The Metaverse Hype Cycle

The metaverse will no doubt bring many benefits, joys, and human advancements, while also raising additional questions about our self-conception and what it actually means to 'advance' as humans. The metaverse is compelling because it asks us to more viscerally engage with what we believe about our bodies — about the paradigms we reify as we scaffo... See more

I think our history with proto-­metaverses should make us more skeptical about any claims for the emancipatory power of technology and technology platforms. After all, each of them both encountered and reproduced various kinds of social inequities, even as they strove not to, and many created problems that their designers did not foresee. Yet this

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Social networking as we know it relies on content consumed in the past tense. Photos, videos, tweets, are all a part of our lives that are captured first and then shared or consumed by others afterwards. Gaming, on the other hand, is inherently a real-time social experience, whether it is with friends playing together online or streamers broadcasti... See more

Throughout this primer, the Metaverse has been positioned as both a successor state to the mobile internet, as well as a platform for human leisure, labor, and existence at large. The success of this vision depends on whether the Metaverse has a thriving economy.

The tech industry currently stands at a crossroads. At the twilight of social media, adtech, and crypto bull markets (bubbles?), tech workers and consumers are simultaneously exhausted by tech and starving for more. Shiny trends like Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality stand on the sidelines ready to transform latent frustrations into newfang... See more