In an age of residing within digital bubbles, alienation and isolation have become the 'new normal' prominent stages of our lifestyle. In this manner, our own space can be perceived as the illustrative outcome of our escapism from reality.
A Foucauldian approach to such phenomenon is the 'Heterotopian' lifestyle.
What do you think would his views on the metaverse be if he was among us right now?
To what extent will he support or reject the idea?
How would he contextualize the metaverse within the current social, political, and economic conditions?
Hello Taher Abdel-Ghani, the Metaverse can indeed constitute a third place [1], hence it can be considered a Heterotopos where the "real and the imagined are persistently commingled". Regarding isolation, it can be argued that the Metaverse can help us re-focus from parasocial to genuine social interactions [2] and restore human connections and trust albeit from a distance [3].
[1] Mystakidis, S. (2022). Metaverse. Encyclopedia, 2(1), 486–497. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2010031
Article Metaverse
[2] Mystakidis, S., & Lympouridis, V. (2023). Immersive Learning. Encyclopedia, 3(2), 396–405. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3020026
Article Immersive Learning
[3] Mystakidis, S. (2021). Motivation Enhancement Methods for Community Building in Extended Reality. In J. A. Fisher (Ed.), Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities (pp. 265–282). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003052838-17
Chapter Motivation Enhancement Methods for Community Building in Ext...
I like this question very much. I spent a fair amount of time this afternoon pondering my reply. The metaverse as a concept—as it originated in Stephenson's Snow Crash—was truly a cyberpunk creation meaning it was a hyper-capitalist dystopian construct (tiered levels of representation of avatars, for instance, that retained power imbalances and socio-economic disparities). It is funny, then, that Zuckerberg chose to attempt to realize that system. I am not sure there is a metaverse yet though. Not in the sophisticated way it was presented in the novel.
With that said there are quite a few games and connected communities that are quite sophisticated and each make up there own little metaverses. See Edward Castronova.
What I find more compelling is something an undergraduate mentioned to me about a creative project he was working on. He said he felt all social media is sousveillance. What he meant is that his generation is so attached to their phones and making representations of their lives (snapchat, tik tok, and instagram in particular) that they change their behavior. This struck me as a strange derivation of the panopticon. Not only are these young people sharing their lives, they graft a commercial persona on top of it. It is all performative living through the device. That strikes me as a more real metaverse, to be honest, and one that Foucault would find a disturbing imbalance in power. What seems like agency and the ability to craft one's own representation is just as dystopic as Stephenson's vision.
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