplace. But this is a false freedom. It is false in the most mundane ways. We can choose from a hundred different cereals, but they are all owned by three companies. We can wear whatever clothes we want, but these choices are shackled by our economic capacity. Furthermore, making these choices requires continued engagement in the spectacle. We are offered prizes for our participation, but we must participate to earn these prizes, all while ignoring the concept of truly, sincerely running free.
This freedom is also false in more consequential ways: essentially, contribute to the simulation or die. It's easy for me to sit on my computer and publish YouTube videos once in a while and even check out of this metaverse in between as best as I can. But not everyone has this choice. When a single mother raises three children or a man works two jobs to pay his rent, waxing poetic about the simulation is a waste of time; it's just not an option. What sort of freedom is this? The freedom that mandates one's actions?
Finally, we come back to Baudrillard. He notes that there are four stages which take something from being real to being simulacrum. Consider a picture of a tree. This is the first stage; it is simple reality. We have an object, the picture, which represents something that actually exists: the tree. But then we begin to meddle with it. We bring that picture into Photoshop and do some color correction. This is basically professional photography; images are enhanced, but everyone knows it. There's very little outright deceit involved. This is Baudrillard's second order. But now we decide our picture, even enhanced, isn't good enough, so we download a great picture of a tree online and we tell people that we took the photo, that it's a picture we took on a hike. This is the third stage; the image is real and it represents something real, but we are presenting it dishonestly in a way that is removed from reality.
Finally, our next stage brings us to full simulacra. We create an AI-generated image of a tree and parade it around to our friends. This stage sees us present something which is fake and actively conceal reality as we convince our friends that this AI-generated image of a tree is, in fact, real. We are developing something beyond the real: a simulacrum, the hyperreal. As Baudrillard notes, I would hesitate to entirely copy and paste this structure onto our present times, but certainly we can see how media, technology, and the internet are moving our reality through a similar series of stages.
Technology isn't bad; the internet is not intrinsically harmful. The digital world has helped humanity in volumes. We can find like-minded individuals, even romantic partners. We can discover cultural achievements and knowledge. We can get help when we need it, almost whenever we need it. Medical technology has saved countless millions of lives. This is a very important point, and my desire is not to burn all technology to the ground. The problem comes when this hyperreal metaverse eclipses reality. The problem comes when we fail to recognize the map isn't the empire, when the empire crumbles in favor of the map.
I understand that I use the internet more than most people, but in the 25 years I have been using the internet, the broader trend has continued to move in one direction: more internet for everyone, all of the time. We are speeding up, not slowing down. I feel the point of diminishing returns grows nearer every day, if we have not reached it already. My stories are both current and forward-thinking. The greatest trap, and the meanest one, we are given by our metaverse is deceit. This metaverse proclaims beauty and happiness are within its code, within its folds, and it conceals the real world under its paper-thin veneer. But in fact, beauty is everywhere. It is in the leaves of grass and grains of sand. It is in late nights with our closest friends. It is in the embrace of a loved one.
We should use technology, enjoy technology, but we should not be so used by it. We should not believe the metaverse. Our world, our real world, is both gorgeous and near.