Context Before Technology: The Possible Utopian/Dystopian Elements of the Metaverse with Examples from Great Literature

Abstract

Is the “Metaverse” a super techy and geeky wet dream with its VR Goggles and Ready Player One depicted all is possible world or is it the intellectual’s nightmare with devices and tools directly connected to the human brain and has ultimate ownership of your consciousness as well as your wallet. Is Metaverse a dystopian or a utopian dream? This is not the first time humans had been trying to deal with an emerging wave of innovation. From radio to TV, to internet and mobile revolutions, we had been seeing rapid examples of innovations rapidly expanding their influence not only locally but also globally with their everlasting diffusion to the most critical elements of human biology and human life: sex, reproduction, and death on the one hand and creativity, production, and money on the other hand. In this short chapter, we are going to use great works of literature from the dystopian and utopian genre of literature to reflect on their possible impacts on life with the Metaverse. Can technologies such as Crispr, Gene Editing, and bio-embedded devices create a more genetically modified and high-performing internet of humans? Can the Metaverse accelerate the speed with which countries become more digital and e-citizenship will overrule national borders? Will the Metaverse create double humans with an online and offline identity with its Matrix-like consequences and force people to choose a blue pill that increases life expectancy or a red pill that will provide everlasting euphoria with modified chemicals? Life in the Metaverse will be discussed with its many layers of technology and economy in this book, but who will tell us that there is “no Metaverse”? Will existing habits and ways of the current life and new emerging Metaverse merge so seamlessly, that we will not even understand we are in a collective utopia (or a dystopia)? Time will tell.