The metaverse is coming: Should we be more worried?

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an "Internet that you're inside of rather than looking at".

an online world that people escape to by putting on virtual reality (VR) goggles and earphones - where digital representations of themselves interact with everyone else's digital avatar.

Others don't see the metaverse as an alternate digital universe to escape to, but rather as an augmented reality layer superimposed over the real world. In this version too, one lives inside the Internet rather than accesses it....Thanks to your augmented reality goggles, you would see his name, age, occupation and most recent social media posts hovering over his head the moment you glance in his direction.

We do not live in that world but we are painfully aware of the looming climate crisis and a dozen other crises, not to mention a pandemic that has forced us to live a significant part of our daily lives online.

we have just very recently received confirmation that Facebook knew its products were hurting society but decided not to do anything about it because it made them money. It did not care that its algorithms were making people more extreme as long as they kept them on the site longer.

In some ways, the metaverse feels like a Plan B for the planet. If the metaverse is thriving, it suggests something very bad has happened to the real world.

Then there is the romantic notion of equality. The gulf of inequality in the real world is often narrowed significantly in the online realm.