Tech firms increasingly want to blur the line between real and digital, and in doing so they blur the line between public and private space. Can a privately owned virtual reality ever be truly public space?
As has been chronicled by writers like Naomi Klein, since the market revolution in the 1980’s public space has been encroached on gradually by corporations. Sports arenas are named after brands and public transport is plastered with advertisements, and the problem is exponentially worse on the internet. Give the corporations a centimeter of advertising space and they’ll take a kilometer. The latest, and perhaps most troubling version of the loss of truly public space is what’s known in science fiction and tech circles as ‘AR’ and ‘VR’, or Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in plain English. The basic idea of AR is to overlay digital information on the real world, for example using digital markers in a user’s glasses to help the user find their way, while the basic idea of VR is to create a digital space that looks and feels immersive by having the user wear a special headset. Major firms like Microsoft and Meta are already offering headsets, and Apple is rumoured to be working on a headset too. I’m sure there are a lot of potentially beneficial use cases for VR, and especially AR, but I still find it worrying that firms which have proven time and time again that they have no regard for peoples’ privacy are trying to develop products promising to transform “how you work, learn, play, shop, and connect with the world around you”.
I’m regularly skeptical about internet firms on the blog, and I think it’s important to point out that my main issue isn’t technology or social media; just the power that grants corporations which are neither designed to nor have a strong track record of respecting privacy and facilitating outcomes which benefit society at the cost of profit. AR and especially VR is the purest form of privatised public space, and accordingly we should be skeptical of it. Is Meta’s Horizon Worlds just an “ever-expanding social universe where you can hang with friends, meet new people, play games, attend cool events”? Or is it just a brightly coloured data harvesting scheme? Can a space be truly public if there is a $400 price to entry to that space which is controlled down to the pixel by a privately owned company? I don’t think so.
Perhaps due to others sharing my discomfort with corporate power over our social lives, or perhaps due to the technology remaining in its infancy, it appears as though the “Metaverse” is struggling mightily to attract users. According to The Verge Meta has revised its annual goal for active users down from 500 000 to 280 000, and according to Gamesindustry.biz over half of Meta’s headsets aren’t used six months after purchase. Much as it makes me happy to see Meta fail, don’t think for a second that VR is dead. The control and power owning a space millions of people really use for socialising, learning, and working is immense and corporations will continue to pursue that dream until we as a society decide to stop them. People are quick to feel uneasy with governments infringing citizens’ privacy yet are quick to embrace the corporate panopticon. If we are to retain any truly public space on the internet we need to act against schemes like Meta’s “Metaverse”.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Sources:
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-vr-and-mixed-reality-headset-release-date-price-specs-and-leaks
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