be it from Mark Zuckerberg or apple or whoever there is a large push to erase the lines between our physical and our digital lives this push is often framed in future or abstract terms these are products in development in experimental Labs being constructed for some not too distant future but this is untrue we are already in a metaverse one which has been snuck into our lives injected behind our retina with needles so narrow that we barely have felt the pain of each injection each day we inch further into entire simulation our interests and interactions are
becoming hyperreal existing in a world which is slowly being blanketed over the one we can touch and experience with true physical senses the metaverse is already here you are already in it these are bold claims so to help us understand them in a concrete way we can begin with some literature simulacra and simulation is a 1981 book authored by Jean balar this book and its ideas served as the philosophical basis for the Matrix series of films but we'll talk more about that later simulacra and simulation discusses the nature of reality in an increasingly commodified and
media drench World specifically bodar discusses how media images create a new reality and systematically Stamp Out the already established World in which we live the book can be complex and Labyrinthian so badar simplifies much of his theory by pointing to an old Parable if we understand this thought experiment and expand on it just slightly we can begin to understand our current predicament and believe me when I say it is a predicament indeed imagine there's a great Empire and a crazed cartographer creates a map of that Empire a fullscale one:1 topographical map on the map 1000t
mountains are 1,000 ft tall 100t rivers are 100 ft wide etc etc the Cartographer further decides that the landscape on the map should change with the real landscape of the Empire if a cliff collapses that same Cliff must collapse on the map so at this point the map becomes indiscernible from the landscape of the Empire itself but the map is so large that the only place to put it is on top of the Empire we must understand this is of course physically impossible but this Parable exists in the metaphorical not the physical so the Cartographer
puts his giant perfect map on top of the Empire and now it essentially replaces the empire being that the map is IND distinguishable from the Empire this is acceptable enough what difference does it really make but then our mad cartographer gets an idea he can actually make the map better than the Empire which it represents trees can be greener mountains taller flowers can bloom every day instead of every year so he does just that well now the Cartographer has a map which in many measures is experientially better than the reality it represents the Cartographer gets
very famous for the of the map he's created he becomes very rich and very greedy and so he develops this lavish lifestyle which he must maintain the Cartographer can't let people see under the map they need to live on the map and bask in the glory of his perfect creation this is precisely what happens meanwhile the Empire itself begins to crumble it has been rejected by those in power as the map has come to replace the Empire as a living space as a world the Empire eventually Falls apart from disuse and lack of Maintenance while
the map remains on top of it greater than the Empire ever was now which is the real Empire is it the world or is it the map what happens when the society present or future needs a map of their new Empire they will produce only a map of a map furthermore When Future Generations describe the Empire after the map has crumbled to Pieces will they imagine the world or will they imagine the map does it matter does this transmute the original map into being real What Becomes of the Empire this is an expanded version of
the tale bodard used in his writing for bodard the map was a simulation but as it took the place of the Empire it became simulacra that is a copy which no longer has an original today we can say that technology is like this map of our Empire it offers products community ities Social Circles in crowds out crowds Trends it has videos of events which occur in real life it too has stores Banks games and sports today the internet can even produce artwork writing and music like The Mad cartographers map the internet presents things better than
they exist everything is easier and more beautiful and more perfect we must also keep in mind that the internet is no longer a mere Network we can access and exit from physical entry points it is something which permeates almost everything we do the map has been laid over the empire in Earnest consider the phenomenon of fake news this is the clearest point where we see our map concealing reality stories are fabricated online with no basis in the real world designed to appease the sensibilities of an audience and delivered with attached messaging that the real actual
version of events is somehow false in the most severe cases people get elected policy is enacted change happens based on things which have tenuous grounds in reality social media influencers and celebrities also exemplify this blurring of lines face- tuned images glamorous and false depictions of life and fake candid photo shoots mask the reality of living but these influencers don't need to look how they actually look because their entire existence is on screens in the Digital World perhaps 1,000th of 1% of Their audience will ever have any real face-to-face interaction with these people and so the
digital representation of these influencers and their lives becomes real these images create tangible effects they alter what we expect from Life they alter how we see reality itself AI produces images which are not real but more and more we are unable to distinguish between the actual and the artificial indeed progress for the people who engineer these algorithms is exemplified by the Public's inability to distinguish between AI generated imagery and reality these images erode at the real pushing our actual World towards insufficiency and irrelevance why bother with the real thing virtual reality devices like the Apple
Vision Pro are said to close down distance and time and geography in a moment you can be transported to distant corners of the world given their say technocrats would have everyone use these devices and they would have these devices portray virtual space as entirely IND discernible from physical space these people would abandon the real world render geography and physical space Irrelevant in favor of their virtual reality of course these devices are not yet ubiquitious so this is kind of a hypothetical Point more concretely and immediately the prolif aration of these devices applications and Technologies harms
our planet in very real ways but still these companies Proclaim nonsense green messaging each time they communicate about their products when Apple for example proclaims they are decreasing their carbon emissions by 50% we should not be fooled even if this statistic has Merit and is earnest we're still left with 50% with enormous harm for our planet we are too left with the myriad other ways apple and its peers exploit and molest our environment so these companies actively engage in the destruction of our planet lying to us while building their false reality our cartographers allow the
Empire to Decay so they can construct their map all of these pieces create a hole as Tech oligarchs grow more ambitious the line between our Empire and our map blurs technology is only optional until it isn't we can no longer check out of the internet we are affected by the digital landscape with every moment we wake and sleep we live in a world which is not true enough to be real but also too tangible to be purely digital it is neither real nor unreal what we have is a new and third version of space the
hyper real this is our metaverse it has already been drawn and the technocrats are our mad cartographers we didn't ask for this metaverse we did not want it so it has been sold to us with a veneer of never-ending function for the consumer we are expected to believe that our metaverse enriches our lives that it satisfies our needs that it can continue to do so forever in truth it provides heroin and diamonds which plate our most superficial desires we impress our peers and enrich some abstract version of social credit we hunt material possession which brings
little reward think of the last time you bought a new X or the latest why there is the rush of accomplishment that wains and we pursue this high once more so we are left with a constant ttis of dissatisfaction which is to be solved only by further consumption the metaverse ensures we do not dip our toes into the water it forces us to keep moving forward like the man who commits suicide Side by walking into the ocean the real function our metaverse serves is to strengthen itself it pumps Capital into the pockets of the few
ensuring control and power while entering the masses in a looplike structure the more that we engage in our metaverse the more it demands from us we work to buy more and bizarrely we work to acrew a lotted vacation time thereby we constantly sacrifice resources and time that could be spent considering life outside of this increasingly unreal landscape Bard's ideas served as the loose basis for the Matrix series of movies in which our protagonists learn that all of reality is a digital simulation the main character Neo can enter into the matrix by plugging a large cable
into the back of his neck our Matrix is not so antique and clumsy as the one depicted by this film ours does not require a cable and our flesh ours is in the air it is in our relationships our social dynamics our everyday routines it is in every tangible and intangible molecule of our lives in 1967 French philosopher G deor wrote The Society of the spectacle the book is a series of short passages which discuss consumerism media and specifically how authentic life is being replaced by representations of reality deor writes the spectacle is not a
collection of images but a social relation among people mediated by images today we can take images to mean any combination of consumer focused media advertisements films magazines newspapers digital content videos like this one Etc the spectacle is an amorphous sort of thing difficult but not impossible to Define it is the capital seeking consumer targeting landscape of Our Lives the spectacle is motivated by economic growth it is the show put on for us by moneyed interests and the way that show Alters our relationships to one another and to life itself the spectacle is both the rhetoric
which produces media and the media which produces rhetoric the spectacle is okay in small amounts technology can help us the market too can be beneficial in many ways some spectacle can provide consumers with safety Choice opportunity and even agency over their lives but the trouble begins when the spectacle does not exist alongside our world and instead takes it over entirely the board noted that living in the real world was replaced by contemplating the spectacle we can understand the word contemplating as basically participating we spend our days working so we can buy this or that new
thing house or car which the spectacle has told us we need conversations occur increasingly via privately owned objects and softwares social media becomes an integral part of any hobby through the spectacle our lives are transmuted into a sequence of exchanges with commercial goods and for-profit Enterprises whose only feedback is that we must engage more every action we take now has some vestigial creature trying to attach itself seeking to insert itself as a middleman between us and reality much like Bard's map this spectacle helps create a false World consider the sport of baseball started as a
game indeed at one point baseball players were not allowed to be paid but over time the spectacle wrapped its arms around the sport slowly each surface at a baseball park became covered in advertisements which all hope to influence the viewer in some way each statistic displayed on television broadcasts is now brought to you by some company jerseys are emblazoned with irrelevant corporate symbolism baseball stadiums themselves are not named after Founders or cities but after the companies who want your attention in recent years even more Curious changes have been made baseball being a slow tedious and
quiet game was losing popularity among modern audiences which meant diminished returns for advertisers and stakeholders without these the sport would have died a slow death vanished from our world because of its inability to satisfy the spectacle so these stakeholders simply changed baseball they added a set of rules to increase the pace of play and shorten the length of a baseball game after the spectacle infected the game it fundament altered baseball itself so too is our world just like baseball and just like the Mad cartographer changed his map the spectacle Alters what it means to be
human it replaces lived reality with contemplation and engagement in the spectacle every decision we make from the media we watch to the shirt we wear to the events we attend becomes fuel for the spectacle itself the spectacle Rejects representation of reality as the board notes that which the spectacle shows is important and that which is important the spectacle shows appearing is the goal not being images be them advertisements internet content or movies influence our decisions beliefs and ideals regardless of whether or not these images are actually based in reality news Cycles filter out parts of
the world and filter in others based on what gets attention and AD dollars we are told to buy by this or that because it will make us happy our social lives have been infected by social networks by pure onslaught of media the spectacle Engineers our Behavior our lives and Minds become moldable clay again a little bit of this may be good the market has satisfied our basic needs in the Western World food shelter and water are easy to access for most people but the spe I Le cannot stop it demands infinite growth so it has
then created new desires and new Ambitions for the consumer it has built us a metaverse of values it implores us to need a faster car or a larger house so we must further partake life itself is no longer sufficient we now must Aspire of course this creates alienation the board notes the more his life is now his product the more he is separated ated from his life we are strangers to our own world to what it means to exist as humans we are further strangers to each other we cannot be with or for our fellow
humans we must be with and for the spectacle achievements are increasingly difficult to measure by connection service or esteem for your fellow man the spectacle does not offer prizes for the happiest man or the closest friends instead to achieve is now synonymous with diplomas possessions and high ranks in large organizations ultimately when we combine this huge amount of circumstances and effects we get our metaverse we find ourselves living not in reality but in a sort of simulation thereof for the modern human conceiving of life unattached to this simulation strikes as basically nonsense so how are
we to spend our days then staring into the sky sitting and doing nothing it's unimaginable thereby we have reached a difficult truth this simulation and all of its trappings are reality the map has become the Empire this swirl of simulacra hyper reality and spectacle all combined to build our modern metaverse but why do we accept it as so certainly it is easy enough to state that this is all nonsense that it's all unhealthy yet our metaverse is effective why well we should not ignore the mechanical realities it is engineered to work billions of dollars and
genius level intellects are plunged into this new metaverse to ensure that it predates on our most intense psychological impulses but more abstractly our metaverse provides us with ostensible benefits in southern parts of the United States greyhound racing has been an event to behold and gamble upon these races a fake lure is towed at speed around a track and the dogs beholden to their Instinct and training they chase the lure as quickly as they can I once had a greyhound as a pet a retired racing dog when I adopted the dog I was told that the
Greyhounds are not in fact abused in captivity at the racetracks quite the opposite to race well a gr H needs to be happy I don't know if this is true but I ask the viewer to let it stand hypothetically you see with this in mind greyhound racing doesn't become more kind it becomes more cruel these dogs are plated and pacified and encouraged by the false notion that one day they might catch the lore they are kept stupid all the while and never allowed to run free they are distracted from the sheer concept of running free
from the their desires to do so our simulation turns us all into racing greyhounds pacified by material wants so that we can continue to race faster and chase our lures we are given a sort of Freedom we are free to live our lives however we so choose according to the metaverse which is represented by the Bevy of options we have in the marketplace but this is a false Freedom it is false in the most m mundane ways we can choose from a hundred different cereals but they are all owned by three companies we can wear
whatever clothes we want but these choices are Shackled by our economic capacity and furthermore making these choices requires continued engagement in the spectacle we are offered prizes for our participation but we must participate to earn these prizes all while ignoring the concept of truly sincerely running free this freedom is also false and more consequential ways essentially contribute to the simulation or die it's easy for me to sit on my computer and publish YouTube videos once in a while and even check out of this metaverse in between as best as I can but not everyone has
this Choice when a single mother raises three children or a man Works two jobs to pay his rent waxing poetic about the simulation is a waste of time it's just not an option what sort of freedom is this the freedom that mandates one's actions finally we come back to bodar he notes that there are four stages which take something from being real to being simulacrum consider a picture of a tree this is the first stage it is simple reality we have an object the picture which represents something that actually exists the tree but then we
begin to meddle with it we bring that picture into Photoshop and do some color correction this is basically professional photography images are enhanced but everyone knows it there's very little outright deceit involved this is Bard's second order but now we decide our picture even enhanced isn't good enough so we download a great picture of a tree online and we tell people that we took the photo that it's a picture we took on a hike this is the third stage the image is real and it represents something real but we are presenting it dishonestly in a
way that is removed from reality finally our next stage brings us to full simulacra we create an AI generated image of a tree and we parade it around to our friends this stage sees us present something which is fake and actively conceal reality as we convince our friends that this AI generated image of a tree is in fact real we are developing something beyond the real a simulacra the hyper real as Bard notes I would hesitate to entirely copy and paste this structure onto our present times but certainly we can see how media technology and
the internet is moving our reality through a similar series of stages technology isn't bad the internet is not intrinsically harmful the digital world has help helped Humanity in volumes we can find like-minded individuals even romantic Partners we can discover cultural achievements and knowledge we can get help when we need it almost whenever we need it medical technology has saved countless millions of lives this is a very important point and my desire is not to burn all technology to the ground the problem comes when this hyperreal metaverse eclipses reality the problem comes when we fail to
recognize the map isn't the Empire when the Empire crumbles in favor of the map I understand that I use the internet more than most people but in the 25 years I have been using the internet the broader trend has continued to move in One Direction More internet for everyone all of the time we are speeding up not slowing down I feel the point of diminishing returns grows nearer every day if we have not reached it already my stories are both current and forward thinking the greatest trap and the meanest one we are given by our
metaverse is deceit this metaverse proclaims Beauty and happiness are within its code within its folds and it conceals the real world under its paper thin veneer but in fact beauty is everywhere it is in the Leaves of Grass and grains of sand it is in late nights with our closest friends it is in the Embrace of a loved one we should use technology enjoy technology but we should not be so used by it we should not believe the metaverse our world our real world is both gorgeous and near
