Virtual insanity

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/10/2023 (1048 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are probably many moments when our minds would rather drift off into fantasy rather than deal with the reality of global calamities. Who could blame us?

But author Jonathan Taplin, who is director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California, argues that a fantasy world is deliberately built around and for us while democracy and the commons are stolen from under our feet.

In The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto, Taplin outlines how the Technocrats — Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter/X), Peter Thiel (Paypal, Facebook) and Marc Andreesen (Netscape, Bitcoin) — are intent on dismantling democracy for their own profits by creating a fantasy world for us based on virtual reality, avatars, Marvel Movies, trips to Mars, transhumanism and/or living to age 200.

As Taplin suggests,“The Technocrats have risen to levels of previously unimagined wealth while providing tools to autocrats around the world.” At the same time, they are centrally focused on using public money to fund space exploration and other strange projects, while some, like Musk and Thiel, seem eager to fan the flames of fascism.

And for Taplin, “Andressen, Musk, Thiel and Zuckerberg’s disruptions of our notions of both capitalism and democracy are only going to increase in the coming years.” This will usher in more autocratic states, an expansion of the social class he refers to as the Precariat, and a fantasy world that has all of us spouting hateful things online, betting on sports online and creating more perfect forms of ourselves.

Leaning on George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, Taplin builds the case that our society is at a tipping point where we are eating each other alive while these four, and others, are becoming immeasurably richer — at our expense. Taplin calls for a greater collective criticality where we ask ourselves “if investing trillions in virtual reality or going to Mars will add to the collective wealth of society, through real, productive growth.”

Through contemporary bread and circuses, billionaires are attempting to create a utopian society for themselves, while dangling this utopia in front of our eyes through Captain America, TikTok stars and the Metaverse. Taplin takes the reader through a deep dive of each of the Technocrats, outlining how each grew up focused on science fiction and in contexts where social interaction and healthy relationships were devoid from their experience.

In 2023, our digital social networks will have been created by those who have not developed significant and non-digital social relationships and by four men who would rather live in a utopian world where their awkwardness is shielded. Meta and the Metaverse to Taplin are stark examples of how the Technocrats are engineering a more perfect social network and society while providing insidious forces a platform and space to dull our criticality.

For Taplin, Meta and similar social networks are at best “an opioid for Gen Z” and at worst a stomping ground for neo-fascism. As he argues, “Meta proposes complete elimination of the boundaries between truth and fiction, between real and unreal.” This is what Trumpism and fascism produce and need. For Taplin, Zuckerberg’s company “has almost destroyed civil society and our democracy.”

So where is the hope? Taplin suggests we have two choices: succumb or wake up. Waking up involves not letting our children use VR, not buying into cryptocurrency, standing up to the misuse of public dollars for childish space fantasies. And, above all, getting back to humanism, the humanities and the arts. It is within these where revolution and healthy social networks and societies are created.

For educators, the examination of the Technocrats is an opportunity for learners to fully reflect on the forces that are fully engineered to dissuade them from reality. From Instagram, YouTube and Marvel movies (Taplin’s rant on Marvel is worth the price of the book alone) to TikTok, are young people able to understand the negative impact the fantasy world has on individuals and our relationships with others?

Educators (and that’s all adults): begin with Orwell and Huxley with our teens, and then have them fully investigate the Technocrats. Have them challenge the inevitability of a bleak and engineered modernity. Have them imagine the possibilities that reside in the exciting notion that “The brilliance of democracy is that it allows for improvisation, the greatest power of the creative spirit.”

Matt Henderson is superintendent of Winnipeg School Division.