Less meta and more with: five reasons to question the metaverse

Technology is a necessary but not sufficient tool for progress. As a society, we should bet on technological development focused on people, other living beings and the planet

Mark Zuckerberg announced in July 2021 the beginning of a new chapter not only in his company, with the change of name to Meta, but also in the internet with the development of the so-called metaverse. And although the concept of the metaverse is not new, the change of direction of one of the most powerful companies on the planet, owner of the three largest social networks in the Western world, with billions of users, marked the beginning of what they have been 12 months of hype about this loosely defined concept of the metaverse, understood as a new, more immersive way to access the internet. Analysts such as the firm SkyQuest estimate that the global market of the metaverse will exceed 700,000 million within five years, with a growth of more than 37% in the period 2020-2027.

The metaverse was introduced in the novel Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, in 1992. Strictly speaking, it is defined as a single digital world, available 24 hours a day and universally, in which we can interact, have relationships and do everything. type of transactions as if it were the physical world. The idealized vision of the metaverse opens the door to a potentially perfect digital world, where we can adopt different personalities, realize our dreams, overcome our limitations, travel without restrictions, access unlimited entertainment, develop our creativity and, finally, have the long-awaited success. in life, or rather, cyberlife.

Following Stephenson's novel, numerous science fiction works have described similar concepts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of visions of the metaverse outlined in science fiction literature show a dystopian and undesirable future: metaverses exist as an escape element for humans from a miserable life in a physical world deteriorated to the point of being uninhabitable. , controlled by dictatorial regimes and where the only hope is to find refuge in the digital world, a world frequently controlled by corpo