The Metaverse is Coming To Get You. Is That a Bad Thing?

NAB

Fake news, deep state surveillance, hacking and monopolistic control — all will be exacerbated in the metaverse if we don’t heed the warnings.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/the-metaverse-is-coming-to-get-you-is-that-a-bad-thing/

This is the view of Zoe Weinberg, founder of a technology incubation fund that works to counter digital authoritarianism.

As might be expected given that role, Weinberg doesn’t hold back and The New York Times sensibly files her views under “guest opinion.”

“A failure to anticipate [the negative possibilities] may put the global world order at risk of being replaced by a virtual, and perhaps less virtuous, one,” she warns.

Her concerns are multiple. For instance, there’s already evidence that online multiplayer games can enable the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

“Players can use in-game communication tools to disseminate fake news targeting others in difficult-to-track ways,” she claims. “The metaverse could allow motivated regimes or extremist groups to go a step farther. Immersive layers of text, voice and visuals in virtual environments would provide new, convincing ways to broadcast misleading or extremist content.”

Further, in environments where individuals can be represented by avatars, knowing who to trust with sensitive information will become even more difficult.

“This could pave the way for a new era of espionage,” she says.

Indeed, digital espionage has already been used by dozens of countries to gain access to commercial intellectual property, proprietary military technology and personal and financial information.

“A metaverse that contains nearly all aspects of life — work, relationships, assets, identity — could be susceptible to breaches or manipulation from across the globe.”

That potentially brings in foreign states in a more insidious, personal way than what we currently experience.

The countries that maintain control over technologies including hardware, computer networks and payment tools, “will have significant international leverage, just as countries that command things like transport routes or oil supplies do today.

“China could effectively control the metaverse’s backbone in many corners of the world, thanks to its Digital Silk Road initiative, which finances some countries’ telecommunications systems. Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry that supports computing needs, will likely become even more of a linchpin on the global stage.”

On the flip side, Weinberg thinks the metaverse also has the potential to change global affairs for the better. For example, international diplomacy may just as easily be conducted in “virtual embassies.” Smaller, less powerful nations, she says, may find themselves on a more level playing field, better able to stay in the mix in global affairs or perhaps, to forge unlikely alliances.

I’m not sure what Kool-Aid Weinberg has been drinking, but this sort of scaremongering doesn’t do her nor the NYT any favors.

Her basic assumption is that the metaverse is coming at us all like a superfast train and we’re stuck in its headlights. Well, the metaverse, or whatever it will be, is going to take decades, not a few years. Secondly, there’s an assumption that the metaverse is going to take over everything from all our personal transactions and relationships to government politics. There is no evidence that the metaverse is anything other than a more trippy version of the internet. The metaverse requires all its worlds, its pay models, its interactions to be continuous and ubiquitous. We are light years from that and we are further still from everyone agreeing to strap on a wearable to view the world through a digital lens.

“The metaverse may have been born in science fiction, but it’s up to us to write a future grounded in cleareyed reality,” Weinberg writes.

It starts with less having a less frenzied and more targeted line of attack.