Aug 28, 2022 04:13 AM
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora...ine-cities
EXCERPTS: . . . This is the vision that Mark Zuckerberg has for us. In a promotional video last year, Zuckerberg welcomed us to the metaverse, a beautiful realm of soaring mountains, untouched forests, tasteful mid-century modern interiors and fantastical fauna.
But Zuckerberg doesn’t want the Metaverse to be merely a platform for entertainment. In his vision, the key attraction of the metaverse is that it is a place to meet other people. (He is a social media mogul, after all.) He intends the metaverse to be an alternative world in which we live with our friends. And as the philosopher David Chalmers argues in his book Reality+ (2022), virtual worlds might not be physical, but they are real places. There is no reason, in principle, why we cannot live full lives in an online reality.
[...] what will get us there in the first place? What starts the cycle?
[...] The message is depressingly clear: it is the deterioration of the physical world around us, the loss of lively streets, the fraying of communities, and the decline of public spaces that will give us reason to migrate online. We will escape to virtual reality not because it is better, but because the old world has become worse.
Perhaps this isn’t surprising. After all, video conferencing technology has existed for years. But it took a global pandemic to usher a critical mass of users on to Zoom and other platforms. Still, pandemics aside, why should we expect physical reality to decline?
[...] We avoid places that feel dangerous. But what keeps cities safe? Not the police – in a healthy city, you rarely see law enforcement. As Jacobs explained, it is the presence of strangers – local shopkeepers, passersby, idlers and diners – that keep city streets safe. By contrast, an empty street is a scary street.
This is why virtual worlds compete with the physical world. Like city streets, online social spaces are appealing because other people are there. The more of our time and money we spend online, the less attractive our high streets will be. Flourishing cities need high-frequency public transit. Remote working starves transit systems of paying riders, leading to service reductions. Cities are fuelled by their culture and nightlife. Zuckerberg sees concerts and parties relocating to the metaverse.
These patterns are self-reinforcing. Some people move online, leading to fewer trains, empty streets and shuttered venues, prompting even more people to move online. The logic of following the crowd means that the transformation can occur even if most people would prefer a flourishing physical world to a flourishing metaverse. And no matter how benign their intentions, once private corporations start to sell virtual reality it will be in their interests for the physical world to become less alluring, increasing the comparative appeal of their products.
[...] what if, as Chalmers and Zuckerberg think, a life in virtual reality really could be as good as, or even better than, the physical world? Shouldn’t we then accept the decline of our cities as the price to pay for the wonders of the new worlds we will create?
[...] In short, we cannot allow the novelty of virtual worlds to blind us to the risks of relocating our social and economic activity into a realm that is privately owned and controlled by unaccountable corporations. And whatever we decide, it must be based on a simple principle: the interests of citizens must always take precedence over the entrancing visions of the utopian messiahs of the virtual future... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . This is the vision that Mark Zuckerberg has for us. In a promotional video last year, Zuckerberg welcomed us to the metaverse, a beautiful realm of soaring mountains, untouched forests, tasteful mid-century modern interiors and fantastical fauna.
But Zuckerberg doesn’t want the Metaverse to be merely a platform for entertainment. In his vision, the key attraction of the metaverse is that it is a place to meet other people. (He is a social media mogul, after all.) He intends the metaverse to be an alternative world in which we live with our friends. And as the philosopher David Chalmers argues in his book Reality+ (2022), virtual worlds might not be physical, but they are real places. There is no reason, in principle, why we cannot live full lives in an online reality.
[...] what will get us there in the first place? What starts the cycle?
[...] The message is depressingly clear: it is the deterioration of the physical world around us, the loss of lively streets, the fraying of communities, and the decline of public spaces that will give us reason to migrate online. We will escape to virtual reality not because it is better, but because the old world has become worse.
Perhaps this isn’t surprising. After all, video conferencing technology has existed for years. But it took a global pandemic to usher a critical mass of users on to Zoom and other platforms. Still, pandemics aside, why should we expect physical reality to decline?
[...] We avoid places that feel dangerous. But what keeps cities safe? Not the police – in a healthy city, you rarely see law enforcement. As Jacobs explained, it is the presence of strangers – local shopkeepers, passersby, idlers and diners – that keep city streets safe. By contrast, an empty street is a scary street.
This is why virtual worlds compete with the physical world. Like city streets, online social spaces are appealing because other people are there. The more of our time and money we spend online, the less attractive our high streets will be. Flourishing cities need high-frequency public transit. Remote working starves transit systems of paying riders, leading to service reductions. Cities are fuelled by their culture and nightlife. Zuckerberg sees concerts and parties relocating to the metaverse.
These patterns are self-reinforcing. Some people move online, leading to fewer trains, empty streets and shuttered venues, prompting even more people to move online. The logic of following the crowd means that the transformation can occur even if most people would prefer a flourishing physical world to a flourishing metaverse. And no matter how benign their intentions, once private corporations start to sell virtual reality it will be in their interests for the physical world to become less alluring, increasing the comparative appeal of their products.
[...] what if, as Chalmers and Zuckerberg think, a life in virtual reality really could be as good as, or even better than, the physical world? Shouldn’t we then accept the decline of our cities as the price to pay for the wonders of the new worlds we will create?
[...] In short, we cannot allow the novelty of virtual worlds to blind us to the risks of relocating our social and economic activity into a realm that is privately owned and controlled by unaccountable corporations. And whatever we decide, it must be based on a simple principle: the interests of citizens must always take precedence over the entrancing visions of the utopian messiahs of the virtual future... (MORE - missing details)