The rocks that surround the Island of Chiloé are inhabited by the singular species of the cold. Among them, two varieties of penguins with surnames of explorers stand out: the Magellanic and the Humboldt. Less well known is the cormorant, or “sea crow”, a dark bird with a beak similar to that of a pelican that dives to fish at great depths thanks to the fact that its plumage is not waterproof and it gains weight when it gets wet. In China and Japan, a string is tied around its neck so that it cannot swallow its prey and deposits it in the hands of a “fisherman”. Believing that it is fed, the cormorant works for its master.
This conduct is not very different from that of the netizen who surfs the net without noticing that it serves commercial interests. The Internet emerged as a free and liberating endeavor (the time of autonomous fishing cormorants), but it soon became a business of unsuspected proportions, making personal data the main commodity on the planet (the time of cormorants with ropes). to the neck).
The next digital adventure will be the metaverse, an immersive platform on which various companies work and which led Mark Zuckerberg to rename Facebook Meta. As on so many occasions, the new technology was anticipated by fiction. In 1992 Neal Stephenson published the novel Snow Crash; there, the metaverse is an alternate reality of planetary scope where people lead a digital life more intense than their physical existence and are threatened by a virus. The concept alluded to a threatening dystopia; even so, it stimulated the programmers of the third dimension who had already scored triumphs with video games.
The success of the Second Life platform, in which the user is represented by an avatar who assumes a parallel destiny and does business in bitcoins, reinforced this initiative. And Stephenson himself, who 20 years ago warned in his novel about the possibilities of building a digital tyranny with the metaverse, is now a partner in a company to develop it: Lamina1.
Expanded reality is supposed to boost productivity. The precise simulation of the environment will allow the projecting of buildings, bridges, works of art, roads, financial transactions and surgeries without risk. The experience will be so satisfying that many will not want to get out of it. The draft of life will become its final version. Each person may have an avatar that represents them in three dimensions to participate in parties, congresses, courses, tournaments, group therapies or work teams.
Unfortunately, the process did not occur at the dawn of the internet, when the digital swell did not belong to the corporate world. After Facebook’s outrageous sale of personal data, you don’t need to be paranoid to fear that identity theft will increase exponentially with the metaverse.
The worst thing about technological dependence is that it is not perceived as such. Those who search for options on the Internet think that they are obeying their impulses without noticing that they are actually obeying an algorithm. We are facing a happy slavery that is confused with free will. If the cormorant believes that he catches a fish for himself, the netizen believes that he dominates a medium to which he is hostage.
Who will own the metaverse? Four corporations control 70 percent of digital traffic. Its commercial value is valued at 2.6 billion dollars, a little less than the Gross Domestic Product of France.
By the end of the decade, the metaverse will generate a $13 billion market incorporating more than 5 billion users. It is unlikely that this economy will follow community principles. Immersive technology will increase the possibilities of surveillance, propaganda and manipulation of societies. For this reason, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who at the age of 29 became the youngest congresswoman in the United States and who belongs to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, warns that we are facing “a cancer for democracy.”
In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez questioned Mark Zuckerberg during his appearance before Congress about ads that politicians pay for on Facebook. “Do you verify that information?” Asked the legislator. In the post-truth era, the young tycoon responded with a runaround.
Digital cormorants fish with a noose around their necks and often only catch lies.
PENTHOUSE
Technological dependency is not perceived as such. The netizen believes that he dominates a medium to which he is a hostage.
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