Of course, when people are so ready to spend money on digital things, it’s no surprise that big companies try to create a universe full of them. But I wish the metaverse was just a virtual market. As I just mentioned, Facebook is our main commodity information that social media companies sell, and the metaverse has the potential to take the information deep in our minds and put it up for sale. Currently, social media can record and sell our personal information, pictures, posts, and reactions such as likes.
Metaverse, on the other hand, has the potential to record everything we do in a three-dimensional universe, every move, reaction and thought. Of course, the metaverse will also be an ideal tool for “marketing”, manipulating people and disinformation due to its believability and potential to affect our subconscious more seriously.
What could be scarier than a virtual universe where companies that care more about their income than their users build and control every inch of it? Unfortunately, the next phase of the metaverse is more terrifying, which is connecting the metaverse with the real universe. Trying to perceive and experience the real world with augmented reality devices.
For example, while we experience the normal world through the lenses we put on our eyes, there may be a future in which various virtual objects and information appear before us. I believe that this will be the next targets of social media giants. I think this could be devastating for humanity. Even today, while most of us have social media accounts where people gather information about us, in such a future we will be able to access all basic information about people as soon as we look at them.
Moreover, we will be able to easily tag people by coloring them according to their religious beliefs, worldviews and interests. Imagine that you enter a store, the business will be able to see your interests, what you like to buy, and how much income you have. Of course, everything will be done to provide you with “better service”. In such a world, everything we do will be followed regularly by companies.
This hybrid universe, which combines meta and real universes, can also seriously affect information exchange. Augmented reality devices can be used to hide some facts we don’t like. Are we bothered by the slums, we can block them with one click and make them disappear from our eyes. We can filter out ideas we don’t like and perceive the world the way we want.
This world may be appealing to some, but such a universe would spawn serious radical people. Moreover, these filters can be easily used by governments and companies to manage our perception. For example, the social media company may show us products that do not advertise to them, or may exclude them from our perception altogether. In such a world, companies can also own our perception apart from our private life.
The worst part is, I don’t think it will be easy to break away from this hybrid universe. I believe that we will become dependent on a technology with such widespread uses in a short time. Let’s take the Internet, it is not possible for a working person to disconnect from the Internet. An individual who chooses to live without the Internet should risk being left behind socially, economically and even intellectually. The same will be true for this hybrid technology. In fact, with the increase in smart homes, roads and workplaces, our daily life will work in an integrated way with this technology, so living away from this technology will negatively affect our comfort.
A hybrid of the metaverse and the real world doesn’t have to be harmful and turn our world into a dystopia. It can also provide many conveniences to our lives. However, we cannot leave it to companies to decide how they should be used and how they should be developed. Academies and thought leaders need to follow technological developments closely and identify strategies for them to evolve in ways that are detrimental to humanity before they become more widespread. Otherwise, it may be too late.
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