Tag Archives: Ready Player One

AI, Social Media, Tech

Algorithms define our lives, the Metaverse is already our home and Dark Patterns follow us everywhere

Photo: Adobe Stock

What is the metaverse?

I can’t link to a particular article explaining it because most of what’s out there is misleading. The truth is that nobody knows. The term comes from various science fiction sources, the most recent and least accurate is from “Ready Player One”.

The general idea of that book & film example is a future scenario where many, particularly the young, spend endless hours logged into a shared virtual reality game-like scenario where they can create a unique identity, via 3D avatars, and can interact in a realistic, yet magical, virtual reality environment.

There are many individuals and companies, such as Facebook that are advocating a link from the current online “world” to this type of “enhanced” 3D interactive “metaverse”. They even use the term and try to define its meaning based on their “vision” for the future of social media and the internet.

Zuckerberg monopolizing the Metaverse before it even exists?

The problem is, they are almost certainly wrong in this future prediction. The metaverse is already here, albeit in a very primitive form, where it will lead and what it will eventually turn into is completely open and up to all who inhabit it now and going forward.

The problem is, they are almost certainly wrong in this future prediction. The metaverse is already here, albeit in a very primitive form; where it will lead and what it will eventually become is completely open, and up to all who inhabit it now and going forward.

Elon Musk once said “We are all already Cyborgs” referring to the way cell phones (and for Tesla owners the onboard computer in their cars) extend our senses in a nearly continuous manner. We really can’t live the digital life most of us currently lead without our technological enhancements via hand-held (for now) computing.

Since this progression from the primitive early internet and web to the current, still primitive, phase of work-from-home and zoom business and education the is a continuous extension of our “world” into an artificial computer-aided meta-universe that is slowly becoming more responsive to our unspoken needs and wants.

“our electric global networks now begin to simulate the condition of our central nervous system. But a con-scious computer would still be one that was an extension of our consciousness, as a telescope is an extension of our eyes, or as a ventriloquist’s dummy is an extension of the ventriloquist.

Marshall Mcluhan, from “Understanding Media, pg. 388

What are “Dark Patterns”

Another recently coined term, dark patterns, has come to mean the ways that software designers use user interfaces to influence behavior and elicit a desired outcome, such as clicking a “buy button”.

Another way to imagine it is the digital equivalent to the grocery store designs that put necessities and staples like milk & eggs as far away as possible from the entrance, to try and entice impulse buying, while filling the check-out aisles with candy and other low cost / high margin goodies.

“We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror”

Marshall Mcluhan

The disconnect in this analogy is that people intuitively believe that the digital dark patters are less powerful and have less impact since they operate in cyberspace, while in fact is that the ability to manipulate behavior is much, much more powerful in the digital realm.

The “Dead Internet Conspiracy Theory” is just reality bumping into the truth

A recent article in the Atlantic noted the existence of the theory, and concluded that, though it had a ring of truth, ultimately the fact that this theory, on an obscure web page was possible to find, meant that the internet is not dead, and therefore the theory is invalid.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The rise of Dark Patterns, even as the devices we use and the sites we surf to and exist inside of (like Facebook) are evolving, and the endless self-inflating systems and algorithms that surround us are literally killing the internet and destroying our digital lives.

Infanticide would be a more accurate term, perhaps, since we are all baby cyborgs of the pre-metaverse and have barely had a chance to live, while these powers expand endlessly into a death-machine for our extended consciousness.

Infanticide would be a more accurate term, perhaps, since we are all baby cyborgs of the pre-metaverse and have barely had a chance to live, while these powers expand endlessly into a death-machine for our extended consciousness.

The internet is currently on life-support, because the one thing that it is innately predisposed toward, the enhancement and amplification of human interconnected communication, is at odds with the corporate goals of the gatekeepers, mainly Amazon, Facebook and Google.

Free and open communication, coupled with ever evolving and improving upgrades to the software of our lives, is nearly extinct, before it has even begun, due to this infinite conflict of interest.

Algorithms define our lives, the Metaverse is already our home and Dark Patterns follow us everywhere

The above, a dramatically described and yet painfully obvious truth, is what has even the US government, in the form of the FTC and its chair, Lina Khan, looking at antitrust remedies for the economic devastation that has been caused by the dead internet paradox.

And it has inspired legions of blockchain and coding resistance fighters to start the long process of finding a way to launch WW3, and other independent ways to connect humans using computers that are in are pockets, in our living rooms, and perhaps soon, implanted in our bodies.

Another example is Pi, a new and upcoming cryptocurrency, based on a future where a billion people will be mining and sharing the proceeds equitably using cell phones, and since they will all be connected via the mining software, the realization of this goal would automatically create, for a billion people worldwide, an alternative network, one without gatekeepers to block people from freely interacting with each other.

Oddly, it is the dim realization that the internet is, in fact, already dead in its current form, that will lead to the changes that will ultimately bring about a digital communication revolution, one that will make WWW1 look like a mistake from a primitive and misguided time.

Oddly, it is the dim realization that the internet is, in fact, already dead in its current form, that will lead to the changes that will bring about a digital communication revolution, one that will make WWW1 look like a mistake from a primitive and misguided time.

Anything, and anyone, that can wake us up to what we lack, and what we are missing, in our digital worlds and our lives – in the pre-metaverse – is a hero of the future and must be praised as such. Starting now.

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AI, Apple, Cutting Edge, Movies, Observation, Science, Tech

Wildly Optimistic Assumptions for a Post-Pandemic Future: Sci-Fi Doomsday or Utopian Dream?

Video
https://movietrailers.apple.com/movies/wb/real-player-one/ready-player-one-trailer-4_h1080p.mov
Original teaser trailer for “Ready Player One” – Warner Brothers

Plenty of reasons for Pessimism but Huge Sudden Changes are where we’ll find the greatest Opportunities

The film clip above, featuring the Steven Spielberg directed film based on the sci-fi book by Ernest Clines, is built on a fairly familiar and, lately, believable premise. In the year 2045 (or sooner from the looks of things) all our human foibles and follies have devastated the world landscape, both physically and economically. Global warming has taken a toll and disasters we now know so well, such as pandemic outbreaks and economic catastrophes, are recent history and shape the reality at hand.

The story takes place in the world of young virtual reality explorers. And from there the plot is a pretty standard fantasy exploration of the potentials and drama that this backdrop produces.

This and other dystopian works of fiction are suddenly ringing true in a new way, and on different levels, since the world has been on lock-down as we battle the novel coronavirus. There is a feeling of a world on the verge of collapse, with an unknown and very uncertain future, and talk of an economic malaise with almost no historical precedent about to unfold, if you accept worst case scenarios.

Yet, using wild flights of imagination and optimism there are hidden bright spots and silver linings that might arise, not accounted for in this film or other works of dystopian art.

“Ready Player One” promo still image / Warner Bros.

An Idea so Big and Radical it is Hard to Wrap our Heads Around it no matter how hard we try

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What if the twin terrors of the covid-19 Pandemic and the possible economic collapse that may follow are actually a kind of gift to the world and humanity? What if this is the mother of all opportunities, like some wildly fantastic movie plot, where the wake up call from the cosmos comes at exactly the perfect moment to, well, wake us all up?

It’s easy to forget that, before we all became consumed in pandemic survival mode, there were already enormous changes and challenges afoot, a they were not small potatoes.

Global warming and climate related disasters were beginning to take center stage in political and social thought. Greta Thunberg was Time’s Person of the Year, and, for the first time, climate deniers (generally paid shills for the oil industry) were no longer being taken seriously.

All that now seems like a distant memory, but what has changed? A lot and also nothing. The threat of global warming and the urgency to stop carbon emissions and begin a transition to sustainable energy is no less pressing, regardless of our current preoccupation with stopping the pandemic.

Skys around the world have turned blue and clear while traffic is a fraction of the previous norm

Though many have warned the pollution and carbon burning will resume with a vengeance, once the quarantines are lifted, there is nevertheless a psychological effect of seeing and experiencing the beauty of clean air and reduced traffic that is fascinating. Eerily similar to scenes in the film 12 Monkeys, wild animals roam freely in urban centers.

Like a good omen or an invitation to positive change, the idea that nature can bounce back so quickly could be seen as a clarion call to change. Of course, a year from now we could see a world where fossil fuels are even more entrenched, due to economic desperation, where societies take great strides backwards in the ability to communicate and all the problems from the past and present accelerate into a final snowball bound for hell.

But what if something else happens?

What if the drastic measures, like the world wide lock-downs, and the economic stimulus actions attempting to stave off the potential economic catastrophe, indicate the potential for entire nations and even the entire world to work together in times of great need?

Virtual and Enhanced Communication as Tool for Crisis Adaptation

One of the interesting and unforgettable earmarks of the current crisis lifestyle is the switch in our lives from “real” lives to internet lives and virtual meetings and events. TV shows are staging networked broadcasts using FaceTime and Zoom, with the various actors and talking heads streaming from their private quarantine stations. We communicate with each other privately using the same technologies and non-contact methods.

What if this foreshadows a revolutionary change in how we use technology to improve our lives, accelerate communication, increase productivity and prevent the future from being an ecological disaster of biblical proportions?

What if all of us learning to adapt to a life with less unnecessary travel, while at the same time studying and inventing solutions for those problems is exactly what we need to be doing? What if we all need to collaborate on ways to stop the spread of disease, certainly, but also need to find ways to seamlessly transition to solving the bigger underlying pre-existing issues in order to save ourselves and our planet?

What if we were all forced to stay inside and use our computers to communicate. And what if we were forced to learn new “jobs” and ways to survive financially? And what if we could engage people around the world to work from home solving the real problems facing humanity, instead of flying and driving around, burning carbon, chasing the latest greed-driven suicide gold rush?

Ideas like universal basic income will not be optional when 50% of the world is unemployed. But if the income generated by the robots and the energy produced by solar, wind and other clean, sustainable energy sources are available and not in the hands of corrupt politicians, Bezos and Zuckerberg, and the fossil fuel companies, then why not?

These kinds of “radical” solutions will have all sorts of political and greed-driven opposition, of that you can be sure. But, as with the coronavirus, when faced with an insurmountable obstacle, like a rapidly spreading deadly virus that does not spare victims just because they have money or power, things change fast. Really fast.

I have always said, climate change deniers will stop trying to convince people it’s a hoax once Miami and New York are underwater. In a different way, we are already there. What we are living through is like a test run and a wake up call that can help us to prepare for the real and necessary changes to come.

Having the Future Thrust Upon you is not as bad If you Look Forward to Change

So why not make the most of it? Many people are. Reading books, particularly serious books for learning new ideas and thinking outside the box, are having an online sales boom. People are using the time and freedom to set their own schedule and goals, and considering career paths and constructive engagement in ways they might have never otherwise even considered.

In this scene from the original “Matrix” film the writers
sub-consciously show us the horrors of the future
– but instead what they show is a symbolic representation
of the present and the past. Humans are imprisoned
for life in “farms” and live only to produce energy
– the food fed to babies locked in pods
is a sticky black goop said to be the liquified remains
of the dead, but is, clearly just a very familiar substance
already enslaving us all: crude oil.

Perhaps, looking back from a better future made possible by this pandemic, we can see a reality where the greatest obstacles to change were the addiction to failed behaviors, failed infrastructures and suicidal greed that was considered “normal” in a dying world. If a larger force makes those things impossible or less viable then it should be welcomed with open arms.

There is an existing world infrastructure based on fossil fuels and greed that has been artificially propped up by political and economic forces for far too long. Now that entire system is collapsing on itself. The coronavirus is just a pin prick to the bubble of stupidity and greed that has been there all along.

Those of us that can see and imagine a future, not built around and based on that failed system, will have the opportunity to use our computers and virtual communication systems, primitive as they are at this stage, to communicate with one another and discuss ways to find a new beginning. That new beginning is already starting with blue skys and clean air across the world. Leaders not motivated by greed and yet wielding power like Elon Musk are putting enormous energy into solving the carbon burning dilemma and replacing it as quickly as possible with sustainable energy.

The economic upheaval to come must be seen as an opportunity to replace the old structures with new and better solutions. The recent extreme acts of the government show at least a willingness to try things never before attempted. Many will not work. Meanwhile, enormous, radical change is no longer a science fiction dream but an unavoidable reality.

Let’s embrace the dream and face the future with the wildly optimistic idea that changes for the future do not have to be dystopian. They can be Utopian. Why should we settle for anything less?

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