ok here's my rant
zuckerberg will not win
metaverse is an ok idea, but not if privatized! (now that we've grown
accustomed to virtual worlds, right?)
zuckerberg has serious issues with power and control (such a cynical
proclamation when we were just beginning to enjoy each other's maskless
faces and smiles again)
his meta is an elite wet dream of some superior sentient class (wearing
oculus rift haute couture) that will rendezvous and talk about the "real
life" of capitalist "flows." (ugh)
On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 3:51 AM Felix Stalder <fe...@openflows.com> wrote:
> I agree. While there is ample technical room -- and a distinct social
> need -- to improve the teleconferencing "experience" (sorry, Olia),
yes, yes, and yes - meta is announced at a time when we have reached
maximum zoom-fatigue, exhausted by boring, zoom-tech jobs and endless
covid-news and an hysterical dismaland of the last two years...out pops,
the shiny forehead of zuck to suggest his "new vision of meta" -
name-changer for FB, re-branding never profited so good...
if only zucker had the guts to give his beloved facebook machine to the the
people. it has value as a social platform if it were not privatized and
commercial "freedom" - maybe we could just use it as a socialist, public
utility, an easy- internet with pictures...and video!
> but
> you don't need a sad metaverse for that.
>
we surely don't need a privatized, premium-rate, premium bandwidth-sucking
acceleration of US corporate colonization of everything around us and our
friends in other places - to think google glasses had beer thrown at them
in bars ten years ago because no one wanted their lives sucked up by google
- and then that same New World Order is styled and re-packaged and
justified for its potential "users" by the z's pathetic concept of "free"
accounts... we may need, instead, a metaverse, that will drain the
income-blood from billionaires, these robber barons of delivery
work/zoom/space are vying to be the next World on Wings ("Things to Come")
directing the globalized 4th industrial revolution. All he's done is direct
the next-gen of elite tech money to invest in the already
highly-competitive drive for wearability, because even Oculus is going to
need improvements.
There was Meta (I have the t-shirt), a valley- company that explored - with
consultant Steve Mann briefly - wearable computers and gesture control,
much superior in every way to google - glass or basic VR goggles. Mann, of
course, a righteous protector of human agency in the cyborg future.
>
> But what strikes me still is the doggedness with which US IT sector
> persues this vision.
yes - its boredom, they cannot get enough - inventory done in VR. it's
better.
> I took the occasion to look into Gelertner's 1992
> Mirrorworlds -- which I admit I had only know through Lutz Dambeck's
> film "Das Netz" -- and it's almost the same vision. And I am sure there
> are many more like that, as Michael has pointed out.
>
great film, das netz..!
>
> I think there is a weird combination of control desire on multiple
> levels (FB to control the metaverse, managers to control their remote
> workers etc)
omg - control, it is beyond control...it is some neo-liberal fantasy that
he's changing "our" world for the good - a planned, total eclipse of any
remaining privacy: privacy of person, privacy of thought, privacy of
experience..all privacy we currently know will be sucked into the vacuum
left by zuckerberg's 'meta' - the earth encased in one giant big-box store
uni-verse of capitalist flows.
> and belief in technical singularity, in the sense that
> computer simulation becomes indistinguishable from physical reality, not
> just in terms of intelligence, but everything else too.
virtualization of everything is a tragic human problem.
> Connected to the
> latter, there is also this notion that we are already living inside a
> simulation created by a much higher intelligence.
elitist, sentient beings...capable of private power games that we have yet
to imagine. no capacity to problem solve, no capacity to love, no capacity
to sacrifice. i do not want to live in a world --- and neither do my young
students---where imaginary commodities float pop up in front of us, as the
result of our search criteria...our conversations, our sex lives and diets.
who is he really trying to get to play his tragic game of desperate moves?
we need to publish a manifesto of the meta
> A kind of IT version
> of the many worlds theory, but I don't know if anyone takes that
> seriously or if the discussion of this is more like a Silicon Valley
> parlor game.
>
>
>
> all the best. Felix
>
adieu
molly
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 02.11.21 03:26, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > Alphabet was realistic. Meta looks desperate. I have the same impression
> > as you, Michael. It will come to nothing.
>
> --
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