The metaverse will be a digital graveyard if we let new technologies distract us from today’s problems - The Guardian

The tiny land federation of Tuvalu precocious announced that it would beryllium the archetypal state to afloat replicate itself arsenic a virtual reproduction successful the metaverse.

Tuvalu, comprising of 9 tiny islands successful the Pacific situated betwixt Australia and Hawaii, fears that its demise is inevitable owed to human-induced clime change, and wanted to sphere “the astir precious assets of its radical … and determination them to the cloud”.

This fatalism was possibly portion publicity stunt but besides portion resignation, arsenic the Pacific federation tries to grapple with the looming clime disasters that volition deed islands similar theirs hardest.

But the thought that it should seizure a integer mentation of itself, a virtual shade successful the shell, belies our flawed cognition towards exertion arsenic a saviour and the communicative that caller technological worlds volition inevitably regenerate our vibrant carnal one.

The metaverse promises to beryllium (it is not yet decently built) a afloat immersive, cosmopolitan virtual satellite powered by virtual world and mixed world technologies. Mark Zuckerberg popularised the word successful 2021, erstwhile helium announced that his institution would alteration its sanction to Meta and pivot its aboriginal towards gathering metaverse technologies.

Since then, pundits who claimed metaverse expertise emerged seemingly overnight, clamouring to get a portion of the pastry of this shiny “new” phenomenon.

This naive futurism expresses itself successful antithetic ways – arsenic believers herald much caller technological marvels – Web3, cryptocurrency, blockchain, non-fungible tokens. A paper of seemingly incomprehensible and baffling technological prophecies.

But the hype and starry-eyed proselytising could not flight reality, and we are seeing examples of these caller technologies collapsing.

Meta’s flagship metaverse task Horizon Worlds is reported to beryllium mostly bare and unpopular. Even among those who visit, astir don’t enactment aft their archetypal month. Wall Street Journal reports that of the user-generated worlds successful the platform, lone astir 9 percent are visited by much than 50 players. Seems similar adjacent Meta employees bash not privation to usage the caller Horizon Worlds.

Meta’s banal is experiencing heavy crashes, arsenic its dogged concern successful the metaverse contempt deficiency of returns and pugnacious economical conditions forced it to lay disconnected 11,000 staff.

FTX, a cryptocurrency speech erstwhile valued astatine $32bn and considered a linchpin of the Web3 world, has spectacularly flamed retired and is now facing liquidation.

This disconnect betwixt the committedness of these caller technologies and the challenges of today’s problems is rooted successful a doctrine preferred by tech evangelists – known arsenic “longtermism”.

Longtermism is the presumption that we should enactment world-changing projects – similar the colonisation of Mars, backstage abstraction travel, and Web3 and the metaverse – due to the fact that the alleged aboriginal worth these volition bring humanity justifies immoderate imaginable disruption successful the contiguous oregon contiguous future.

Longtermism has advocates successful the tech barons of contiguous – including Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. For them, the concerns of the contiguous are lone worthy addressing insofar arsenic they interaction connected their grandiose visions of the future.

Philosopher and writer Émile P. Torres criticises this mode of thinking: “Why does Musk attraction astir clime change? Not due to the fact that of injustice, inequality of quality suffering – but due to the fact that it mightiness snuff america retired earlier we tin colonize Mars and dispersed passim the universe.”

Longtermism favours an unrealised aboriginal implicit a troubled present, and its believers assertion motivation authorization with vague notions that they are doing things that volition allegedly make aboriginal value, but ne'er erstwhile reasoning astir the outgo calved by nine today.

For the land federation of Tuvali, it is heartbreaking to deliberation that they don’t adjacent consciousness similar they person immoderate prime successful being capable to prevention their physical, existent satellite community, and each that’s disposable to them is an abstracted, virtual copy.

If we physique caller technological worlds astatine the disbursal of addressing today’s problems, the metaverse won’t beryllium a shiny caller utopia, it volition look much similar a integer graveyard, afloat of the mislaid memories and copies of a satellite we chose to ignore.