You can be anything you want in The Metaverse, you just can’t be in control.
Who owns the means of production? And how is that relevant in today’s always connected world?
Many US citizens rent their residence, have near zero or negative equity on their car loans,
and have their “retirement savings” owned by the government. But perhaps under certain conditions and legislation, those citizens might have, or be granted, some form of stake or ownership in the “Metaverse” means of production.
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Owning and controlling are fundamental concerns in human affairs… and are integral to civilizations…which tend to create/ produce “ruling classes” or dictatorships or Hedge Funds uber alles, or “all power to the party”. But though power is problematic the approach we take isn’t fated to be the same old same old.
There are a number of models of civilization current on the planet, with greater or lesser degrees of freedom and personal empowerment, and there is no rule of the universe saying we couldn’t innovate and disrupt our way to new models of dealing with power and control. History is anything but static. Will it be different in “meta- verses”?
We hope for more equitable relations between power entities and individuals and communities as our immersion in web worlds continues. It would help if we could grasp what is at stake in Meta Worlds.(see article below).
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Net Neutrality and Municipal Open Networks…would seemingly help create some unappropriated real/unreal estate.
The Brits back in the day had large areas that were called “the commons”, ownership and control being vague and not monopolized…until it was decided to fence them off and control given to the country squires.
There was a time in the US when “land” could be “homesteaded” and then owned, such as the homesteading on great huge swaths of the Great Plains. It wasn’t always worth the sweat equity invested and those who owned railroads were the big winners in terms of capital gained.
Free isn’t always a good deal… but for many without assets it was a big step up into the American Dream. Echoes of this exist in all the free online services we signed on for, that gave away things we didn’t even know had value…personal data).
Perhaps hopes for homesteading new “land” was what drove counterculturists to adopt computers, and drives some of the huge amounts of energy devoted to “video games”.
Power and control on the desktop might be seen as sort of homesteading, creating ownership out of thin air so to speak, empowering the “user”.
Yet here we are today, with only part of that dream of power to the user fulfilled, and a larger part controlled by huge corporations.
Are we going to be relegated to “renters” who can’t hang anything on the walls, or otherwise void the rental agreement? Or are we going to DIY? Or is there a third “middle way” as Buddha suggested?
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Kudos to Gary for the link.
The Metaverse is a human rights dilemma | ZDNet