A Defense of the Metaverse

How Virtual Worlds Can Offer Us Hope, Refuge, and Transformation

This last month or so, we have seen an incredible surge of interest, discussion and debate about the metaverse — what it is, what it will be, and whether it will do any good or not. That last question has seen an army of cynics slamming the very idea of a metaverse, decrying it as a sign of our society’s slide into dystopia. Let us recall that this burst in metaverse discussion came from Facebook rebranding itself as Meta to dodge the scandal of Facebook designing Instagram to capture teenagers’ attention and monetize it without concern for their overall well-being. Honestly, the fact that this name change made us all forget this is a sign we’re already living in a dystopian world — that a mere rebrand has successfully quashed the greater debate about social media’s impact on the well-being of the world’s youth. As in a dystopian world, ethics seems to be a distant afterthought.

And yet, Facebook doesn’t get to define the metaverse. The term was born from the amazing cyberpunk novel Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist jumps in and out of VR at will — meeting people, going to virtual clubs where hackers hang out and trade secrets, and so on. He uses these alternate states of reality to accomplish his aims, to connect with people far away, and ultimately to save humanity.