What if I tell you to close your eyes and imagine Lata
Mangeshkar? Please try it. What came up to the mind? The image of an elderly
woman? What if I had asked this question 50 years back? When the internet or
the TV were not a common thing. Only perhaps radio was. Would imagination be
visual (as it is now), or would it be auditory? What would you have thought? A
face or a voice?
The human imagination and the mode of remembrance have
always been affected by the media it consumes, thus in the wake of the emergence
of new mediums of interaction with [information and] the (virtual) world, like
the Metaverse recently in development by Meta, formerly Facebook, it becomes essential
to understand the mediums and the media themselves. Once we resided in the
print media-dominated era, I believe it has now changed to an
audio-visual-dominated era. However, how did we reach here? How did media
evolve into this? What made us leave the print media and convince us that VR
headsets showcasing a ‘fake’ replica of the real world is the future?
One of the earliest ways of navigating reality has
been the literary/rhetoric device of metaphor. They are understanding one thing
through the vessel of another. Extending this device to the world of social
science, in the context of media, medium, and message, the media is often confused
for the message itself: a rhetorical disfiguration and a common mistake.
If the clock is the
medium and time its message, did the message exist prior to the existence of
the medium? Before the invention of any time-keeping device, did time exist?
Can time be counted in the crashing of waves and happiness spent?
Clocks once were a metaphor for time, but now they are
confused for Time itself. Time was not always this distinct chuck of minutes
divided evenly into sixty segments.
Metaverse, though now synonymous with the tech company
Meta, formerly Facebook, is not a single definitive concept as of yet; neither
does any single company have a single hold over it. Metaverse, without a fixed
definition, is the loosely based concept of enabling the participants to create
an ‘avatar’, a representation of themselves in the virtual world, to explore
and interact in a virtual world with similar virtual players. The virtual world
where this interaction will happen is developed differently by different
companies for different means. Some had existed for quite some time, primarily
in the gaming realm, like the 2003 video game Second Life. Others are
actively being developed for entertainment purposes like “Lil Nas X
performed the first Roblox concert in 2020, over 3 million people watched”
(The Week Junior – Science + Nature. 12th Aug 2022, ‘Enter the
Metaverse’) and “Premier
League champions Manchester City and its new partner Sony have begun building a
virtual replica of the Etihad Stadium, which will be the team’s central hub in
the metaverse” (Newar, 2022).
Postman (1985), in his
book Amusing Ourselves to Death, writes that the train was the fastest
means of communication for a long time. The speed of information was limited by
the speed at which we could physically traverse space; however, with the
invention of the telegraph, information could be transferred in minutes instead
of hours. This was the introduction of a new medium. When a new medium is introduced,
it is not just an advanced version of an old medium, just like a computer is
not just a better typewriter or a lightbulb a more advanced candle, it brings
with itself a complete change in the order of things, much like Eliot’s theory
of change in literary tradition. The car was not just a faster horse because
this medium evolved other surrounding mediums into something else too; cities
are now planned to make them car-centric, house designs have changed to
accommodate a driveway directly connecting the garage, and it has even changed
how much we value nature by pitting electric v/s diesel cars.
With the invention of the
telegraph, how we approached information itself changed. For the first time, we
could receive information about things thousands of miles away. For the first
time, we were getting answers to questions that no one asked or thought of.
Newspapers were no longer bound to report only the (local) important events but
could report the most distant and shocking events, even if they had no personal
connections to people who would receive the news, as long as it was fast and
new.
With this new medium, what was valued now was
not notable information but fast (and shocking) information. Thus began the
commodification of information.
“how often does it
occur that information provided to you on morning radio or television or newspaper,
causes you to alter your plans for the day (which prior to speedy information
could have caused if the news was only about your local town) or to take some
action that you would not otherwise have taken?” (Postman, 1985)
The commodification of
information is most prominent in today’s digital news media, i.e., TV channels.
News media trying to out-fast each other and provide the most recent and latest
information on anything. On anything as long as it is the latest news. Even if
it is the most irrelevant news. There are now dedicated Twitter handles that
report the most recent celebrity gossip, down to the location of celebrities
until the last hour through paparazzi. However, why does the audience lap this
up? Obviously, there’s the element of celebrity worshiping; but were there not
Gods to worship? Or, as Nietzsche said, we have killed him?
What made an entire
generation rationalize celebrity worshiping and gossiping? Or caring about
something random, like an earthquake happening on another continent? Because it
was taught that the basis of selection/prioritization of information is its
fastness and novelty, not its relevance. This creates a constant demand and
supply loop of fast
and new but irrelevant
news/information.
If the news/information/media
is not good/new/exciting enough, the audience is conditioned to just….
“Isn’t
life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” – Andy Warhol
Metaverse, as of now, is
a relatively empty land. Comparable to pre-colonized America or Australia. The
natives are the developers and the investors. Only this time the land is
actively for sale. Server spaces are being sold for the promise that once this
land populates, you can do business on them. Buy some digital land and set up something,
like a software to screen virtual movies there. Instead of going to actual
theatres or even watching on their mobile phones, people might pop up a headset
and watch VR movies on your VR software in your cinema hall that stands on your
digital land. “Investors are buying up plots of land in cyberspace.
Sometimes for millions of dollars, seemingly convinced there must be gold in
them.” (Ravenscraft, 2021) But what is the appeal of this cyberspace
though? Is it the allure of entering a never-ending world? A world of constant newness and novelty? Or is it
the ability to constantly change yourself in relation to how you interact with
the world? The ability to change your avatar in the metaverse in an instant.
The fastness and
non-boundedness of your identity.
…change the channel or
scroll away from the content. Just like I changed the
topic in the last paragraph.
While Picasso showcased
the fragmentation of the modern world (and thus all the information we receive
in it) Andy Warhol succeeded him in the art scene and showcased the mass
repetitive nature of the world. Pop art exists on the assumption that you know
about pop culture and that you are up-to-date (which you can never be), and
thus, the art does not need any more context than its contemporary existence.
The rows of Marilyn Monroe’s lips produced by Warhol depict that message. The
context is so violently taken out that the art is no more about Marilyn, but is
about a mass-produced sex symbol. Images now exist separate from the context
they present. Information today is treated the same way. Flashy headlines and
segments like ‘News in 60 seconds’ (One-minute World News, n.d.) prioritize
information over context and condition us into accepting that as the norm of
receiving information. The context can be (and becomes) whatever you can
imagine it to be.
You can be whatever you
can imagine to be in the Metaverse. “As one of the six main metaverse pillars, avatars
represent the user, allowing them to choose their desired identity.” and
“avatars can
be easily swapped out, this digital identity can be adjusted frequently
depending on mood” (Sandbox, 2023). You can be a dragon in one chat
room, a blue-haired girl in another, and a chair in yet another. Your image
precedes the context you need to provide in this world.
The Plato’s cave does not entertain reality, but it is cozy for sure.
References
Levine, S., & McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The extensions
of man. American Quarterly, 16(4), 646. https://doi.org/10.2307/2711172
Newar, B. (2022, February 22). Manchester City to build Etihad Stadium in
the metaverse. Cointelegraph. https://cointelegraph.com/news/manchester-city-to-build-etihad-stadium-in-the-metaverse
One-minute World News. (n.d.). [Video]. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/10462520
Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death. https://www.exodusbooks.com/Samples/Penguin/1235Foreword.pdf
Ravenscraft, E. (2021, December 26). The metaverse land rush is an
illusion. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/metaverse-land-rush-illusion/
Sandbox. (2023, April 26). Study
reveals how avatars shape digital identity in the metaverse. Medium. https://medium.com/sandbox-game/study-reveals-how-avatars-shape-digital-identity-in-the-metaverse-3dac23a8f3f2
The Week Junior - Science + Nature (12th
Aug 2022). “Enter the Metaverse”
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, January 21). Metaverse. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
Wikipedia contributors. (2024a, January 15). Andy Warhol.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol
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